On Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 2

The first volume of Marvel's "New Republic"-branded epic collection series, featuring Dark Horse-published comics the '90s and '00s that were set after the events of Return of the Jedi, had a fair degree of variety in the types of comics it included, the characters featured and even the genre of stories.

It contained miniseries and one-shots along with plenty of shorter stories taken from the pages of Star Wars Tales, and these featured not only the heroes from the films, but also a couple of heroines from the prose novels (Mara Jade and Guru) and more minor characters from throughout the galaxy (including Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, various criminals, former stormtroopers and some Ewoks, Jawas and even an ex-Gamorreon guard). 

This second collection, by contrast, is much more narrowly focused on a particular set of characters from a particular thread within the greater Star Wars saga, the result, I suppose, from there being so many comics focused on a particular franchise from within the franchise.

That is the adventures of the Rebel Alliance-turned-New Republic's Rogue Squadron, an elite group of pilots first mentioned in The Empire Strikes Back and then featured in the Star Wars: X-Wing series of prose novels that writer Michael Stackpole began in 1996. There was also a Star Wars: Rogue Squadron video game series that started in 1998.

The entirety of this collection consists of Rogue Squadron stories, all published between 1995 and 2005. The book is dominated by the first 16 issues of the 35-issue, 1995-1998 Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron ongoing series, preceded by a 2005 miniseries (Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Leader), a 1995 one-shot (Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron Special) and some shorts from the pages of Star Wars Tales. 

Also unlike the first volume in the New Republic series of epic collections, this volume heavily represents the work of a single creator, as Stackpole plots all 16 issues of the ongoing that appear within. 

Were one not terribly interested in the adventures of Wedge Antilles, a minor character from the films who assumes leadership of Rogue Squadron after Luke Skywalker moves on to concentrate on Jedi stuff,  and his daring pilots dog-fighting TIEs in the air and battling various plots by Imperial holdouts on the ground, there's probably little to recommend this particular volume of Star Wars comics. 

That said, it is certainly important both chronologically, for anyone wanting to follow the old, now obsolete "Expanded Universe" version of the Star Wars saga (i.e. that relegated to "Legends" status), and as an indication of where the franchise's focus was at a particular point in time. (I should perhaps note that the heroes of the films are almost entirely absent in this particular volume, with only Luke Skywalker appearing at all, and even him only in the first three stories collected herein). 

As we did with the first volume, let's take them each in turn...

•"A Day in the Life" This 12-page short by writer Brett Matthews and artist Adrian Sibar comes from a 2002 issue of Star Wars Tales. Specifically, it comes from an issue with a cover by EDILW favorite John McCrea. 

The opening is pretty inspired, given how in the movies the many battles in the vacuum space are always filled by exciting sound effects. "They say there's no sound in space," narrator Wedge Antilles says, "They're wrong. Or I'm just crazy, because I swear I can hear them." These words appear over an image of Wedge's X-wing blasting a TIE fighter from behind and then flying through the explosion, accompanied by a big THRA BWOOM! sound effect.

As the title indicates, the story follows Wedge through what is apparently an average day for him, this one being just days after Jedi's Battle of Endor. He and two other pilots engage TIEs and blow up a still-functioning Star Destroyer that has crash-landed on the surface, and one of their number die in the process. Wedge tries and fails to comfort the surviving pilot, then retires to his office to type out a condolence letter and, finally, to look for something to eat in what I assume is the Rebellion's cafeteria. There he finds Luke, and they talk over a pair of giant sandwiches.

Aside from the clever opening line, I also liked the bit where Wedge references the wild party that ensued after the destruction of the second Death Star, which sounds a bit like the one Archie Goodwin described in a Marvel-published comic set the night after the destruction of the first (I wrote a bit about that moment in my review of Star Wars: Wild Tales Vol.1, in this recent-ish column).

"Three days since the Battle of Endor," Wedge narrates. "Two of which I actually remember. Note to self--never accept a drink from an Ewok wearing a stormtrooper helmet."

Noted. 

Sibar's art is noteworthy for how unusual its style is, particularly compared to much of that which will fill the rest of this volume.

•Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Leader This 2005 three-part miniseries from writer W. Haden Blackman and artist Tomas Giorello seems to be something of a retroactive origin for Rogue Squadron, or at least to its iteration under Wedge Antilles. 

Giving each character an information box including their name, home world, ship of choice and a brief military biography, Blackman and Giorello introduce us to Luke, Wedge, Ten Numb (an alien of the same species as Nien Nunb, who was Lando Calrissian's co-pilot in the Millennium Falcon in Jedi) and a couple more white guys I often had trouble keeping straight throughout the rest of the collection. Then the creators give them a mission: They are to assess the state of the Corellian system in the wake of The Battle of Endor.

(This story is also apparently set just after that battle, by the way, as the various characters were all engaged in various activities on the forest moon when we are introduced to him. One of those white guys, Tycho Celchu, expresses his belief that "the war is basically over," but Luke corrects him, asking him if he would stop fighting just because he or Wedge or "Senator Organa" were killed, and noting that there were millions of Imperials still scattered across the galaxy. I guess that will explain why for the next 450 pages or so, Rogue Squadron will keep on fighting the Empire, as if the events of Jedi hadn't really changed anything in the galaxy.)

As for the state of things in the Corellian system, they are pretty grim. Shortly after our heroes land on Corellia, Imperials arrive with a bunch of scout troopers on speeder bikes and a pair of the two-legged walkers and start attacking the city indiscriminately, bent on instilling terror of Empire.

They're led by a scout trooper in cool-looking all-black armor. The bad guys capture Ten and end up torturing him to death before the good guys can rescue him, although Rogue Squadron do manage to shut down what the guy in the black armor calls "a new counter-rebellion."

"Defeating me won't stop the Empire," this villain says, as Wedge ties him up after beating him in hand-to-hand combat. "I'm just one man. The Empire is legion."

"I know," Wedge replies. "But I also know the difference that one man can make."

In the epilogue, Luke and Wedge have a heart-to-heart conversation about the future, with Luke saying, "The New Republic -- the galaxy --still needs Rogue Squadron. But it also needs a new Jedi Order..." 

Essentially, he passes the torch here to Wedge, and the penultimate page features a big panel filled with would-be pilots being presented to Wedge as potential recruits; a few will be recognizable as characters that have appeared in previous Rogue Squadron comics, although in this collection (which is organized by where the stories appear on the Star Wars timeline, not when they were published) they haven't yet appeared in the book. 

I thought it noteworthy that when the team first arrives on Corellia, Wedge, a native Corellian like Han Solo, wears a black vest over a long-sleeve white shirt and a pair of pants with a red stripe down them. I had thought that was a unique look of Han's, but I guess that's just the style there...?

•Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron Special I was curious about the providence of this particular story, because it seems to be presented here as if it were a standalone one-shot, but the story is incredibly short: Just 16 pages. Looking it up on comics.org, it appears that it was a giveaway included with Hero Illustrated magazine, which I guess explains its low page-count. 

It's written by Ryder Windham, penciled by John Nadeau and inked by Monty Sheldon. 

Its fairly melodramatic opening has a Grand Moff declaring to a planet's population that they are now under the control of The Empire, while an Imperial Walker looms large in the background.

"Oh, Father!" a child cries, "Can't anyone help us?"

And then a two-page spread reveals a half-dozen X-wings dive-bombing the walker, the ships surrounded by speedlines. 

Our heroes' victory isn't assured, however, as one of them sees a landing strip lined with a hundred TIE fighters. Wedge manages to shoot down a conveniently placed tower, which topples onto the TIEs and destroys them all before any of them can left off to engage our heroes' X-wings.

The people of the planet are pissed off, however, as that tower was apparently some sort of important monument. As they argue with Wedge, another rebel pilot wearing a helmet and visor tells Wedge to take a walk, and this pilot then spends a few pages telling the crowd what a great pilot and hero Wedge actually is, essentially vouching for him. 

When a kid asks this pilot who he is, he finally takes off his helmet and responds, "Luke Skywalker, at your service!"

(Um, spoiler alert for 30-year-old story, I guess.)

And that's pretty much that. 

It's a nice enough introduction to the Wedge character, focusing on his small but apparently important role in the films' adventures, and the basic Rogue Squadron premise. I quite liked the art on this one; it felt very "classic" looking in its style. 

Nadeau will return later to draw a few more stories in this volume.

•"Lucky" A 14-page short from a 2005 Tales by writer Rob Williams, penciller Michel Lacombe and a pair of inkers, this is another portrait of Wedge story, this one narrated by the character himself, featuring a generous flashback to his youth on a Corellian moon and the tragedy that drove him to join the Rebellion. A tragedy that, apparently, still haunts him.

It's not a fun story. After reflecting on the major battles he's survived (those of the films) and then rather miraculously surviving a new bit of danger, Wedge narrates about whether he's managed to live through all of his many adventures due to skill or luck.

Then we see his pre-Rebellion life, including a girlfriend whose father was secretly a rebel, a job as a pilot and a devastating Imperial attack.

These events don't come up in the next 350 pages, of course, but then, the comics that follow it are all from a decade or so previous, so why would they? Still, this seems to be giving us something of a belated origin to the character. 

I wasn't necessarily crazy about Lacombe's art style, but I did really like the long-necked, weasel-ish looking guy that worked for Wedge's girlfriend's dad.

•Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron #1-#16 These issues account for the rest of this particular collection, and they are a little less than half of the ongoing series. 

The fact that there was an ongoing at all strikes me as a bit unusual, as when I think of Dark Horse comics, especially those of the '90s, I think of their publishing model as more of a series-of-miniseries, rather than ongoings (Although I know they've published other Star Wars ongoings as well, having read a few in trade paperback). 

It's not hard to imagine the series being published that way instead, though, given that it is written in quite distinct, trade paperback-ready story arcs, and that the art teams and scripters change with each new arc, the one constant in all of these issues being the aforementioned Michael Stackpole, who would start telling these characters' adventures in his prose novel series just after the first arc of the comics series.

There are four four-part arcs here, "The Rebel Opposition," "The Phantom Affair," "Battleground: Tatooine" and "The Warrior Princess". 

In addition to Wedge and his fellow white guys (Tycho, Janson, Hobbie)*, the cast also includes Dllr Nep, another Sullustan (i.e., the alien race of Nien Nunb and Ten Numb) who apparently has super-hearing and a deep love of music, and Plourr Ilo, a hard-drinking female prone to brawling who I at first took to be an alien of some kind given her weird hair, but it turns out she just shaves her head and wears some kind of dumb headdress that gives her an artificial mullet. 

As the book progresses, they will pick up other characters, like Elscol Loroanother, another human female, as well as a blue-skinned Mon Calamari and a Quarren. (Do feel free to look any of these names or words up on Wookieepedia. There's no shame in that! God knows I kept a tab open to regularly consult it while reading these collections. It's not like I knew the word "Quarren" off the top of my head, when I first saw that character I simply thought, "Ah, one of those squid guys.")

The four stories are all quite well-crafted. Each works as a standalone story (Stackpole and company seem to be operating on an updated-for-the-'90s version of the Stan Lee maxim that every comic is someone's first comic: Every trade paperback collection is someone's first trade paperback collection). And each manages to successfully present readers with "more Star Wars", although I confess to being somewhat disappointed that the conflicts were all various riffs on the Rebellion vs. Empire conflict of the films, rather than any ambitious attempts to reinvent the wheel (as Jo Duffy did in the later issues of Marvel's original Star Wars comic, especially when she and artist Cynthia Martin introduced the Nagai). 

I also got a sense, apparently common among these Dark Horse Star Wars comics, that by having not read the novels (and/or played the video games...? Or role-playing games...?) that I was missing something, with certain characters appearing in the comics for the first time as if they were characters I should recognize and know, apparently having been introduced...somewhere else (The first of these in this volume is a Dame Winter, who is apparently some sort of intelligence agent for the Rebellion/Alliance and a Princess Leia lookalike...although one can't really tell from the more generic way that penciler Allen Nunis draws her).

In "The Rebel Opposition," scripted by Mike Baron and drawn by Allen Nunis and Andy Mushynsky, Rogue Squadron is stationed on the planet Cilpar, where they are trying and failing to make contact with the local underground, led by a woman code-named "Targeter". They find themselves caught between the planet's own, homegrown rebels and the Empire, the former not trusting the Rebellion/Alliance, and Wedge and company eventually have to prove themselves to them.

In "The Phantom Affair", scripted by Darko Macan and drawn (and lettered) by Edvin Biukovic, Rogue Squadron find themselves in an unusual setting for a Star Wars story, I thought—the equivalent of a college town planet. They are there to negotiate with the planet's leadership to gain possession of a fantastic new weapon that could tip the balance of the still-going galactic civil war...as are representatives of the Empire (The main bad guy here is an Imperial officer with some kind of space parasite permanently attached to his face).

"Battleground: Tatooine", scripted by Jan Strnad and drawn by Jon Nadeau and Jordi Ensign, is obviously set on the oft-visited desert planet that Luke and Anakin both hail from. There, Wedge and company reunite with agent Winter to aid in her investigation of a local conman who may or may not have had connections to the Empire. They attend a fancy party, get in the Star Wars equivalent of a car chase and ultimately uncover a secret Imperial base. This story includes an appearance by Jedi's Bib Fortuna, who has apparently had his brain removed from his body and put into some sort of spider-y droid at some point...?

Finally, "The Warrior Princess", scripted by Scott Tolson and drawn again by Nadeau and Ensign, primarily focuses on Plourr, as the action is set on her home world. To the surprise of the rest of Rogue Squadron, she is actually a princess, which comes out when they are drawn into the political intrigue of her home planet, involving a suspicious aristocracy, her arranged husband-to-be, her long-lost brother, anti-royal rebel freedom-fighters and, of course, an Imperial presence. 

Visually, I was most fond of Nunis' style on "The Rebel Opposition," which, again, had a "classic" comics feel to it, and that of Biukovic on "The Phantom Affair," which was highly idiosyncratic and had the look and feel of European comics to more standard American comics of the era.

While all four stories are perfectly serviceable, balancing the war story aspects of the franchise with various bits of local political intrigue, I thought "The Phantom Affair" was the most fun, in large part because of its campus-like setting and colorful villains and side characters. 

While I was a little disappointed that this collection was exclusively focused on Rogue Squadron at the outset, I have to admit that it proved more interesting than I had originally feared, and that when I closed it and set it down, I found myself looking forward to the next volume which seems to be, again, all Rogue Squadron. 

It might be a bit until I can read and write about that next volume, though. As I recently discovered, these collections are much fewer and farther between now than I would have guessed, given that they are, you know, Star Wars. In fact, it looks like they may actually be out of print now....? Regardless, I'll keep trying to get my hands on them. 

*Obviously, modern Star Wars has been plagued with a particularly noxious group of "fans" who loudly complain online about the franchise's efforts to add more women and characters of color to the most recent films and Disney+ TV shows. These terrible people apparently see any attempts to make the casts of these newer works better reflect the audiences that are watching them as some sort of affirmative action run amuck, somehow tainting the franchise by finally, belatedly giving it the diversity it so sorely lacked in the 1970s and '80s. 

I obviously agree with the powers that be who are now making the films and shows that diversity is a good thing, and that the setting could use more women and people of color to better reflect the people watching these films and shows...and, one would hope, give the young people perhaps looking up to new heroes the chance to more easily see themselves in the rebels and Jedis.

That said, another benefit of diversity? Well, if there were a few women or Black or Asian folks in Rogue Squadron, it would be a hell of a lot easier to keep all the characters straight. Instead, the team is like 90% young white guy with short hair, and the fact that the artists drawing them changes almost every arc makes it even harder to get a sense of who is who. 

So I guess I am reading Star Wars comics now...

After having finally finished reading the original 1977-1986 Marvel Star Wars series via the last few Dark Horse omnibus collections of it that have been gathering dust in my to-read pile, I was curious about how the Dark Horse comics addressed the post-Return of the Jedi era, wherein creators seemingly had free reign to come up with their own ideas about what "more Star Wars" might entail, without having to worry about being later contradicted by any future movies. 

That era is—or at least was, before the 2015 reboot of the official Star Wars "Extended Universe" continuity that accompanied the release of The Force Awakens movie—referred to as "The New Republic" era. So naturally I turned to Marvel's re-collections of the Dark Horse-published material, in the publisher's "Epic Collection" format, 500-ish page anthologies that collect the various eras of Star Wars comics in the order in which they are set, labeled The New Republic. (Do note the band along the bottom of the cover reading "Legends" along the bottom of the cover above; that designates these comics as no longer canonical.)

Marvel has published eight volumes in The New Republic series of Epic Collections.

When I sat down to read the first volume, I was expecting to read comics akin to those that Jo Duffy was writing in the final 20 or so issues of the original Marvel series, stories of the heroes of the Rebellion dealing with the remnants of the Empire, setting up the New Republic (it's right there in the title, after all) and embarking on new adventures that had little or nothing to do with the continuity of the films. Only perhaps a little bit more mature and sophisticated, as the Dark Horse comics of the '90s were compared to the Marvel comics of the early '80s.

Basically, I was expecting a bunch of comics like Star Wars: Dark Empire.

What I found within the collection was...not that. Despite the fact that Marvel put the heroes of the original films on the cover, in a gorgeous but somewhat weird looking cover from the great Duncan Fegredo (It's taken from 1998's Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire—Evolution #3).

The collection contains comics published between 1997 and 2005, organized not as they were originally published, but rather by the order in which their events occur along the old Star Wars timeline, which here means how close they are to the events of Return of the Jedi. And so sprinkled throughout the various series and one-shots are much shorter stories taken from the pages of Dark Horse's 1999-2005 anthology series Star Wars Tales, which was notable for occasionally offering straight comedy or parody shorts and for giving unlikely creators a chance to play with the franchise's toybox (How unlikely? I remember stories from the likes of Jason, Andi Watson and Tony Millionaire; trades of Tales are among the few Star Wars comics I ever actually bought trades of).

The longest stories collected within the first volume—1998's Mara Jade—By the Emperor's Hand and Shadows of the Empire—Evolution—are both quite closely tied to the events from Star Wars prose novels, and are, in fact, written by the novelists who introduced the characters they star in their previous work, Timothy Zahn and Steve Perry.

The "Star Warriors", as Roy Thomas used to call the films' heroes, technically appear in both. In the former, they are relegated to the background and, in Luke's case, a few psychic flashes. In the latter, they play much more substantial roles, even though the protagonist of the series is actually Guri, "The only assassin-programmed human replica droid (HRD) in the galaxy", apparently introduced in Perry's 1996 Shadows of The Empire novel...and/or the related "Shadows of the Empire" suite of media that the novel was a part of.

Our heroes do star in a couple of stories within this collection, although these tend to be the shorter Tales stories. Also featured in this first New Republic collection are side characters from the films, like Boba Fett, the late Jabba The Hutt, as well as the Ewoks, a Jawa and a retired Gamorreon guard. 

I suppose the best way, or at least most thorough way, to review such anthologies is to go through them story by story, so let's do that. 

•Star Wars: Mara Jade—By The Emperor's Hand This seven-part series from 1998, consisting of a four-page webcomic labeled issue #0 and then a six-issue comic series, stars the Imperial agent who was first introduced in writer Timothy Zahn's 1991 prose novel, Heir to the Empire (and who would go on to play a major role in the old post-Jedi "Extended Universe" continuity).

Zahn actually writes this series too, plotting the first half of the series while fellow Star Wars novelist Michael A. Stackpole handled the script, and then getting the only writer's credit on the second half of the series. The pair couldn't ask for a better collaborator, as the series was drawn by the great Carlos Ezquerra.

The events of the series are so close to those of Jedi that, after the zero issue prologue, it actually begins during the events of the film. Apparently Mara, a light saber-wielding Force user mysteriously given her abilities through The Emperor's own force mastery, was charged with assassinating Luke Skywalker, and, in an effort to do so, she sought employ as a dancer in Jabba's palace (It's here we see a chained and bikini-ed Leia in the background of a few panels, along with C-3PO).

From there, she moves onto her next assignment, the assassination of a criminal cartel leader, which seems to go easily enough, but then her life gets immensely harder. The Emperor sends her some kind of psychic message just before his death, which here shows her a different version of the events we saw in Jedi: Rather than Darth Vader pitching the Emperor over a railing to fall to his death, Mara sees Vader and Luke teaming up to kill the Emperor with their light sabers, and she gets a final entreaty from the Emperor to kill Skywalker. 

The rest of the series details her attempts to navigate the immediate aftermath of the Emperor's death, which means she no longer has the favor of the Empire's leader (and she spends some time in an Imperial prison) nor access to her full force powers, and her attempts to re-assassinate the crime boss she targeted earlier, when she learns she had actually only beheaded a decoy.

Though Mara Jade is a character from the novels, Zahn and Stackpole do a fine job of introducing her here, and one need not know anything other than what is presented here to follow and enjoy the story (although I suppose having seen Return of the Jedi is something of a requirement). 

Ezquerra's art is among some of the best I've seen in a Star Wars comic thus far. His Mara Jade is beautiful, statuesque and hard-faced, and his gift for faces is perfect for drawing the various arrogant and severe Imperial officers. He also draws some cool, weird-looking aliens; I particularly liked the skunk guy who hangs out at a bar Mara works in for a bit, and the strange, pointy-headed species that the crime boss apparently belongs to (Both seem to be original to this series). 

•"Mara Jade: A Night on the Town" A 1999 16-pager from Tales by Zahn and artist Igor Kordey, this is a much less successful comic. The plot involves Mara hunting down an Imperial governor who had stolen from the Empire for his personal enrichment, a task that involves her crossing paths with the Alliance and its soldiers, as they currently hold her target captive. 

Partially told as if through Mara's eyes and very heavy on her narration via thought cloud, it reads more like a short prose story clumsily adapted into a comic. I'm not sure what went wrong here, considering the relative strength of the Zahn comics series that this short follows, but it does seem to argue for the importance of Ezquerra's importance...and maybe that of Stackpole, as well.

•"Do or Do Not" This 2003 four-page Tale features the first real appearances by Luke and Leia in this collection, with the former feeling a little lost after the Battle of Endor and the sudden silence of the force ghosts, and the latter listening to him vent. Yoda's force ghost puts in a brief appearance, which is why the story is titled what it is. Jay Laird writes, and Timothy II provides the art, which is pretty cool in how different it is from so much of the franchise's comics art. 

I thugh the story in notable for Luke's line "And now I've got to rebuild the Jedi order all by myself!" That's something he will dedicate himself to in the '90s Extended Universe continuity, of course, but is in sharp contrast to his attitude in the Marvel comics, where he refused to teach anyone else his Jedi skills, fearing that they might be used for ill. 

•"Free Memory" A 2001 Tale by Brett Matthews and Vatche Mavlian, in which R2-D2 shares with C-3PO the various holographic farewell messages that the original trilogy's heroes had him record, as well as the "You're my only hope" message from A New Hope and the group "photo" that accounts for the last image of Jedi. 

•"Lando's Commandos: On Eagles' Wings" Wait, what's an eagle? Is that something like a falcon? Do they have these birds in the Star Wars galaxy...? 

I have to assume this 2000 22-page Tale by Ian Edginton and Carlos Meglia started with its title. After a series of Alliance convoys are attacked and plundered by imperial TIE pilots gone pirate, leadership turns to Lando Calrissian for an "unconventional" approach to shut down the bad guys ("Send a thief to catch a thief, right?" Lando says).

He assembles a team to accompany the next convoy, a diverse team that includes a former officer of the Imperial navy who has since joined the Alliance. Through a couple of sneaky tricks, Lando manages to draw out a traitor and take down the pirates. 

It's a nice enough character portrait of one of the more colorful characters from the films, but what really makes it sing is the angular lines and explosively cartoony faces of artist Meglia. I particularly liked his tiny-eyed, big-eyebrowed Lando with his permanently smirking face, and the severe, axe-shaped face of the former imp officer. 

The story has more room to breathe than the other Tales, which might be another factor in why it is probably the best of these in this collection. 

•Star Wars: Shadows of The Empire—Evolution As previously mentioned, this 1998 five-part miniseries is a Steve Perry-written sequel to the events of his own Shadows of The Empire novel (and its attendant video game and other related media). That was set between Empire and Jedi, so some time has passed between the events of the earlier story. 

I found the story easy enough to follow without any prior knowledge of Shadows, but it doesn't read nearly as self-contained as the earlier Mara Jade miniseries, a fact highlighted by a character guide to nearly a dozen different players that is presented before the first page of the miniseries.

This story really cemented for me the fact that Dark Horse's Star Wars comics were going to some pains to fit into the emergent "Extended Universe" continuity, to the point that many of them seemed made more for the sorts of Star Wars super-fans who were reading the prose novels and playing the videogames, rather than more casual comics readers whose familiarity with the saga began and ended with the films.

Our protagonist is the human-looking assassin droid Guri, who was apparently a lieutenant for the criminal organization Black Sun's now dead leader, Xizor. She is on a quest to find someone able of stripping her memory of her own criminal career, allowing her to start over with a new life. 

Others are on the hunt for her, though, including Xizor's niece and would-be successor, a rogue scientist, a pair of twin sister martial artist/mercenaries and, most colorfully, a bounty hunter named Kar Yang, who looks like a huge, humanoid rubber chicken and speaks in big, bold, jagged dialogue bubbles filled with all-caps dialogue (His entry in the opening character guide refers to him as "the second-most skilled and feared bounty hunter in the galaxy," with Boba Fett presumably being the first...?)

In the middle of all this are the heroes of the films, most of whom had some dealings with Xizor and Guru previously (as seen in flashbacks to her memories), and who are currently trying to stave off a gang war between various criminal factions. They first appear in the series' third issues and will appear intermittently throughout the rest of the series. 

Perry seems to have a lot of fun writing them, paying special attention to the screwball comedy bickering between Han Solo and Leia, making a running joke out of Han's interest in (and to) other women. It's also interesting to see how other characters react to them in the course of the proceedings; when the twin mercenaries' employer dismisses Luke and company's many victories as a matter of luck rather than skill, they reply with, "Listen...they took out Jabba The Hutt, blew up two death stars, and destroyed The Emperor himself!" and, "With that kind of luck, they don't need any skill." 

