Star Wars #67 Review

Writer: Kieron Gillen

Artist: Angel Unzueta

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Publisher: Marvel

This week Kieron Gillen's run on the Star Wars series (and his time with Star Wars overall) comes to an end. He's been consistently writing a Star Wars ongoing ever since Marvel got the license and started publishing four years ago. It's undeniably the end of an era and I'm sad to see him go, especially because I could see a potential spinoff series for him after this issue if he hadn't decided that he was done. 

In the final installment of the Scourging of Shu-Torun, Leia, Luke, and Han have to rush to stop Benthic from perverting their plan and using the Spire to destroy an entire planet full of innocents to spite the Empire. 

I'm still a bit surprised that Trios didn't survive to see the end of this story that she started but making Benthic the last true threat is definitely an interesting choice that I think worked. The way he was stopped felt just a little bit rushed but it was what I was hoping would happen and I really, really everything that happened after it. As I said before, I could have easily seen Gillen spinning off from this series into another one after this issue and I'm almost sad that didn't happen because who knows when or how we will get that story. 

There were some really cool callbacks in this issue as well. We finally get a reference to the fact that Han and Benthic have met before and it was worth the wait because it was a fantastic moment. There's also a callback to a tiny bit of foreshadowing that happened a couple dozen issues ago, I didn't even realize that it was a callback at all until I reread Gillen's entire run after this issue and picked up on it. 

I think Gillen's run benefitted a lot from a reread of the entire thing start to finish. It's clearly a very tightly-plotted series and I think it works more when you can read it without extended breaks between the bits of story. I don't think some of his issues worked as well as others when reading month to month, the middle of the arcs could drag sometimes, but that problem isn't nearly as prominent when reading them all together. 

This is the last issue that Angel Unzueta will be doing after having been the primary artist for the last two arcs. At first I welcomed the change because I was never a fan of Salvador Larroca's art before him but as time has gone on, the flaws of his work have gotten more distracting and prominent for me. Next month Phil Noto will take over the art and I like his art so I'm really looking forward to the next change. 

Next month Grek Pak will be taking the reigns from Gillen and I'm very excited for that, even if I've enjoyed Gillen's run. While the closing moments of this issue served as a perfect ending to the run, Gillen also gave Pak a great jumping off point to take the series right into Empire Strikes Back and I've enjoyed Pak's work on the Age of Rebellion series so I can't wait to see what he does with the series.