Comic Review: “The Star Wars” #2 (of 8)

Mild spoilers below.

TTSW2-Covhis month’s issue of The Star Wars is the print-version of deja vu.  There is much in this story that will make you think, “… this seems familiar”, because you can start seeing more of how the final version of Star Wars: A New Hope came into being from this first draft.

Case in point: this issue contains a huge space battle.  It’s no surprise.  First, it’s Star Wars – of course there’s a space battle.  Second, the previews from Dark Horse showed it.  What’s interesting about this battle is that it’s obviously the Rebels vs. the Death Star from the end of Star Wars, but it takes place around the time of the Imperial troops storming the Tantive IV.  There is much dialogue in this comic battle that was repurposed and repositioned in both movie battles.  We have references to “Cut off” as opposed to “Cut the chatter!”, “Get back on target!” as opposed to “Stay on target!”.  Two unnamed droids who are obviously the precursors to C-3PO and R2-D2 are caught in the middle of the battle, much like they did on the Tantive IV, only here, R2 speaks in perfect English, er, Basic.

More and more, this issue feels like The Star Wars truly is the huge epic saga George has claimed he envisioned from the start, from which he took only a small portion to create A New Hope.  This is compressed storytelling going on here — we start out with General Skywalker waiting for the Senate to approve war, and by the middle of the issue, we’ve got it.  Along the way, we see hints of the Jedi Bendu wisdom as Skywalker takes on Annikin as his padawan.  Annikin tries to get Princess Leia to safety, and in that we see her defiant spirit… and some a unique tactic used to get her to go along with the plan.

I really liked the first issue of this story; this second issue feels like there’s so much detail we’re not getting to see, and for good reason — we know the details already, and this is a cursory glance at them.  Obviously, George knew his story needed revising, but The Star Wars continues to be an interesting look at what could have been.