Star Wars #10 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS No. 10, December 2015

There’s an incredible amount of action crammed into Issue Ten of “Star Wars” as Jason Aaron’s narrative concerning a “galaxy far, far away” not only tries to depict the exhilaratingly tense flight of Sana Solo’s Volt Cobra from some pursuing Imperial patrol ships. But also attempts to give both Luke Skywalker’s rather brutal light-sabre tutorage by Grakkus the Hutt’s Gamemaster and Chewbacca’s exploits on “the notorious Smuggler’s Moon of Nar Shaddaa” plenty of ‘screen time’ as well.

Indeed if anything this twenty-page periodical’s plot is actually a little too busy and perhaps with hindsight its American author may well have better served the comic’s 134,613 strong audience by concentrating his script upon just the adventures of the Wookie and aspiring Jedi. Rather than water down their battles with criminally-minded robots, unruly space bar clientele and electrostaff wielding MagnaGuards on account of a shortage of space. Certainly one of this book’s few disappointments, alongside the inclusion of a one-eyed Gungan towards the end of the story, is the fact that much of Chewie’s fist-fight with some of George Lucas’ more recognisable cantina customers occurs off-page and as a result the Harvey Award-winner simply hints at the co-pilot’s formidable prowess by only showing him dangling the bartender off the top of a high-rise building once their savage disagreement has concluded.

Admittedly Leia and Han’s short(ish) scene squabbling with one another as to just who is the better shot, whilst the scoundrel’s supposed wife desperately outmanoeuvres the multitude of lasers emitted by a squadron of TIE-fighters and their accompanying Star Destroyer, does provide this third instalment of “Showdown On The Smuggler’s Moon” with as enthralling a fast-paced opening as any science fiction fan could want. Yet so too, arguably, would have the Millennium Falcon’s arrival on the “revolting” Nar Shaddaa, and See-Threepio’s “rather… unseemly” altercation with a party of his “fellow droids”; “Cut his head off so we don’t have to listen to him yammer the whole way.”

Perhaps this publication’s strongest selling point however, has to be the Alabama-born writer’s inclusion of the Corellian bounty hunter, Dengar, at the comic’s climatic conclusion. Charismatically illustrated by Stuart Immonen, whose pencilling is simply outstanding throughout the entirety of the comic, the “scruffy-looking and battered” killer seems just as “crude and slovenly” as the character appeared when first played by Morris Bush in the 1980 motion picture “The Empire Strikes Back”.

The regular cover art of "STAR WARS" No. 10 by Stuart Immonen