Pencil artist Ron Randall and inker Tom Simmons provide clean, smooth art, portraying a particularly sexy Guri (her outfit getting provocatively but strategically shredded in battle) and doing a quite striking job on the movies' heroes, pulling off an impressive balancing of celebrity likeness with vital and animated looking characters.

As alluded to above, Duncan Fegredo provides covers for the series, and these match realistic renderings of the characters (albeit with some somewhat awkward posing and a weird energy), with flat star and blast iconography. 

As with the Emperor's Hand story that kicks off the collection, it's a quite solid graphic novel embedded within the collection.

•Star Wars: The Jabba Tape A 1998 one-shot from a creative team with a respectable pedigree (writer John Wagner and artist Killian Plunkett), this story stars a pair of low-level members of the now late Jabba's criminal organization, swoop riders Spiker and Big Gizz (A "swoop" is apparently the Star Wars answer to a motorcycle, making this colorfully designed pair essentially a couple of biker types).

Seeking to profit after Jabba's demise, they set out to acquire a luxury ship stocked with treasures that Jabba had hidden in a cave in case he ever needed to make a fast escape from Tatooine. The only problem? Jabba's greedy nephew Gorga has also heard of the ship and wants to get his slimy hands on it. 

Our "swoop scum" protagonists manage to wrest it away from Gorga's men and, along with the ship's sole guard Onoh, make it into space with it. The only problem? It's programmed with an "interactive security tape" of Jabba himself (thus the name of comic) which, without proper authorization, shuts down the ship and vents all of its oxygen. Oh, and Gorga's men also have a ship of their own in orbit to stop them from escaping with the treasure.

Plunkett draws the hell out of the book, and it's filled with lots of fun character designs, particularly that of the small, spindly Onoh, who, like many of the Star Wars aliens in the films (but too few in the comics) looks an awful lot like a Muppet. 

I wasn't expecting much from this particular comic—and was wondering how there could be a Jabba comic set after Jabba's death—but it proved a lot of fun. 

•"Sand Blasted" Killian Plunkett both writes and draws this 28-page story from a 2000 issue of Star Wars Tales, a direct sequel to his and John Wagner's The Jabba Tape. On the surface of Tatooine, where they crash-landed in the previous story, Spiker, Big Gizz and Onoh encounter a caravan of shot-up Jawa sandcrawlers...as well as what shot them up, an Imperial battle droid which had laid buried under the sand for years (This resembles a particularly big and brawny stormtrooper, one capable of flight and carrying a huge blaster rifle).

The story consists mostly of our heroes—well, our protagonists—and a surviving Jawa battling against it. They ultimately prevail, but in a twist ending, a group of those pop-up pit droids from Episode I discover its wreckage and start to reassemble the battle droid. 

There's not a whole lot to the story, really, but it's another opportunity to enjoy Plunkett playing in the Star Wars sandbox. 

•"Three Against the Galaxy" Another 2000 Tale, this Rich Hedden-written, Rick Leonardi and Mark Lipka-drawn 22-page story details a young aristocrat who chance leads to teaming up with a former Gamorrean guard and a Jawa. Together the three outlaws take on her corrupt uncle and avenge her father. The Jawa is given a name, Tek, and his dialogue is translated into Basic/English for the benefit of the reader. Me, I prefer when those little weirdoes just talk gibberish, like the one that appeared in the previous story did. The comic is fine, though unremarkable.

•"Apocalypse Endor" If the title of this 2002 short doesn't clue one into its filmic inspiration, the cover of the issue of Star Wars Tales it appeared in ought to. An old man drinking in a bar, a former stormtrooper, is questioned by some young punks about how it was the great Empire was defeated by "those cute, fuzzy widdle Ewoks." 

"You guys had walkers, blasters, armor, speeder bikes, starships," one chimes in. "What did the Ewoks have? Pointy sticks and a happy song."

The old man, who actually seems way too old given how close to the Battle of Endor this story would seem to be set given its placement in this particular collection, responds by detailing what horrifying little monsters the Ewoks really were, and how they drove his fellow soldier mad with their stealth attacks, constant drumming and primitive death traps. We know, we saw Jedi; they clearly eat human flesh. 

This one is by Christian Read and the art team of Clayton Henry and Jimmy Palmiotti.

