Review: STAR WARS: Legacy Volume 2 #4

STAR WARS: LEGACY VOLUME 2 #4
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics

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

SCRIPT: Corrina 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. (June 2013)

Prisoner of the Floating World Part Four

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is a new comic book series from the creative team of co-writer Corrina Bechko and co-writer/artist Gabriel Hardman. This Star Wars comic book takes place “approximately 138 years after the events in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.” Legacy Volume 2 focuses on junk dealer, Ania Solo, the great-great granddaughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo.

Young Miss Solo finds a battered Imperial communications droid and a lost lightsaber. Soon, Ania is on the run with her friend Sauk, an ice harvester and refugee from Mon Calamari. Later, AG-37, an ancient assassin droid, joins them. Meanwhile, young Imperial Knight, Jao Assam, searches for the master to whom he is apprenticed, Imperial Knight Yalta Val. The quartet becomes involved in a Sith conspiracy involving the building of a communications array in the Carreras System.

As Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 #4 opens, Governor Biala of Shifala begins to realize that she cannot trust Imperial Knight Yalta Val, who has taken control of the construction of the Shifalan communications array. Little does she realize that this Val is an imposter and is actually a Sith warrior.

Ania, Sauk, AG-37, and Jao fall into a deadly trap, and Sauk makes a discovery about a disappearing planet. Can they escape with these secrets and their lives?

Brian Wood and Carlos D’Anda’s new eponymous Star Wars comic book series is getting a lot of attention. However, Corrina Bechko and Gabriel Hardman’s Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is the best new Star Wars comic book series of the year. I’m starting to think that Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is the best Star Wars comic book series I’ve read, after my beloved Marvel Comics’ Star Wars, of course.

Corrina Bechko and Gabriel Hardman have created a comic book with such dense character drama, superb character development, intricate politics, and intense plotting that it reads like a Star Wars novel… after only four issues! This is Star Wars as George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan imagined it.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux