Star Wars Volume 3: Rebel Jail

Click HERE to order the Star Wars Volume 3: Rebel Jail trade paper back on Amazon



Star Wars issues 15-20 and Annual 1 were collected in Star Wars Volume 3: Rebel Jail. Issue 15 having already been reviewed, we start with Annual 1 and continue with the first part of our review of Rebel Jail. The Annual was written by Kieron Gillen with art by Angel Unzueta. The remaining issues were written by Jason Aaron with art by Leinil Francis Yu.



Rebel spy Eneb Ray is undercover on Coruscant as an Imperial named Tharius Demo. Princess Leia asks him to extract some anti-Imperial Senators from Arrth-Eno prison complex whose executions are imminent. After successfully infiltrating the prison and finding the Senators, he learns that the Emperor is supposed to be coming to the facility to have a final talk with the condemned. With the help of another Rebel mole working as an Imperial in the prison, Ray contacts Leia and gets permission to assassinate the Emperor. Leia dispatches the rest of the Alliance’s spies on Coruscant (there are only five more). As they make their move on the Emperor and engage Stormtroopers and his Royal Guard, the Emperor’s throne/dais thing lifts off and toward an opening in the roof. Ray follows. On the roof, as the Emperor races toward an approaching Imperial shuttle, Ray shoots him in the back. Thinking he has killed the Emperor, Ray looks up to see Palpatine standing inside the shuttle. It was a decoy. Ever persistent, the spy grabs hold of the gangplank of the shuttle, still determined to end the tyrant’s reign. The Emperor deflects some blaster bolts and tells Ray to look back. Doing so, he sees the whole Arrth-Eno complex exploding. It was all a ruse. A cunning attempt to trick him. In one fell swoop the Emperor has disposed of the Senators, eliminated the Alliance’s assets on Coruscant, and labeled the explosion a terrorist act by the Rebellion. Palpatine throws some Force lightning at him, loosening his grip. Eneb Ray survives his encounter with the Emperor, but he escapes Coruscant with the realization that, although he thought he was a man who could make hard decisions (to be temporarily bad for the sake of the greater good) Palpatine’s evil was on a whole other level.

In the aftermath of their confrontation with Darth Vader on Vrogas Vas, Princess Leia is now escorting Dr. Aphra (a woman whose parents have probably had to tell people, on more than one occasion, “no, she’s not that kind of doctor”) to Sunspot Prison, the Rebellion’s top secret detention facility which closely orbits a star. I mean very closely; like George Hamilton level tan close. They are being transported by Sana Starros in her ship because Luke and Han have undertaken their own highly sensitive mission. Aphra is taken to meet the warden of Sunspot, who boasts that the prison is just as hard to get into as it is to get out of when she assures him that she won’t be staying long. Leia mentions that Aphra was questioned for weeks by Alliance intelligence agents and never gave them anything. Sana speculates that they didn’t interrogate her hard enough and says that is the kind of weakness that will lead to the Rebels losing their fight with the Empire. As Sana is leaving, Aphra tries to talk her into busting her out of the prison and we learn that the two of them have known each other for a while prior to this incident. Meanwhile, Han and Luke are on an unnamed planet where they’ve been sent to purchase supplies. Pretty cut and dry, right? Not when you’re Han Solo. No, when you’re Han Solo you instead decide to gamble with the money so you can have more to buy more and take a little for yourself off the top. This leads to Han and Luke barely escaping with their lives and no money. To Han’s credit, it wasn’t because he lost; it was because he got caught cheating. Back at Sunspot, Leia and Sana are taking their leave of the Warden when a hull breach is reported.

Sana and Leia help to stop the incursion by assassin droids only to learn that it was a distraction. The leader, an unknown helmeted man, has taken over the control room and captured the warden. Leia understandably assumes that this man’s goal is to free the prisoners. It is not, he assures her. He is not there to help them, he is there to help her; to help her understand that fighting a noble fight and taking prisoners is not the way to win this war. He orders some of his droids to begin shooting the prisoners in their cells. Leia takes out the droids, but the man cuts the power to the cell block and opens the prisoner’s doors. Now, Leia is must kill them herself if she wants to live. Leia refrains from using deadly force. She and Sana round up as many of the prisoners as they can and put them into a holding room; however, once they’re locked in the sun shields are deactivated by the intruder and the prisoners are killed. In the fine tradition of action movies, the bad guy continues to taunt the hero over the comm. He tells her that he is what she made him. She sent him into the midst of evil and now he knows what needs to be done. Elsewhere in the prison, Dr. Aphra wakes up, apparently unaware of what’s going on until an assassin droid is standing outside her cell firing at her. She manages to hold out until Leia and Sana arrive and destroy the droid. Leia decides that they have to all work together, or die; so she lets Aphra out of her cell, gives her a blaster, and proposes that they take over the prison together. While all this is happening at Sunspot, Han and Luke have gone to Nar Shaddaa to get a smuggling gig so that they can recoup the loss of the Alliance’s money. Luke gets them a job smuggling a herd of Nerfs. Which is to say that they literally become Nerf herders. So, that happens. We see Luke and Han crammed into the cockpit of the Falcon surrounded by the bison looking animals and being chased by TIE fighters because they are transporting illegal livestock.



And so, we begin to pick up the threads left dangling after the events of Vader Down, except for the Annual, which seems to take place before Vader Down. If you haven’t read this storyline and if you haven’t already figured it out, it will become clear why the Annual was included in this collection. I thought the Annual was pretty strong in terms of both story and art. It was good break away from the “main cast”, Eneb Ray is an interesting character, and you get a good action-packed story in a slightly oversized single issue. The art was clear and more or less in line with what Cassaday and Larroca established with their styles in the beginnings of both the Star Wars and Darth Vader series. As for the beginning of the Rebel Jail storyline proper? It’s not bad. I like that Sana’s back and not just being used to play off Han. We don’t get a lot of development for her except when she supplies the needed point of view that the Rebel Alliance is likely to lose the war if they continue to try to hold the ethical high ground in their fight with the Empire. This obviously foreshadows our vilian’s beliefs. Leia rebuts that if the Rebellion becomes the very thing it’s fighting, then what is the point? Of course we know that Leia’s POV will win out in the end, but it is good to see these kinds of discussions. The idea of Sunspot Prison is pretty cool and makes sense if we are talking about the Rebels not being the kind of people who just execute their prisoners once they get whatever they need out of them. But where did this place come from? Did the Alliance construct it? Was it already built and they found it? One of the main storylines of the comic is the Rebellion’s ongoing search for a new base and their limited financial and other resources; but they can afford to operate this place? None of these questions are deal breakers when it comes to enjoying the story of course, but they should be considered. There is also the revelation that Aphra and Sana are already acquainted with each other. This seems like another one of those “small universe” things that people often complain about. It seems like somewhat lazy writing too. Hey, they know each other so they instantly have this rapport. It would be better if they didn’t know each other and, through their getting to know each other, we learned more about them. As for Yu’s art, it’s not my personal preference, which would have been for Cassaday to continue illustrating the series, at least through the end of Jason Aaron’s run. However, the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize it was actually fairly appropriate for this story. There is a kind of heaviness to the art (yeah, I’m not even sure what I mean by that) that conveys the oppressive atmosphere of the prison. Next time, the conclusion of Rebel Jail.

Action Figure Comic Pack Wish List:

Comic Pack wish list: Eneb Ray and Sunspot prison guard

Click HERE to order the Star Wars Volume 3: Rebel Jail trade paper back on Amazon

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