Star Wars #70 Review

Writer: Greg Pak

Artist: Phil Noto

Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles

Publisher: Marvel

Greg Pak's first arc writing the Star Wars comic continues this week with the third installment in the Rebels and Rogues story arc. On Lanz Carpo, Han and Leia must find a way to transmit false signals to the Empire while also dealing with Leia's ex, Dar Champion. Chewie and 3PO are supposed to lure Imperials to K43 and blow the planet up to destroy them but the plan is complicated when they discover native sentient life. Luke attempts to draw the Imperials away from an outpost on Sergia when he encounters a woman who could help him learn more about the Force.

It's a perfectly serviceable issue that progresses all three of the stories forward, but I honestly had a hard time getting into it. Dividing the cast into three distinct plots is a good idea and each of the plots is interesting enough in their own right but when there are only twenty pages in an issue it means you're only getting six or seven pages of each story in an installment. Nothing in the issue is particularly surprising because a lot of the overall story beats have been revealed by promotions or solicitations. 

It doesn't help that the series can go over a month without an issue sometimes or that this arc is eight issues long, two longer than the typical arc. When you throw all of those elements together it makes the arc feel very drawn out and predictable when the actual story and execution isn't bad. If it was read all together at once in a trade, it would probably be a much better experience. 

There isn't too much else to say about the issue. As I said before, most of the story beats are easy to see coming. There are some fun moments, like Luke's plot having a cute call forward to The Last Jedi. Chewie and 3PO are a great pairing and I can't say I would have expected a story where the two of them must take on Vader alone. The native rock creatures are an interesting enough concept that I'm sure the arc will do some cool things with as it goes on. The Han and Leia plot has an original feeling, though I'm not too into Dar Champion yet. He's seemed fairly bland so far, though it is distinctly possible he'll be more interesting in the rest of the arc after this issue. 

Phil Noto's art is as great as it always is, I'm still very happy that he's taken over the series. Other than that I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next, even if I'm admittedly not quite as excited as I was when the arc started. This is one that I'd probably recommend to people, but not until after it's already come out in trade. Still, I'm enjoying it and I'm excited to see where the plot goes!