REVIEW:  Star Wars Volume 13

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Star Wars Volume 13 collects issues 73-75 of Star Wars as well as Empire Ascendant 1. It was written by Greg Pak with art by Phil Noto and published on March 18, 2020.

The strands from the previous volume come together in this final installment of Marvel’s Star Wars. Han, Leia, Dar Champion, Luke, and R2 all end up on K43 with Chewie and the rock people. Unfortunately, Darth Vader is there too and eager to take possession of young Skywalker. It’s okay though, because the rock people awaken the grandmother rock person who apparently was the whole planet. So…everybody ends up escaping…and now I’m honestly wondering what the whole point of any of this was. Make sense? No? Good, then I’ve accurately conveyed what it was like to read this story. .

Marvel’s Star Wars comic series, the company’s return to publishing Star Wars comics since concluding the original series in 1986 comes to a rather lackluster ending with issue 75. I’ll be honest, this final storyline didn’t really do it for me. Maybe my hopes were too high. Maybe I was expecting some grand finale that I really didn’t have any right to. I don’t know. All I know is, I just didn’t think it was that great. The sentient rock people thing only served to remind me of the Yoda’s Secret War storyline, which was maybe the worst storyline of the series. The whole thing with the planet transforming into a giant rock creature that was just sort of hanging in space with 3PO in it’s hand…I don’t mind things getting a little weird sometimes but that was just a little much for me. It seemed like the worst sort of deus ex machina story resolution. If this tale was supposed to be a send-off/finale to the pre-ESB era, then I really think the whole gang should have been together for most of the story. It should have been tighter, and leaner. We should have gotten more character stuff that would have added some to what we see in The Empire Strikes Back instead of convoluted plot happenings like the whole Boss Carpo thing. You get new characters like Dar and Warba being introduced way too late in the game. It wasn’t completely terrible, but it just didn’t fire on all thrusters. The best thing about it was Phil Noto’s art. At least the last 7 issues of this series got some good, consistent art. It was long overdue. And now the series ends, not because it has too, they could have just as easily kept the numbering and started a new storyline, but because Marvel knows that number 1 issues sell a lot. It’s the same reason we are about to get the third Darth Vader number 1 in five years.

This volume also contains the Empire Ascendant one shot. It contains four different stories written by four writers and artists. They are all pretty good. The best thing about this volume in fact. If you already have Dr. Aphra Vol. 7, then there will be a redundancy with the Aphra story from Empire Ascendant that’s included in that one. If you stopped reading Star Wars at some point and are wondering if you should pick it back up, I’d say make sure you read through The Scourging of Shu-Torun; unless you’re a completist you are not missing a whole lot here. Not only that, but you could read Empire Ascendant without having read this. I get the feeling that Pak (who’s written some good stuff) got put in a corner on this one.