Star Wars #72 Review
Writer: Greg Pak
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel
In the fifth installment of the Rebels and Rogues arc, Chewie and 3PO are now in direct conflict with Darth Vader himself and must find a way to save the natives of the planet K-43 while on Sergia Luke attempts to convince Warba to teach him more about the Force and on Lanz Carpo Han and Leia attempt to work with Dar Champion to defeat one of the Rebellion's enemies.
The way this arc still very slowly unfolds continues to frustrate me. None of the three stories in the issue are bad. To varying degrees, I find all of them pretty enjoyable. All of the characters feel consistent and the stories are reasonably interesting. The problem is how slow it's moving. Trying to tell three stories at once means each story only gets six or seven pages per issue.
The stories also feel much lower stakes than Kieron Gillen's run that immediately preceeded it. It doesn't feel like it's moving the overall story to a new place like Gillen's arcs did. The fact that this arc is extra-long contributes to the problem about it moving slow: it's lower stakes than usual with three different stories to tell each issue and the extra length means they feel even more dragged out. It just ends up feeling sluggish, which is an even bigger shame because this is the final arc in a 70+ issue, five year run.
I really like Pak as a writer and I really love Phil Noto's art on the series (it's still really refreshing to see it with great art). It's a great creative team, which makes me even sadder that this feels like a bt of a letdown for the final arc. I don't think it'll end up being bad but I do think it'll be one of the less memorable arcs of the series. I'm still looking forward to seeing how the rest of this story goes but with how frustrating the slow pace is, it feels like something that would be more enjoyable when read as a trade.
Hopefully the arc throws in a few twists and turns in the last three issues too, because it's been fairly predictable for the last few issues. While I still think it'll be a shame if this arc doesn't feel lke a satisfying conclusion, I'm optimistic about the recently-announced Empire Ascendant one shot that seems to serve as a true finale to this era of Star Wars storytelling. I'm even more excited to find out what comes next from Marvel publishing since almost all of their Star Wars series end in December. Seems like we might be in for a relaunch of Star Wars comics. I'm hoping to get some announcements later today at NYCC. Can't wait to find out!
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel
In the fifth installment of the Rebels and Rogues arc, Chewie and 3PO are now in direct conflict with Darth Vader himself and must find a way to save the natives of the planet K-43 while on Sergia Luke attempts to convince Warba to teach him more about the Force and on Lanz Carpo Han and Leia attempt to work with Dar Champion to defeat one of the Rebellion's enemies.
The way this arc still very slowly unfolds continues to frustrate me. None of the three stories in the issue are bad. To varying degrees, I find all of them pretty enjoyable. All of the characters feel consistent and the stories are reasonably interesting. The problem is how slow it's moving. Trying to tell three stories at once means each story only gets six or seven pages per issue.
The stories also feel much lower stakes than Kieron Gillen's run that immediately preceeded it. It doesn't feel like it's moving the overall story to a new place like Gillen's arcs did. The fact that this arc is extra-long contributes to the problem about it moving slow: it's lower stakes than usual with three different stories to tell each issue and the extra length means they feel even more dragged out. It just ends up feeling sluggish, which is an even bigger shame because this is the final arc in a 70+ issue, five year run.
I really like Pak as a writer and I really love Phil Noto's art on the series (it's still really refreshing to see it with great art). It's a great creative team, which makes me even sadder that this feels like a bt of a letdown for the final arc. I don't think it'll end up being bad but I do think it'll be one of the less memorable arcs of the series. I'm still looking forward to seeing how the rest of this story goes but with how frustrating the slow pace is, it feels like something that would be more enjoyable when read as a trade.
Hopefully the arc throws in a few twists and turns in the last three issues too, because it's been fairly predictable for the last few issues. While I still think it'll be a shame if this arc doesn't feel lke a satisfying conclusion, I'm optimistic about the recently-announced Empire Ascendant one shot that seems to serve as a true finale to this era of Star Wars storytelling. I'm even more excited to find out what comes next from Marvel publishing since almost all of their Star Wars series end in December. Seems like we might be in for a relaunch of Star Wars comics. I'm hoping to get some announcements later today at NYCC. Can't wait to find out!
A Look Inside
