Writer: Rob Williams
Artist: Brandon Badeaux
Dark Horse Comics
This month sees the second step in Dark Horse’s re-branding of its Star Wars line of comics. The Star Wars:Empire on-going, which ended last month at issue 40, is being superseded by a new title Star Wars: Rebellion. Fractal Matter has managed to get an advance copy of the first issue of Rebellion so we can give you a heads up on what to expect from this new yet not new title.
Beyond the title change nothing else much has altered in the transition from Empire to Rebellion. It’s still an on-going Star Wars series and it still covers the same time period; that between Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Empire, unlike its sister tile Republic, never really found its feet in my opinion. Without a regular writer or artist each story arc seemed rather independent of the others, and not all of them were very engaging. Despite this there were highlights, the best of which were the stories involving Imperial military recruit Janek Sunber. Sunber, a childhood friend of Luke Skywalker, brought a human element to the story as we were shown a man torn between his sense of duty and his sense of right. This made for much more engaging tales and I’m pleased to see that the writers and editors at Dark Horse have twigged to this and kicked of Rebellion where Empire left off; with Sunber.
In the last issue of Empire Sunber’s base was infiltrated by Luke and other Rebels and his inner conflict was heightened by the realization that his childhood friend was on the other side of the war. Rebellion #1 starts with a flashback to simpler times, Sunber, Luke and Biggs trying to find some excitement as kids on Tatooine. Brandon Badeuax (Superman, Green Lantern, G.I. Joe) has done a great job on the art in this issue and these initial pages have a clarity and quality of art that had been lacking in Empire and left me thinking ‘yeah definite improvement’. Then I turned the page and was greeted by one of the most impressive double page spreads I’ve seen in a while. A massively detailed depiction of Sunber and the Imperial army assaulting the rebel base on Yavin IV, that left me thinking ‘yeah massive improvement’.
So the art is great, what about the story. Well writer Rob Williams (Cla$$War, 2000AD) doesn’t disappoint there either. The story is told mainly through Sunber’s internal monologue as he struggles to come to terms with his place in the war relative to his friend, and this works really well. This issue ends with Sunber giving into his sense of duty and going to Vader himself to report what information he has on Luke. It seems like a turning point for the character of Sunber, but I have a sneaky suspicion that we may see him finally give in to his sense of moral right later in this arc. We shall see. Importantly this issue leaves you wanting to see.
Overall this was a great start. The choice to continue Sunber’s journey is a good one I think. He’s a valuable and interesting character with more unexplored depth than say Luke or Leia. The writer and artist both shine here; I get the sense from interviews they are on the series for a while and that’s great because a regular team is exactly what Empire lacked. All in all this was a great issue and hopefully indicative of good things to come from this re-launch.
Having just finished a PhD in Immunology Ross is currently pursuing a career as the most over qualified barman in the Midlands. He lives in Birmingham where he reads comics, spends too much money on music, clutters up his girlfriends house and attempts to learn Portuguese.