– Full Spoiler Review –
The flagship Star Wars title comes to its end as “Rebels and Rogues” race across the galaxy in a last ditch effort to find a base, disrupt the Empire, and save some rebel lives!
Back in January of 2015, Marvel joined the new canon with their first ongoing series, simply titled Star Wars. With the “Rebels and Rogues” arc, this series is coming to its end. How did the last story arc tie up the series? Read on as I review the entirety of Greg Pak and Phil Noto’s run!
The Good
Three Concurrent Stories
As I noted above, the “Rebels and Rogues” arc was split largely between three stories. In one story, Han Solo and Leia Organa traveled to Lanz Carpo to stop Boss Carpo, the leader of a powerful crime syndicate, from providing the Empire with more names of Rebel sympathizers. Their long-shot hope was that they would be able to turn Carpo and the Empire against each other, dealing significant damage to both at the same time. The second story focused on Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 as they traveled to Sergia. Their mission? To distract the Imperials from finding a nearby Rebel fueling post and save the lives of a few Rebel soldiers. Finally, Chewbacca and C-3PO traveled to an asteroid known as K43 hoping to lure some Imperials into a trap designed to do some serious damage to a Star Destroyer stationed in the area. Of course, each of the three missions hit significant snags, but our ingenious heroes work out a way for all three to culminate together in a climactic battle on K43.
This pacing worked really well for me. Some previous arcs (like “Hopes Dies“) have felt unevenly paced, spending a lot of time on the main story because there wasn’t much of a B-story. These issues shifted the focus every few pages, keeping the plot moving along briskly. Each issue gave us enough to move the story a bit further, leaving us wanting more, without showing too much at a time. It also meant that if a story was lagging, it wouldn’t pull the entire issue down with it. (The downside? The best storyline, C-3PO’s, got fewer pages than I would’ve liked!)
C-3PO!
Okay, hear me out, because this one might be striking: C-3PO was probably my favorite character in this entire arc. In fact, he probably received the most characterization, and he was the emotional core to the best story of the three. When Threepo and Chewbacca work to place detonators around the asteroid, they discover that a sentient race of rock-based humanoids already live there. Threepio communicates with them, hoping to save them….but they instead save him? As C-3PO talks with the rock-people, they instill in him a sense of worth that the Rebels he spends most of his time with don’t. This shakes him a bit, making him re-evaluate his priorities and how he thinks about his relationships. Even though a lot of people find C-3PO to be one of the most frustrating characters in the franchise, this arc really fleshes him out (pun intended) in a really masterful way.
Warba Continues the Rogue One Love
When Kieron Gillen took over the series back during the “Ashes of Jedha” arc, he made it a point to note that the series was going to heavily follow the trajectory that Rogue One set for the universe. He did so by bringing us back to Jedha, showing us the surviving Partisans, and having Luke learn about the legacy of Jyn Erso. Pak doesn’t engage quite as heavily with the themes of the film, but he introduces us to a character named Warba. Turns out, Warba grew up on Jedha, and by cultural osmosis, learned quite a bit about the Force from overhearing the Guardians of the Whills who protected the temple. She used this knowledge to trick Luke into thinking she was going to train him in the ways of the Force, which excited Luke, who somewhat recently lost Ben Kenobi. If the comics are going to continue to act as connective tissue between the Saga films, it’s only right that they continue to pull in information from previous films and bring all of them into conversation with the current plot line, and Pak does this well.
Phil Noto Art
Okay – Phil Noto’s art isn’t a single person job. Phil Noto and Clayton Cowles (on lettering) work together to make this arc a visual feast. But fans of Poe Dameron and Chewbacca will be thrilled to see Noto lending his art style to the main series. The lush colors, plus the realism (yet not movie-still traced imagery) of the book centers us in the galaxy without rehashing scenes or faces from the films. The last three issues in particular contain some gorgeous full-page splashes that imbue such life into the story that I had to stop and reflect on a few of them for longer than I normally do with comic art.
The Bad
This is the End of the Series?
Now, I can already hear what you’re going to say in response. I know that Empire Ascendant will serve as an epilogue for this series, showing us the Alliance on Hoth. I also know that the series will reboot in January, picking up right where The Empire Strikes Back leaves off. But I was a little surprised that the series itself didn’t do much to bring itself to Hoth directly, despite the banner at the top of the cover advertising that very instance. (Even the concurrent, and amazing, Doctor Aphra series worked its way to Hoth quicker!) This felt like it would’ve been a great arc in the middle of the book, but I think I would have personally preferred a more direct tie-in to the Battle of Hoth.
Underwhelming Vader Fight
In the entirety of the (approximately) 75 issue run, the Rebel Alliance cell has run into Darth Vader three times. Once, Luke literally ran into Darth Vader. Oh, and before that, Han tried to run into him by stepping on him with the foot of an AT-AT. And I guess Chewbacca ran into him with a boulder on K43. So pun intended? But more seriously, I think that this final encounter with Vader, only a month before Luke would face him again, seemed both a little too close to their encounter at Bespin and a little too underwhelming to make it worth it. Despite some gorgeous splash pages in the issue, I thought that the fight lacked the emotional core that the first two Vader encounters had.
The In-Between
Princess Leia and Dar Champion
Now, if you remember from the beginning of this series, one of the first major shocking elements was the introduction of Sana Solo – or so we thought. Only a few issues into the new series, when we had no idea what to expect from the new canon, I think we were all shocked that Han might’ve been married once. Now, Pak tries to recreate that shock by introducing us to one of Leia’s exes, Dar Champion. Unfortunately, I don’t think the shock value really transfers in this story the same way it did with Sana. We already knew that Leia has dated before Han (remember Kier from Leia: Princess of Alderaan?). Thankfully, while this revelation doesn’t bring much emotion to the story, Dar was a mostly likeable character and I would be happy to see him in the series.
The Length — a Long Arc, But Only Story for this Team
The length is something I am more or less torn on. This arc is a bit longer than most, spanning two graphic novels. While I said above that I was thankful for this arc’s moving focus between the three stories, I do wish this creative pair had more time to tell more stories, and I wouldn’t have minded if they had told two stories instead of this longer one. In the end, this is a great story and they crafted it well, but I can’t help but wonder what else they could have offered us.
Top Moment:
In lieu of a top five moments list, I want to focus on one: Darth Vader using the Force to ride a rock on lava. In the mighty words of Marvel: ‘Nuff said.
Final Thoughts:
If I may offer this series a final backhanded compliment, I want to say that Greg Pak and Phil Noto did something that I never imagined would be possible: they made it so that I was excited to read the next issue of this series. If you remember from previous reviews, I liked a lot of Jason Aaron’s run, despite being hampered by its art styles. When Gillen came along, I thought he breathed new life into the series, but by the time that “The Escape” wrapped up, I was ready for new blood on the series. Thankfully, Pak, Noto, and the whole team was able to bring back a sense of adventure and rollicking good times to this series. And, I am very thankful that Pak is bringing us Darth Vader (Volume 3).
If this is where the series had to end, I am content saying that it ended on a fairly high note. The pacing was solid, the art was gorgeous, the character work was familiar, yet brought new dimensions out of the characters, and it was a worthy predecessor to bring us to Hoth as we prepare for the series to relaunch in January!
Chris is the Manor’s Sous Chef. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisWerms, You can follow the website @MynockManor.
All comic panel images credited to Marvel/Lucasfilm
Greg Pak and Phil Noto’s “Rebels and Rogues” Reviews (by Ryan):
#68 | #69 | #70 | #71 | #72 | #73 | #74 | #75
Kieron Gillen Retrospective (#38-67) | Jason Aaron Retrospective (#1-37)