The Rebel Alliance’s Sunspot Prison has been taken over by a mysterious assailant, Han and Luke are smuggling/herding nerfs, Chewie is...nowhere to be seen in this story (I imagine he has to take some time off for some fairly involved grooming from time to time); and now the conclusion of Star Wars: Rebel Jail.
On the Outer Rim world of Ibaar, Han and Luke offload their smuggled Nerfs. Luke agrees to clean up the considerable mess left by the animals if Han agrees to let him fly the Falcon for a bit. Han grudgingly allows it. Luke finds the whole experience a bit underwhelming and complains that the ship is a little sluggish. Han takes this criticism in stride and in no way sees it as an affront to himself because he is a very secure individual. Back at Sunspot Prison, Leia and Sana have freed Dr. Aphra so that she might assist them in regaining control of the facility. Aphra, however, is more concerned with trying to rewire an IG-RM that is choking the life out of Sana. Leia steps in and blasts the thing and reminds Aphra that their mission is to keep everyone alive, not mess with droids. Sana tells Leia she was able to send out a weak distress signal before the droid attacked her. It’s not strong enough to reach the Fleet, she says, but someone in the area might pick it up. In the prison’s control room, our antagonist’s head droid tells him that someone sent out a signal; the bad guy doesn’t seem to be concerned as he is keeping himself occupied by murdering random prisoners. He goes into the cell of a man who claims to be there for slitting the throats of three Jedi. Maybe; but by the looks of him he probably just got caught with a rolling meth lab. Anyway, he kills the prisoner; and, as he’s dying, tells him that the Emperor is a Sith Lord. “It feels good to finally tell someone my secret”, he says. He continues his killing spree, broadcasting to Leia the screams of the dying. He repeats to her that he is what she made him. He is what the galaxy needs. Leia and the gals (is that okay?) close in on the control room and get into a firefight with the assassin droids. They are pinned down by the last one when the droid that Aphra was rewiring suddenly appears, strolls past them, kills the last droid that was blocking the door and gains them entry into the control room. See? Aphra is a real wiz with the droids; which is weird because her formal training is actually in pediatrics. So, the control room is breached and Leia asks the head droid inside who is behind this. It won’t say, only that he is trying to teach her something. At the same time, Sana and Aphra get into it because Sana wants to shoot the Doc’s new droid friend in the face now that the shooting is over. Aphra objects and we get some dialogue that suggests they were more than just friends in the past. It’s too bad we don’t get some dialogue to explain why Sana hates droids so much. Maybe it’s because she associates them with Aphra and she hates Aphra now; or maybe Sana was raised by Wuher. Yeah, that’s probably it. About that time Luke and Han are departing the Falcon in the prison’s landing bay. The two of them, confident that they are there to save the day, don’t notice the bad guy perched atop the hunk of junk.
Hey, it's that guy!
Leia, Sana, and Aphra rush to the docking bay only to find that Baddy McBadface has incapacitated Luke and Han and hung necklaces of thermal detonators around their necks like he is planning the world’s worst luau, or the world’s best luau. He tells Leia once again that it’s time to start taking this war seriously; which is to say, start killing more people. Apparently, this guy doesn’t realize that one of the people he’s captured murdered a population the size of a small moon (that was no moon) like 3 weeks before. He tells her, “you have an Imperial prisoner in your midst; shoot her and I’ll let your friends go”. Leia refuses, much to the chagrin of Sana who is totally ready to pop a space-cap in the not so good Doctor. At this point our mystery villain finally chooses to reveal himself. It’s Eneb Ray! The guy from the Annual. “You sent me to them”, he tells her, “you can’t be surprised that I came back changed”. Eneb starts a countdown and just before he presses the button to kill the guys (and everyone else in the room I would think), Leia gives R2 the order to send out an ion pulse. It disables the weapons, as well as the artificial gravity. Leia and Ray are float fighting, and Sana decides that now is as good a time as any to beat the crap out of Aphra for whatever she did to her. I mean, really, what happened between these two? Did Aphra say she was going to move in with her and split the rent, and then left Sana holding the bag on a lease for an expensive Coruscant apartment? Did she forget to pick her up at the airport once?
We'll be seeing more of these guys.
Anyway, when Aphra apologizes and admits she is better at dealing with machines than people, Sana tosses her at Eneb Ray and ends both fights. So, power is eventually restored to the prison and the warden is let out of whatever broom closet he was stuck in. He remarks to Leia that, in the clean up, one prisoner seems to have been misplaced. Next, we see Leia stop Dr. Aphra from sneaking into an escape pod. She tells her that she can’t just let her walk away and also gives her a warning about continuing to pal around the Darth Vader. “...he will get around to killing you," she says. Leia suggests that if Aphra should survive her time with Vader she should look her up. Aphra is confused. Leia said she wouldn’t let her walk away. “I didn’t say anything about her," Leia says as Sana kicks the doc onto the pod and hits the button. So, they let her go; but they also mention that they placed trackers all over her. Back at the Falcon, Han and Luke decide that this wasn’t their best rescue and also agree not to mention the whole nerf herding thing. We see Eneb Ray, now in binders and a prisoner himself, tell Princess Leia that someday she will regret not listening to him. In an epilogue taking place days later, we see a team of special ops stormtroopers arrive at a now abandoned Sunspot prison looking for a captured comrade named Kolar Ludd (he appeared in issue 17 as one of the prisoners Leia subdued). The leader of the troops is seen brandishing a green bladed lightsaber.
Review
And thus Rebel Jail comes to what I think is a more or less satisfying conclusion. The real weak point in the story at this point is how Luke and Han come off. Prior to their arrival at Sunspot, their separate storyline serves as a much lighter and amusing contrast to the fairly dark and violent “A” story. When they do arrive, they are easily taken out by the bad guy and serve basically no use in the story other than being bait. I suppose you could look at it as a clever reversal of the much maligned “damsel in distress” trope; and that’s fine. But maybe their storylines could have never converged. Maybe Luke and Han’s nerf herding storyline could have been teased out a little more, the final confrontation at Sunspot plays out a little differently, and in the end Han and Luke are like, “well this sucked, but I guess it beats doing a stupid, boring prisoner transfer like Leia and Sana." It really is a pretty good story as is, though. Aphra is pretty well portrayed and it’s good to see her get a chance to bounce off someone besides Vader. There’s snappy dialog and funny lines. I personally like Sana and feel like this story gives her a little more development. The whole Sana and Aphra are exes thing is a little forced; I mean, she already may or may not have had a thing with Han (in the novel Last Shot, Han is definitely shown having a crush on her). What happened to all the Sunspot guards? They didn’t all get killed. I guess maybe they were engaged in other areas of the prison, or maybe captured in the initial assault. Overall though, not bad. As for the art, I previously mentioned that it fits in pretty well with the theme of the story. The more I allowed myself to acclimate to it, the more I enjoyed it. Next week: we check back in with Vader.
