Review: STAR WARS: LEGACY Volume 2 #5

STAR WARS: LEGACY VOLUME 2 #5
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. (July 2013)

Prisoner of the Floating World: Part Five

“Prisoner of the Floating World,” the first story arc of the recently launched Star Wars comic book series, Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2, comes to an end.  According to publisher, Dark Horse Comics, Legacy Volume 2 takes place “approximately 138 years after the events depicted 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.

The storyline began when Miss Solo finds a battered Imperial communications droid and a lost lightsaber.  Because of these finds, Ania ends up 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 centered on the building of a communications array in the Carreras System.

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 #5 opens with Ania blaming herself for everything bad that has happened and rejecting any connections that she has to a family legacy.  Now, Ania finds herself racing between a planetoid and the space station that holds the Carreras System’s communications array, which are on a collision course.  The Sith behind this new conspiracy reveals himself as Darth Wredd, and he stands between Ania and her comrades and escape.

This final issue of Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2’s first story arc has forced me to make this clear.  Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is the best new Star Wars comic book series of 2013 – better even than Brian Wood and Carlos D’Anda’s new eponymous Star Wars comic book series that has been getting a lot of attention.  Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2 is the best Star Wars comic book since Marvel Comics’ Star Wars (1977 to 1986).

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2’s creative team of Corrina Bechko and Gabriel Hardman are creating Star Wars Expanded Universe fiction that recalls George Lucas’ original Star Wars films.  I don’t know how long Bechko and Hardman will work on Legacy Volume 2, as I’m certain Marvel or DC Comics will hire them away from Dark Horse, if they have not already done so.  In the meantime, we have this great comic book series.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux