Star Wars #5 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS No. 5, July 2015

Followers of the cult bounty hunter Boba Fett should be rather pleased with Issue Five of “Star Wars” as Jason Aaron’s script spends a considerable amount of time focusing on the murderous Mandalorian’s machinations. In fact the dangerous ‘unaltered clone of Jango’ features so prominently throughout the comic’s twenty pages it is hard to understand why “Marvel Worldwide” didn’t insist upon advertising his pronounced presence as part of the book’s main cover illustration; or perhaps selling an astonishing 146,850 copies was enough for the New York City-based publisher in May 2015…

Regardless the ruthless killer is most definitely at his most brutal within this magazine as he coldly searches Tatooine for any clue as to the identity of the Rebel pilot who destroyed the Death Star. Indeed those foolish enough to oppose Fett’s mission for the Dark Lord of the Sith swiftly discover he’s yet to adopt a “no disintegrations” policy… Though not before the notorious exterminator has tortured the information he wants from their battered and broken bodies.

Far less effective is the Alabama-born writer’s (mis)use of Han Solo and Leia Organa. It is quite clear that the couple’s scenes, both on board the Rebel Fleet and then later in a stolen Imperial shuttlecraft, are little more than desperate attempts by the American author to try and recapture some of the wonderful tension and chemistry shown between the pair during the film “The Empire Strikes Back”. However without Harrison Ford’s roguish delivery and Carrie Fisher’s frosty stares neither character successfully comes across to the reader as being particularly likeable. Especially the Corellian smuggler, who oafishly throws their stolen ride into a suspicious-looking descent just as its escorting TIE-fighters have cleared its flight path.

Equally as poorly thought out seems to be Luke Skywalker’s return to his planet of birth, Tatooine. Having decided to visit Obi-Wan Kenobi’s homestead, the Rebel pilot bizarrely lands his X-wing fighter in the desert a considerable distance from “Ben’s house.” So far away in fact that it is almost night by the time the young Jedi trainee arrives at his destination and engages in a disappointing rematch with a horde of pillaging Sand-People. This is arguably lazy writing on the part of Aaron and a plot point solely and sloppily engineered simply to have Boba Fett and his prey encounter one another in the comic’s final full-page splash; “Artoo? What happened? I can’t see!”

The regular cover art of "STAR WARS" No. 5 by John Cassaday and Laura Martin