After last issue introduced us to the Scar Squadron, the elite team of Stormtroopers tasked with eliminating Rebel soldiers wherever they found them, Jason Aaron and Jorge Molina flip perspectives to catch up with the what Luke, Leia, Han and the rest of the Rebel Alliance have been up to. Turns out, what they’ve been up to is an idea so crazy, it might just be one of the most Star Wars moments to happen in this entire series so far.
Read on below for our full review of “Star Wars” #22 by Jason Aaron and Jorge Molina.
Written by Jason Aaron
Illustrated by Jorge Molina
The Star Destroyer Harbinger, a massive weapon of Imperial war. Also the target of the rebels’ new top-secret plan. Join Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Leia Organa for “The Last Flight of the Harbinger”!
After 22 issues, four story arcs (including ‘Vader Down’) and a handful of one-off stories, Jason Aaron seems to have perfectly nailed what makes him such a fantastic Star Wars writer. The first element is the fact that he has worked with some of the best artists in the business in the issues so far and this arc is no different, with him being joined by Jorge Molina, and the second is how he constructs the stories he is telling. With this series nestled between the two biggest tentpole movies of the saga, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Aaron and the artists he works with are essentially charting a course from point A to point B. That’s a tricky course to chart because you have to be at once faithful to the characters as originally portrayed while providing new and original stories for fans to enjoy every month.
With this twenty second issue of Star Wars, the series is showing no signs of slowing down as Jason Aaron and Jorge Molina construct a moment contained in a single issue. This is, I think, this series’ greatest strength as it has come into it’s own. While previous arcs have had a lot of the storytelling and character development fall on the shoulders of original characters to the comic series, this arc seems to have taken a leaf out of Aaron’s writing of the ‘Journal Of Ben Kenobi’ interlude issues. Last issue was a self-contained story that introduced a new set of antagonists and this issue is a largely self-contained story that depicts the Rebel attempt to hijack a Star Destroyer. Focusing on these single issue, self-contained stories like this allows the onus to be put on the artist to really build the story and capture that moment in one issue.
That task should have been impossible for this issue, but somehow Jorge Molina pulled it off. Molina has a style unlike what we’ve seen in “Star Wars” so far. While he, like every artist Aaron has worked with, is able to perfectly capture that feel off Star Wars and depict in this issue the fighter and ships of the universe with amazing accuracy, his style is more cartoon-y than previous artists.
It becomes very noticeable in this issue with the characters of Luke, Leia and Han as this is the first we’re seeing of them drawn by Molina. The characters are instantly recognisable, but Molina isn’t so much capturing the likeness of the actors as capturing the feeling of the characters. There’s a slight exaggeration, a slight caricature, to them – especially Han Solo, who’s long and drawn out face makes this character style more noticeable against the realistic machinery otherwise depicted – but it makes this wild caper of an issue feel all the more fun.
There’s drama to be had, for sure, but when the overall outcome of these characters is pretty much set in stone, the stakes of the story have to be considered differently. This allows Aaron and Molina to lean into the wild adventure of Star Wars in a really fun way. These characters are, essentially, invincible and so that allows an issue like this to pull off some really crazy moments (like Luke flying his X-Wing inside a Star Destroyer) and use that to showcase Jorge Molina’s art to it’s fullest.
Continued belowLike I said, this issue should pretty not have worked. It’s a comic book depicting a dog fight in space as a group of single-pilot fighters take on a Star Destroyer. The lack of actual movement or animation means that depicting the swirling mass of fighters, the criss-crossing lines of blaster fire all across the void of space shouldn’t work. It just shouldn’t. This is where Molina’s more exaggerated style comes into play. While Aaron uses radio chatter between pilots to escalate the stakes of the mission over the course of the issue, Molina uses a lot of speed lines and engine trails to hone in on the energy of the dogfight more than the details.
From the first, double-page spread of the encounter with the Star Destroyer dominating the engaging fighters to our heroes racing through the insides of that same Star Destroyer, racing against the clock, this is an action-focused, self-contained story that showcases adventure more than anything else. The larger plot of this arc remains fairly nebulous, but that’s okay because Aaron and Molina crafting these smaller moments of story in these issues is just as fun, if not more so, as a sprawling narrative like what Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca have been doing in “Darth Vader”. To me, these kinds of issues are defining the identity of this series. This is a series stuck between a rock and a hard place as it’s characters all have a set in stone destination and so Aaron and Molina are using the journey to create fun, interesting adventures in bite size chunks.
“Star Wars” burst onto the scene with a hell of a first impression and has only gotten better since, but this issue proves that Jason Aaron is far from losing steam as a writer and working with artists like Jorge Molina means creating engaging and fun adventures each issue. This is pure Star Wars. It’s an adventure, a caper featuring the heroes we know and love, focusing on a dog fight, wearing it’s war movie influences on its sleeve, and the hijacking of a seemingly impossible target. Just as the Rebels are able to pull through with pluck and wit, Jorge Molina is able to pull off the seemingly insurmountable task of illustrating a dog fight in space in a comic.
Seriously, I’m going to break the review facade here for a second and get real. This is just me, Alice, talking to you. Jorge Molina’s work on this issue astounded me on every level. It’s a dogfight in space rendered in a comic book and the sense of speed, movement and scale are all captured perfectly while keeping a strong focus on the characters and their goals. This might be the best issue of “Star Wars” so far.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with this issue.