•"Marooned" Another Tale set on Endor, this 2005 story written, drawn and colored by Lucas Marangon is set a little over a year after the climactic battle there in Jedi, and chronicles the meeting between an Imperial scout trooper and a rebel fighter and the uneasy friendship that develops between the pair. Both abandoned there by their respective armies, this odd couple proceed to bond with one another, hang out with the Ewoks, liberally smoke whatever it is that the Ewoks stuff their little pipes with and eventually send out a distress signal to be picked up from Endor. The former Imperial trooper opts to stay behind, worried a soldier like himself won't fit into the new galaxy...and maybe having developed a liking for those Ewok pipes...?

•Star Wars: Boba Fett—Twin Engines of Destruction Dark Horse reprinted this 32-page story in a 1997 one-shot, although it was apparently first published across four issues of Star Wars Galaxy Magazine in 1995 and 1996. Written by Andy Mangels and drawn by John Nadeau and Jordi Ensign, it seems to be another one of those stories that that picks up on plot points from somewhere other than the films themselves (If I understood what I read about him on Wookiepedia correctly, one of the main characters here seems to have originated in a souce book for a Star Wars role-playing game...?).

Someone who sure looks a lot like Boba Fett is bounty-hunting and eventually finds himself facing another bounty hunter briefly seen in The Empire Strikes Back, Dengar. After initially mistaking the guy with the jetpack and wearing the same armor as Boba Fett as Boba Fett himself, just as the reader was likely meant to, Dengar eventually recognizes this guy as Jodo Kast.  

Dengar tells his colleague Boba Fett about the encounter, as apparently the newcomer has been trading on his resemblance to Fett to further his bounty-hunting career. In order to deal with imposter, Boba Fett secretly hires him for a job and leads him into an elaborate trap, one that seems to end with Kast being killed in a kinda roundabout, indirect fashion.

Colorist Cary Porter isn't as consistent with the portrayal of the two guys in similar armor as I would like—sometimes Kast has a yellow and gray helmet which distinguishes him from Fett, sometimes they both have red and gray helms—and yeah, having never heard of Kast and his whole deal before, I was on somewhat unsure footing the first time through this story.

Still, it's a decent enough portrait of the taciturn Boba Fett as one of the galaxy's ultimate badasses, and it's certainly fun to see him battle a "twin" with the same weapons and accessories as him.

It was interesting to read this story in 2025, after having seen the new post-Jedi Fett onscreen in the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett (a series I actually managed to watch, before Disney started producing so damn may of the things that I couldn't keep up any longer and ultimately gave up on them). 

While the live action Boba Fett, played by Temuera Morrison, was more or less healed from the Sarlacc pit thanks to his many long baths in a bacta tank, here he is apparently so scarred that when he's not in his Mandalorian armor, he's bandaged up like a mummy (Actually, he looked an awful lot like DC's old Unknown Soldier character). 

•"A Wookie Scorned!" This fun 2001 Tale from Jason Hall and Christina Chen depicts the friction in the Han Solo/Chewbacca friendship caused by Leia, who keeps pulling Han away for various missions, so that it starts to seem that he's spending all his time with her, rather than doing stuff like repairing the Millennium Falcon with Chewie. And Chewie has noticed that Han returns from some of these missions with lipstick on his face. 

Even when Chewbacca makes a special effort, like preparing an elaborate dinner for his best friend, Han seems to barely notice or appreciate it, instead piling up a plate and rushing off to see Leia again. 

Talking to C-3PO and Luke doesn't help, but the neglected Chewie eventually gets a form of revenge when he takes Leia shopping, the two of them leaving Han all alone for a change.

Chen's art in this short story is quite delightful, as she gives Han and Luke a neat, dreamy, manga hero look.

•"Problem Solvers" The final story in this massive collection is one of those occasional stories from Star Wars Tales that is a piece of pure comedy, and a story that I don't think we were ever meant to take as canonical, even before the 2015 reboot. A 2004 four-page effort by Chris Eliopoulos of Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius fame, the strip's premise is that Leia asked Han to hire an I.T. crew to get the New Republic's computer systems up and running, and he delegated it to C-3PO, who apparently hired the Ewoks.

Over the course of two-pages, the Ewoks attack the computer problems the same way they attacked the stormtroopers: With logs, ropes and rocks. On the final page, there's another inappropriate-for-the-task gag, and a riff on an oft-repeated line of Star Wars dialogue. 

It's an effective gag strip, and a lot of fun to see a handful of Star Wars characters rendered in Eliopoulos' distinctive style. 

I imagine page count and chronology had more to do with its placement as the final story in this particular volume than anything else, but it proves a perfect capper for some 500 pages of Star Wars comics.