Star Wars #68 Review

Writer: Greg Pak

Artist: Phil Noto

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Publisher: Marvel

This week Greg Pak starts his run on the Star Wars series, taking over from Kieron Gillen. Pak started writing Star Wars a few months ago with the Age of Rebellion miniseries which had a number of stories set in this era with these characters, giving me a good idea of what to expect from him here. 

In the first installment of the Rebels and Rogues arc, Leia, Luke, Han, and Chewie are all assigned different missions to distract and hurt the Empire, protecting the wider Rebellion from direct pursuit.

The issue was definitely a solid start to an arc with a lot of potential. Much of the issue was revealed from promotion and preview pages so there weren't many surprises but that didn't hurt it much. It's hard to tell how firm Pak's grasp of the characters is with just one issue but everybody seemed in character. 

I was glad to see some references to Shu-Torun and I really enjoyed him ending the issue on a callback to one of the earlist issues of the series. I was surprised to see that the issue didn't pick up on the hook Gillen left at the end of his run: the team investigating different potential bases that Dodonna had scouted, including Hoth. The mission goes unmentioned here and it's ambiguous if the Rebellion has settled on Hoth yet.

It's really great to see the series with some awesome art. I haven't been in love with the art in the series since around the twelth issue. Though there were some good moments here and there, I was never a fan of either Salvador Larroca or Angel Unzueta's work on the series. I hope Noto is with the series for the long run, or at least however long Pak's run lasts.

I can't wait to see what comes next with this arc. I'm curious how long Pak's run will last beyond it, because we're pretty firmly right up against Empire Strikes Back. It's possible that Pak will take the series past that film into a new era, but it's equally possible that the series will end or reboot once it runs out of space before. I'm looking forward to finding out what direction he decides to take it.