First Time Through: Star Wars Volume 1, Skywalker Strikes

Hi everyone, I'm Star Wars Syl and this is the Remember Clone Captain Keeli blog.

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for the specified comic book volume, and also for Vader Volume 1. (The original Vader. The one with Doctor Aphra.)

Reading about Han, Luke, and Leia is not my cup of tea, so I confess I put off reading this for a long time, even though I could procure it from my library.

I finally decided I needed to know this stuff for my story writing, so to make it less painful I took a trip back to my family home and while my Mother was busy baking cookies, I read it out loud to her.

I was aware ahead of time of, shall we say... the moment. You know. George Lucas told Marvel originally Luke was not allowed to meet Vader in combat face-to-face before Empire Strikes Back, and the very first thing Marvel does when it regains the license from Dark Horse is have just that happen.

I was not exactly primed to like this story.

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing the whole way through. The artwork is gorgeous— I'll just say that first off. There were moments when Leia carried expressions I've seen on Carrie Fisher's face. The likeness is much better than what I'm used to in comics, though granted, my experience is quite limited. Han too, looked spectacular to me.

I loved the eyes. They looked so alive, and full of emotion.

As far as the story goes— hey, it wasn't as painful as I was anticipating. The idea of posing as Jabba's people to blow up the factory was a good idea on the Rebels' part, the Imperial who looks tough, then crumples without a second's hesitation when R2 threatens him was beautiful.

As far as the confrontation between Luke and Vader, I found that I couldn't be mad, because I was too busy glorying in Vader's awesome dialogue. He does some Bad Guy Monologueing to an empty room full of dead people, but hey. It's a comic. I'm not sure comic authors know how to tell a comic story without doing that kind of thing.

There were some beautiful drawings of Vader, and all in all, the impact this story is going to have on my own writing will be felt. I'm going to assume the basics of what happened are true in the Star Wars universe, but did Luke really fly under the stomping foot of the AT-AT when he could have just gone around? I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe that was just a legend spread about the famous Luke Skywalker in the time between Ep VI and VII.

I adore Vader, and he was very badshebs, beautiful, and said a lot of cruel and wonderful things. That is certainly how to convince me to return to read again some time in the future.

And can I just say, I do like Marvel's second stab at explaining how Vader figured out the Death Star Pilot's name better than the original one waaay back when.

I'm aware there exists a character named “Sana” but I'm not really sure how she fits in. I do think she's the lady in the ship headed for the gorgeous planet with the waterfall cave. That is my guess.

See you guys later!

Curious to see my Star Wars fan fiction? Come visit me on Archive of our Own. I'm Star_Wars_Syl there, and I'm @StarWarsSyl on Twitter.