Jedi News Comic Review: Star Wars Legacy #10

Ania Solo and Imperial Knight Jao Assam’s pursuit of the Sith Darth Wredd has instead led them to Darth Luft, who is creating a pirate fleet in the abandoned factory ring around the dead planet Dac—using native Mon Calamari and Quarren refugees as slave labor.

Jao, sure that Luft and Wredd are connected, has left Ania and his friends and confronted Luft alone, leading to Luft’s order for all the refugees to be executed.

But, disobeying Empress Marasiah Fel’s orders, Admiral Gar Stazi and Imperial Knight Yalta Val arrive with a strike force, having received a distress message from Jao. Given the amphibian nature of the slaves within the Ring, Stazi has a plan…

The Review

Legacy #10 is one choppy issue, but it does bring an end to the battle on the Ring and Luft’s pirate empire. Ania, AG-37, Sauk and Jao all join in for the fight as battles are waged inside and outside the orbital shipyards of Dac. Meanwhile, Gar Stazi and Yalta Val bring reinforcements. From beginning to end, there’s a lot of action.

This issue bounces around a lot as it jumps from scenes inside and outside the Ring. It starts in space with Ania and her crew dodging enemy droids. While flying around, AG heavy handedly points out a tanker ship, a plot point that is hinted at in the blurb, and thus takes away any and all surprise for Stazi’s big attack: they plan to flood the Ring with water. Inside the ring, there’s a lot of chaos as the pirates are fighting the enslaved Quarren and Mon Calamari. Then there’s Jao Assam’s duel with Darth Luft. When the flood kicks in, things get even more chaotic.

All that chaos isn’t handled very well, though. Scenes jump around a lot with little to no transition. The big flood only gets two panels, and with all the foreshadowing, it lacked surprise and any real impact on the story. In fact the panel following the two flood scenes is a clean up shot of the Imperial scuba troops. In essence they boiled the whole water attack down to just one page of the comic. As dramatic as that action should have been, I can’t help but feel it deserved more page time.

Something else that bothered me in this issue is Yalta Val’s comm droid. It barely appeared in the last issue, giving readers just a glimpse of it slipping off onto the ring with Jao Assam. Rather than having any real mission or objective, its presence is only a convenient way for the characters to escape an underwater predicament. It felt really forced. On top of that, I have no idea how Ania got from her ship and into a flooded docking bay that was froze over, let alone do I have any idea how she thought she could do something the Mon Cals and Quarren couldn’t do on their own…like hitting the close button on the door. The whole scene felt really convoluted and would have been better off if they had just used Ania as the one to hit the external controls.

Yet Ania’s rescue attempt is just one of many nonsensical events in this issue. Another example is the two pirates who cause the whole open hangar bay door problem in the first place. They have a brief dialog about not getting paid. So they decide to escape out the airlock in space suits. How is that a bright idea? Wouldn’t they need an escape pod or an escape ship? Surely they don’t plan on flying away with hyperspace equipped rocket packs. However, by flying out the hangar door, they cause needless complications for the heroes. It just didn’t feel integral to the story. The flow from one scene to the other didn’t fit logically.

Regardless of the forced plot points, we still get a lightsaber battle between a Sith and a Jedi. Sadly, it’s not very memorable. Luft tosses some tired old dialog. Jao gives some stiff responses. They clash sabers, Luft tosses some junk at Jao, and then reinforcements arrive. Here is where things could have gotten good. Luft fights a couple Imperial Knights and easily defeats them. Alas the fight is brief and there isn’t much to it. Then Jao stabs Luft in the back. Boom! End of not-so-epic fight. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh, but I’ve read a lot of Star Wars comics, and with all the lightsaber battles that have been done, this one was pretty mediocre.

The saving grace of this issue is the end. The final two pages wrap of this stage of the story by Jao talking with Master Val and remaining determined in his pursuit of Darth Wredd. AG-37 and Ania have a chat about needing to make some credits, and then something unexpected happens. They get a holotransmission from Darth Wredd. Never one to miss the chance to gloat, Wredd takes credit for manipulating the good guys into doing his dirty work for him. His grand scheme was to have them kill Darth Luft. It’s a pretty cool twist that helps build up Wredd a little more.

As much as I liked the ending, it wasn’t enough to make up for all the choppy action and convoluted plot points. The issue is very action oriented without a lot of character focus. There was some good things to work with: a flood attack on a space station, a giant space battle, lightsaber fights, underwater escape scenes…but it didn’t turn out very well. A lot of the tension and impact was lost with rushed scenes and predictable dialog. The twist in the end was definitely the best part.

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