Star Wars’ Newest Comics Period Has Come to a Fittingly Bizarre Finish

Lots has occurred in Star Wars comics recently. Like, a frankly insane quantity of issues, as Marvel has managed to pack the 12 months between the events of Empire Strikes Again and Return of the Jedi with not simply 50 problems with an ongoing major title, however wild tales throughout books like Darth Vader and standalone occasion sequence to make this singular year in canon one of many absolute wildest that we all know of thus far.

It’s becoming then, that as Marvel prepares to bid farewell to this quantity and chart an intriguing future for its Star Wars comics, that it goes out with a problem that does a lot of what this sequence has at all times been: one which bridges so many alternative eras of Star Wars tales, asks large questions, and is completely not afraid to simply get completely and utterly weird in all the best methods.

Star Wars #50, out right this moment and written by Excessive Republic scribe Charles Soule, with artwork from Madibek Musabekov and Rachelle Rosenberg, and lettering by Clayton Cowles, already jukes the place you count on it to jive in its framing machine. Though largely “set” in that aforementioned hectic 12 months—because the occasions of Return of the Jedi come ever nearer—the problem is framed with a flash-forward to the nebulous period between Return of the Jedi and The Power Awakens, to Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy on Ossus. There, educating what’s near changing into a closing lesson for his most promising pupil, his personal nephew Ben, Luke tries to impart a fateful piece of recommendation to Ben: the price of doing good can’t be justified by doing nice evil. To take action, he tells Ben a narrative, flashing again to the “current” of the comedian’s pre-ROTJ setting, as Luke, Leia, Lando, and Chewie discover themselves on an totally absurd quest.

It’s one which, taking part in to much of Soule’s strengths on this period of Star Wars, successfully weaves collectively the franchise’s previous, current, and future. Returning to the planet Gazian, residence to an enormous fungal “sea” that acts as a organic archive of each individual to have ever visited it, Luke makes an attempt to search out classes from the Jedi Order’s pasts to search out an final finish to Emperor Palpatine. It’s a rigidity that sees him brush with darkness, when one of many reminiscences inside Gazian, the spirit of the darkish renegade Jedi Azlin Rell, factors Luke in direction of a mysterious historic artifact that’s basically a box-shaped magical gun: put the blood of your goal in it, let it do its mystical factor, and increase, they drop lifeless.

It’s an insane idea, and Soule, Musabekov, Rosenberg, and Cowles have a number of enjoyable getting round it, not simply from its connections to his work within the realm of the Excessive Republic materials, however in how the journey the gang goes on to accumulate it equally pulls on threads throughout Star Wars‘ hallmarks. There’s a disguised heist, there’s a visit to Naboo to see its reflection years after the prequels, there’s vital acts of resistance that present that anybody is usually a hero within the face of the best of evils. And though we logically know that this journey can’t finish with the Insurgent Alliance truly utilizing this artifact—not efficiently at the very least—there’s an interesting little bit of rigidity when our heroes encompass it with the important thing to killing Palpatine and start to weigh the grim calculus of whether or not or not they’ll truly undergo it.

The machine, it seems, works by analyzing a goal’s genetic materials, and tracing a lineage by lives they’ve touched, linked within the Power—kin, associates, individuals who really feel an important affect from the goal—all used as an online to finally ship the killshot to the meant sufferer… killing all these used within the webway within the course of. It’s completely insane, and in contrast to something we’ve seen in Star Wars earlier than, however on the identical time roots itself in concepts and arguments which have outlined the franchise’s soul ceaselessly: who’s responsible by affiliation in Palpatine’s machinations for the galaxy? Who’s worthy of redemption, and who isn’t? What number of lives are price spending to stop the lack of much more underneath the continued Imperial regime? Because the field begins to seek for its path to killing Palpatine, we start to see arguments kind that we the viewers know will now start to play out within the subsequent 30 years of Star Wars storytelling. We all know the Rebels didn’t want this proverbial assassination field to kill Palpatine, Vader kills him at Endor. We all know that he eventually returns, fostering a brand new wave of acolytes and admirals to deliver a couple of new battle that takes the lives of billions. Star Wars‘ cyclical battle turns into, within the second, a theoretical debate somewhat than recognized historical past. What would’ve modified if all this occurred this manner, as a substitute of what we see in Return of the Jedi?

What’s attention-grabbing about all that is that Star Wars #50 doesn’t actually conclude definitively, prefer it is aware of we all know what’s to come back all of this. The occasions don’t actually matter; it’s the teachings taken from them. Luke imparts his lesson to Ben, and that story peters off, prepared for the inevitable tragedy we all know is to come back. The “current” is equally nebulously lower off after Luke chooses to trick the machine into discovering one other inert goal, leaving this period of Star Wars comics each at its logical finish and likewise large open. Which, whereas not completely satisfying within the second, feels reflective of the very unusual interval at Marvel that Star Wars is about to enter.

The most recent quantity of the continuing just isn’t being instantly adopted up by a direct successor, however a trio of miniseries that adapts and recontextualizes among the earliest components of the post-reboot canon’s concepts of what occurred after Return of the Jedi. Past that, the writer has stayed quiet about simply the place its Star Wars books will go subsequent. The interval after Return of the Jedi that may be probably the most logical subsequent step; it’s, arguably, simply as fraught in continuity because the minefield that the previous few years of comics have woven within the timeframe between Empire and Return, albeit for very different reasons. Brushing up in opposition to the occasions of The Mandalorian and its myriad spinoffs in that hole, particularly whereas the period is still in flux because it’s fleshed out by live-action initiatives, can be a problem the Star Wars comics have but to essentially need to face, with the freedoms they’ve had filling out the gaps between the recognized portions of the unique trilogy. Going into the previous and the prequels would keep away from that minefield, however simply merely present the alternatives the guide has already mined for the unique trilogy to the prequels, albeit with extra wiggle room given the broader timeframe.

No matter’s subsequent, although, will hopefully seize the scope and wild selection that this present period has encapsulated… maybe, on the very least, on a wider canvas.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the things you want to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.