When Star Wars: The Force Awakens begins, we learn that Luke Skywalker has all but disappeared from the galaxy. In his place, his legend grew, and stories, both likely real and likely false, have popped up in his absence. Ken Liu’s novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker presented four such stories that may have happened. Viz Media adapted all four into a new collection, “The Legends of Luke Skywalker,” and the results are a bit mixed, but mostly quite enjoyable.
Plotted by Ken LiuCover by Akira Himekawa
Scripted by Akira Himekawa, Haruichi, Subaru, and Akira Fukaya
Illustrated by Akira Himekawa, Haruichi, Subaru, Akira Fukaya, and Takashi Kisaki
Translated by Satsuki YamashitaLuke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.
– Rey
Who is Luke Skywalker? Across the galaxies many have heard his name, but few have met the legendary Jedi. There are those who call him a merciless war criminal—others say he’s not even a human, but a droid! Whether he is myth or man, those who claim they’ve encountered the elusive Luke Skywalker all have an unforgettable adventure to share.
Star Wars: The Legends of Luke Skywalker—The Manga pairs powerhouse Japanese manga creators with inspiring myths about Luke Skywalker, originally written as a prose novel by best-selling author Ken Liu.
The first story in the collection is ‘The Starship Graveyard’ by Akira Fukaya and Takashi Kisaki. In this story, an Imperial escapes a crashing ship and lands on Jakku, home of Rey. But this is years before Rey’s birth; instead, he’s rescued by a mysterious man in a hood. Of all the stories, this is the most straightforward; Luke isn’t doing anything all that different than what we’ve seen him do in the past.
The first half of this story has some of the most standard visuals associated with Star Wars: TIE fighters, Star Destroyers, Imperial uniforms. Because we’ve also been to Jakku, this story, visually, feels very familiar, even if its Luke is the least recognizable, in part because he’s often hidden under a hood. Fukaya’s artwork is spare in parts, but flips to extreme detail when warranted, like when Luke creates the devices that allow him to glide over trouble, literally making him a walker of the sky. See what they did there?
The story ends with a bit of a Spartacus riff, and the Imperial realizing that he’s a cog in an uncaring wheel. It’s a bit of a cliched take, but it works for what it is. This story took the safest path, both plot-wise and art-wise, and so it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the later stories in the book
The most effective story in the bunch is ‘I, Droid’ by Haruichi. Despite this having, arguably, the least emotionally involved narrator, this story feels the most Star Wars to me, as well as doing some things we’ve never seen Luke do before. In the story, Luke poses as C-3PO, wearing what sure looks like his trust droid’s metal plating, in order to rescue R2D2.
Just on that plot description, the story stands out. But then, in a touch of Solo, Luke winds up freeing more than just Artoo, and leads a number of droids past their programming and adaptations and into freedom, or at least the droid equivalent of freedom. This story highlights Luke’s compassion and loyalty, two of the traits that would serve him well over time.
Haruichi’s artwork is the most consistently detailed of the batch as well, giving the various droids extreme specificity while retaining a classic look. His Artoo, in particular, is note-perfect in ways his Threepio isn’t which, once the twist is revealed, makes all the sense in the world. The focus on the mechanical characters also makes Luke really stand out as an almost supernatural character, which he is in many senses.
While ‘The Starship Graveyard’ inspired an Imperial to want to seek a better life for himself, ‘I, Droid’ shows the droid that you can help everyone if you set your mind to it. This is far more in line with the Jedi we’ve seen across Star Wars, and shows that even without a soul, a droid has a bigger head start on decency than an Imperial.
Continued belowThe third story, ‘The Tale of Lugubrious Mote,’ feels the most uniquely like a manga, which is due to both the story’s more playful nature and the broader artwork by Subaru. The narrator of this tale is a mote, living on the head of Salacious Crumb in Jabba the Hut’s palace. This story takes place within Return of the Jedi, and shows both Leia and Luke’s interactions with Lugubrious. Leia is aware she’s speaking to a mote, but Luke things that the voice he hears is a Force Ghost, guiding him through his encounter with the Rancor.
This leads to a very funny sequence, and one that puts Luke in less than glowing light. This is by far the most cartoonish of the bunch, and will land for you depending on how you feel about Luke looking less majestic and in control. Subaru falls very comfortably into Leia’s youthful gossip and Luke’s self-serious nonsense, and it gives the book a time to exhale a bit and have some fun with itself. Subaru gets to draw the most Star Wars characters here, from Jabba and Crumb to the Rancor and his keeper to Han and Lando and Artoo and Threepio, and softens all of them to a more relaxed, youthful appearance.
This feels the most like what you may expect a Star Wars manga to feel like and, again, is probably the most subjective of the stories, in terms of whether or not it will work for you as a reader.
Finally, we get ‘Big Inside,’ by Akira Himekawa, a travelogue through an exogorth, the slug-like creature that the Millennium Falcon hung out in/almost got eaten by in The Empire Strikes Back. This story features the most Luke, in terms of getting a story that is explicitly about him, rather than a story about someone who has a chance encounter with him. Yes, the story is really more about the unnamed narrator than it is about Luke, but he is an equal part of this story, rather than a transient character that pops in and out.
Visually, Himekawa gives Luke a beard so shitty it gets burned off halfway through the story. But beyond that, this story is the most fantastical, featuring multiple ecosystems inside the exogorth, as well as creatures frozen in time, creatures, an acid river, etc. This story is Luke as a lighthearted and optimistic explorer, which is something that has only ever really been hinted at elsewhere. It’s a good look for Luke.
This collection is never really explicit about the idea of these being stories that may or may not have happened, which I feel was a major part of the marketing of the initial novel. Taken from that perspective, the book is a lot of fun and a very different kind of Star Wars book. There is something for most Star Wars fans here, and hopefully, the book can act as an introduction for Star Wars fans to manga, and vice versa.
