– Spoiler Review –
With Lobot lost, and the situation behind said loss and recovery attempt far too complicated, has Lando Calrissian backed himself into a corner he can’t wiggle his way out of or does he still got it? Find out in our review of Star Wars #40 (Vol. 2), a tale of two Landos!
In a way, Charles Soule’s script for issue #40 attempts to give us two different views on Lando, as the Talky droid sums up everything which has transpired so far and how bad it is for him, while another delightful flashback to the simpler times for Lobot and Lando shows us the genius of the swindler but does leave one wondering if he’s cashed in all his chips. With the Talky, Lando is short and testy, his true anger and disappointment over losing Lobot to the Scourge and returning with the droid he sold off to Jabba the Hutt with Rebellion secrets not being hidden in the slightest. His initial response to the Talky trying to sum up the situation is the best register of how much he doesn’t want to be reminded of what’s happened, as he asks why it’s talking. It’s a grim scenario for Lando, trying to ask help from the Rebellion, and the art backs this up by making it a dark scene, hyperspace’s blue glow and the Falcon cockpit’s many lights keeping the scene feeling as heavy and as doubtful a situation for Lando as one can get. It makes the next scene, the flashback to Lobot and Lando and Alderaan at one point, even more startling, as the heavy neon tones for previous flashbacks are replaced for a lighter, brighter touch, while the pair’s surroundings aren’t a stuffy cockpit but a big, open park on the peaceful planet. Whereas Lando is grumpy and angry, in the flashback he’s all smiles, even when he ‘accidentally’ breaks a glass in someone’s hands on a passing gondola, with the only change happening when he gets serious with Lobot. And the script has flipped, as while the Talky makes it all seem doom and gloom, even relishing in the conundrum Lando faces, Lobot just can’t believe he continues to get away with all his bigger than life lies and schemes. He’s worried his friend will run out of his social credits soon, but we learn Lando isn’t worried about it because he knows it’ll happen but might as well enjoy it while it lasts, which fits a lot with what we know of him even going forward in his story. As I said last issue, I was curious as all hell to see what would happen once Lando returned to the Rebellion and the opening scenes only left me in more suspense, as would it be as bad as Talky believes or would he impress us much like he did Lobot, time and time again?
Lando interrupts Leia’s latest meeting, where they are discussing trying to figure out where the Death Star II is, and the moment he started talking, I’ll admit, I was quite impressed! Lando’s made a turn, gained trust with Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca after Cloud City, yet, given the severity of the situation, he plays the Lando he needs to be to both divert suspicion and gain the help he needs to rescue Lobot. This isn’t some big battle or revelation we’ll be talking about for years or something, yet it’s still a standout scene, and one of my favorites, for the entire series so far thanks to Soule’s writing and the art team of Madibek Musabekov, Rachelle Rosenberg for colors, and Clayton Cowles on lettering. The story Lando weaves shows Soule’s strength with character interactions, as he plays up everything Lobot and Lando have done for the Rebellion and his key omissions for what he was doing, framing it instead about an attempt to rescue Han Solo from Jabba’s wall, allows him to dig at Leia’s emotions instead of her logic. It’s as deft a move as any decisive fight in a battle and Leia acquiesces and eventually appoints herself, Luke, and Chewie to assist Lando with rescuing Lobot from the Scourge. As much as the script makes this scene sing, one almost doesn’t need the dialogue to figure out how Lando’s playing it and how well it does and doesn’t work on Leia, right until it works. There’s her initial shock and anger over his cover story of going to Tatooine to rescue Han, his easing of tensions with his hands held up to ward off further attack, her determined face as he makes his plea, his bursting anger as he counts off on his hand all the times they’ve helped her, his hands up in surrender, as if he’s tried enough, and then on the next page, after he’s begun walking away, the first panel is a doozy, as while Leia’s gesture to stop him is in focus, we just a get a slice of his face and it’s of his mouth, all in shadow, and he’s smiling. We know he’s won then, light shining on him next, as if he’s the star of a play, Leia the one in the audience watching the show, his method having worked and her help gained.
This already feels like a lot’s happened in Star Wars #40 (Vol. 2), but wait, there’s more! Luke, Leia, Lando, and Chewie, the core crew who were at the focus at the beginning of this series, jump into the Falcon to track down Lobot and rescue him, and they already know where he is thanks to trackers Lando put in his friend’s cybernetic implants; sounds like a totally normal, friendly thing to do! Arriving at the planet, Lando’s is understandably paranoid about what this Scourge can do, forcing the Falcon’s navicomputer completely shut off to protect L3-37 and the other droid brains inside its core, forcing them to make a dramatic crash landing using giant transmitter dishes. Much like the very fitting though convenient tracker in Lobot’s cybernetics, the planet they’ve tracked him to is Epikonia, one where transmissions across the galaxy go to and are boosted even further, so they have tons of transmitter dishes for exactly the perfect type of landing without a computer that the team needed; Lando’s luck hasn’t run out yet! Whereas we’ve had some freaky moments in this series so far, with Lobot’s Scourge transformation the most frightening of them yet last issue, what follows in the issue’s final pages are some of its freakiest moments and visuals yet, matching the heights the main Dark Droids miniseries hit as of late in its third issue. Lobot walks amongst a seemingly endless array of various organics being modded for the Scourge to eventually overtake, from droid heads on human/non-human bodies, droid limbs, you name it, it’s creepy, but so too is Lobot himself, whose face betrays the Scourge’s lack of understanding about being an organic, lack of sleep and eating already evident. The Scourge notices they’ve arrived and sends out his minions, dozens and dozens of grotesquely modified droids, with big deadly blades for fingers and hands, and they quickly begin to swarm Luke, Lando, Leia, and Chewie, the issue ending with them seemingly overwhelmed. It seems like an insurmountable position to be in and them having plot armor almost makes this seem even more impossible they’ll manage to come out of this somehow alive!
From leading the way on Lando’s ability to swindle and lie to get what he wants to the grotesqueness of the Scourge’s plans, this art team is really in full swing these last several issues. Lobot was very spooky, like a puppet being controlled by an inexperience puppet master, exaggerated facial expressions and incomplete gestures or movements, and I love how the Musabekov continues this and takes it to its logical next step this issue. For me it’s really the gaunt face and sleep-deprived eyes, lines showing in his whites (well, purple whites), with the macabre smile or wide-eyed looks, which really showcase the Scourge’s lack of understanding about being anything organic. It’s so madly focused on its experiments and its quest to touch the Force, as we see more of here, for it to stop and think about how to prolong an organic body’s usefulness for it. The droids at the end where haunting to say the least, angry faces, broken parts, and lots and lots of knives for hands, making Edward Scissorhands look very, very normal. The orange and yellow coloring for the air around the droids as they attack the crew feels claustrophobic, like radioactive air clogging our heroes and their chance to escape, and helps accentuate the purple of the Scourge’s control. For Cowles’ lettering, in the earlier Lando/Leia conversation I talked about, Leia’s words seem to hang in the air between them when she beckons him back, his bluster doing the trick, and then the word bubbles are placed behind her, showing how much he’s letting her do the talking, offer her help on her own. In the scenes with all the Scourged droids together, the way he moves our attention across their joined speech, and therefore through the rest of the issue, is methodical and makes each word a punctuation, allowing the circumstances really sink in for our characters.
Star Wars #40 (Vol. 2) puts Lando’s money where his mouth is, doing the unexpected to avoid condemnation, while the latter half takes the horror of the crossover to the next level ahead of its final month in December.
+ Lando’s wordsmith ways
+ Flashback giving us more of Lando/Lobot connection
+ Art team goes big on little conversation moments and the horror packed ending
– Picks up a little too fast in the second half
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.
STAR WARS (Vol. 2)
The Destiny Path: #1-6 — Operation Starlight: #7-11 — War of the Bounty Hunters: #12-18 — Crimson Reign: #19-24 — Special Issue: #25 — The Path to Victory: #26-30 — Quests of the Force: #31 | #32 | #33 | #34 | #35 | #36 — Dark Droids: #37 | #38 | #39