Review: STAR WARS: Legacy Volume 2 #3

STAR WARS: LEGACY VOLUME 2 #3
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics

["Star Wars Central" review page is here.]

SCRIPT: Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman
ART: Gabriel Hardman
COLORS: Rachelle Rosenberg
LETTERS: Michael Heisler
COVER: Dave Wilkins
EDITOR: Randy Stradley
28pp, Color, $2.99 U.S. (May 2013)

Prisoner of the Floating World Part Three

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is a new Star Wars comic book series from Dark Horse Comics and writer Corrina Bechko and writer-artist Gabriel Hardman. The events depicted in this Star Wars comic book take place “approximately 138 years after the events in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.”

Legacy Volume 2 focuses on the character, Ania Solo, the great-great granddaughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo. Young Miss Solo, the owner of a junkyard, is on the run after inadvertently stumbling onto a conspiracy involving the Carreras System. It begins when she finds a lost lightsaber.

As Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 #3 opens, young Imperial Knight, Jao Assam, is deep inside the Surd Nebula, as he continues his search for Imperial Knight Yalta Val. Elsewhere, in the Carreras System, Ania and her friend, Sauk (a refugee from Mon Calamari), and the assassin droid, AG-37, are aboard the droid’s ship, trying to escape pursuing snub fighters.

Meanwhile, the Sith continue to manipulate the construction of a communications array in the Surd Nebula. Perhaps, Jao Assam and Solo and company need to find common ground… or space.

Brian Wood and Carlos D’Anda’s new eponymous Star Wars comic book series recalls both the original Star Wars films and Marvel Comics’ Star Wars comic book series (1970s-80s). It is about re-imagining classic Star Wars. The second new Star Wars comic book series, Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin, is fun just because it puts Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine in mortal danger.

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is as “real Star Wars” as a Star Wars comic book can get, as far as I’m concerned. Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 artists, penciller-inker Gabriel Hardman and colorist Rachelle Rosenberg, are doing their best impersonation of Al Williamson, a quintessential Star Wars comic book and comic strip artist, without it being a mere copy or pastiche. So, when I read this well-written series, I look at Hardman and Rosenberg’s art and think that I’m seeing Star Wars personally guided by George Lucas and Al Williamson, even if Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 really isn’t.

Anyone who reads Star Wars comic books must read Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux