Star Wars #108Cover dated: May 2019
Issue title:
Forever CrimsonScript: Matthew Rosenberg
Artwork: Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils)/Cam Smith (inks)/Kerry Gammill (pencils)/Ze Carlos (inks)/Andrea Broccardo (pencils & inks)/Jan Duursema (pencils & inks)/Stefano Landini (pencils & inks)/Luke Ross (pencils & inks)/Leonard Kirk (pencils & inks)
Colours: Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Clayton Cowles
Cover art: Walter Simonson (pencils)/Antonio Fabela (inks)
Variant cover art:
Carmine Infantino (pencils)/Dan Green/Dean White
[remastered variant]Michael Golden
[variant cover C]John Tyler Christopher
[variant cover D and "action figure" variant]Overall rating: 7½ out of 10
Variant Covers:
Publisher's synopsis:
A long time ago on a spinner rack far, far away-STAR WARS comics were a LOT different than they are now! With wild and intricately plotted storylines, MARVEL's historic original run introduced an array of unique heroes and villains to play alongside GEORGE LUCAS's incredibly popular science-fantasy characters. In celebration of MARVEL'S 80TH ANNIVERSARY, this Legends-era sequel to legendary comic book writer Archie Goodwin's "Crimson Forever" reunites HAN SOLO, LUKE SKYWALKER, PRINCESS LEIA, CHEWBACCA, C-3PO and R2-D2 with JAXXON, AMAIZA FOXTRAIN, DOMINA TAGGE and VALANCE THE HUNTER in a galaxy-threatening, nostalgic roller coaster! STRAP YOURSELVES IN! Comments: Well, I really thought that this series of
Star Wars reviews was done with, but then the unbelievable happened! As part of their 80th Anniversary celebrations, Marvel Comics published a one-shot issue set in the original and long-discarded Marvel
Star Wars comics continuity. It is numbered as issue #108, carrying on from the final issue #107, with the conceit being that this comic is a relic from an alternate universe...a universe where the
Star Wars comic wasn't cancelled in 1986.
Of course, it should be noted that
Star Wars #108 falls outside of the stated time frame of this review thread (1977-1987), as well as the "classic comics" remit of this forum. But, with encouragement from the followers of this thread, I've decided to review it anyway, just as a sort of supplementary thing. As always, your own thoughts and comments on the issue are most welcome. But be warned, there
will be spoilers ahead!
So, first things first: how about that Walter Simonson cover? As fans of this series will know, Simonson was the regular artist on the series (as well as a co-plotter) in the early 1980s, from issues #49 to #66. He also drew
Star Wars #16 and some of the SW strips that appeared in Marvel's
Pizzazz magazine. I must say that I like Simonson's cover a lot, although I find the modern computer colouring to be a little garish and over the top for my tastes. Also, is it just me, or is Simonson channelling Carmine Infantino here? The cover looks decidedly Infantino-esque to me...particularly the rendering of Darth Vader.
Speaking of Infantino – who was, of course, an artistic mainstay of the series' early years –
Star Wars #108 is also available with a variant cover that repurposes some of his old artwork. I must say that I like the Infantino variant a lot too, and I was mighty tempted to purchase it. Of the other variant covers, the Michael Golden one is rather nice, although a little "busy" for my tastes (Golden, of course, pencilled SW #38 back in 1980), but I'm much less enamoured with John Tyler Christopher's two contributions. In particular, the "action figure variant", which is part of an ongoing series of similar covers in Marvel's modern SW comics, is rather boring.
Something else I just wanted to note about the various covers is that Marvel have used one of Ron Frenz and Tom Palmer's old corner cover symbols in the price box at the top left. It's only a small thing, but it adds a nicely retro touch to the comic...
And really, a "retro touch" is what this issue is all about.
Star Wars #108 is keen to push our nostalgia buttons at pretty much every opportunity, but it does so without any sense of self-conciousness. Writer Matthew Rosenberg (who's name is weirdly missing from the credits page) joyfully embraces the original run's old-school aesthetic and idiosyncrasies, while perfectly capturing the light-hearted tone of the original series, and the voices of both the film characters and the Marvel-originated cast. He takes us back to fondly remembered locations like Stenos, Centares and its Rubyflame Lake, and the Red Nebula, as well as reacquainting us with alien races from the Jo Duffy era, such as the Nagai, Lahsbees, Zeltrons, and the Hiromi. There's also a nice mention of the Alliance of Free planets, which is what the Rebellion morphed into, after the fall of the Empire, in the original series.
Oh, and I, for one, was very glad to see Plif, the telepathic Hoojib making an appearance...
Make no mistake, what Rosbenberg has delivered here is unabashedly old-school cheese, but thankfully, he avoids the pitfall of laughing up his sleeve at the source material. Often, with these kinds of nostalgic, fan-service revivals, you get a knowing and hugely irritating, post-modern, metatextual slant on a beloved franchise. That's not the case here. Rosenberg plays it thoroughly straight and this comic is all the better for it.
The issue is divided up into eight chapters – which seems rather a lot for a 48 page comic book – and I'm kind of ambivalent about whether this format enhances or detracts from the story overall. However, it seems fairly clear that the excessive number of chapters was probably necessitated by the excessive number of artists working on the comic, since each chapter showcases entirely different artistic talents, with only Andrea Broccardo drawing more than one.
I'm really not sure why Marvel needed to employ so many artistic contributors, but I will say that, surprisingly, the various art styles on display hang together pretty well and aren't too distracting. And it's certainly nice to see a few veterans of the original series working on
Star Wars #108, with Kerry Gammill (who pencilled
Star Wars #70 and #102) drawing one chapter, and Jan Duursema (who drew issue #92 of the old series, as well as a whole load of the Dark Horse
Star Wars comics) drawing another.
However, I can't help feeling that it's a shame that more of the series' surviving creative talents weren't involved. It would've been nice, for example, to have seen Ron Frenz or Tom Palmer contributing, or even having Simonson do some interior artwork (apparently Simonson was approached, but his busy schedule meant that he could only contribute a cover). Also, while Rosenberg has done a great job with the writing, it's a shame that the likes of David Michelinie or Jo Duffy couldn't have contributed. In particular, I'd have loved to have seen what Duffy could've come up with, since this comic continues on from the end of her run. In this respect,
Star Wars #108 feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity.
The artistic ensemble of modern Marvel mainstays, like Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, Luke Ross, and the aforementioned Andrea Broccardo, do a serviceable job overall, without ever once producing anything that blew me away. Colourist Chris Sotomayor turns in some pretty nice work, and I particularly enjoy the vintage-style, Ben-Day dot-like colouring effect present in the backgrounds...
The story itself is titled "Forever Crimson" and is a sequel to Archie Goodwin's fantastic "Crimson Forever" storyline, which appeared in
Star Wars #50. I'm not sure exactly how soon after the end of the original series this is supposed to be set, but the Tofs are mentioned as still being a problem for the Alliance, and Princess Leia's Zeltron valets are still hanging around. So, I'm guessing that this is maybe only a few months after the events of the final issue.
Actually, Leia's brief mention of a "Tof threat" is puzzling because the Tofs were defeated in
Star Wars #107, when the Alliance captured their Crown Prince and absolute ruler, Prince Sereno, and forced him to tell his men to stand down. That seemed like a pretty conclusive end to the Tof invasion, but apparently it wasn't. I don't know for sure, but I'm going to assume that this is a mistake on Rosenberg's part and he hadn't realised that the Nagai–Tof war had, in fact, ended.
Perhaps the most striking thing about
Star Wars #108 is that it sees the return of the fan-favourite cyborg bounty hunter Captain Valance. His mechanical remains are recovered by a group of scavengers on the shores of Rubyflame Lake, and, unsurprisingly, he is reanimated some pages later...
While it's awesome to see Valance back in action, I hate that he's depicted like the Terminator. Far too much of him is revealed to be mechanical for my tastes – it's essentially only his brain that is human, by all accounts. I don't know about anybody else, but I always got the impression in the original series that Valance was a lot more human than he's shown to be here. I always felt that he was kind of like Darth Vader, in that he was basically half man, half machine.
I understand that Rosenberg needs Valance to be made mostly from durasteel, in order to justify how he could've survived lying submerged for years in the highly-corrosive waters of Rubyflame Lake, but we were told in
Star Wars #29 that even the toughest metals would only last a few hours in the lake. So, having Valance mostly consist of mechanical parts doesn't really account for his survival.
And anyway, if Valance is made of so much durasteel that he could survive years of laying in Rubyflame Lake, why didn't he simply crawl out after his confrontation with Vader? We're told in this issue that the bounty hunter's systems supposedly went into stasis mode as soon as he hit the water, but why would that happen? If he was corrosion-resistant enough to survive years in the lake, a few minutes surely wouldn't have caused him to go into stasis mode. Frankly, the whole thing regarding Valance's survival doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Clearly Rosenberg was just desperate to use Valance at all costs – and who could blame him?! But for me, Valance's re-appearance contradicts too much of what we saw in the original series.
Still, Valance does at least get a satisfying ending here – one that is arguably better than the one Archie Goodwin gave him back in 1979. In this issue, Valance's body is "repaired" by the Crimson Forever gemstones, allowing him to die as a human and not as the cyborg he hated being. Personally, I rather like that ending, although I can see that some fans might argue that it rather undercuts the character growth we saw in Valance in the original series.
Actually, there's a bit of a continuity glitch associated with the healing of Valance too. In the original "Crimson Forever" storyline, the jewels were never explicitly shown to heal flesh in a general sense...they just cured the Crimson Forever disease. If the reunited jewels could "heal" and regenerate destroyed flesh, in the way that they do with Valance here, then wouldn't they have done the same for Luke Skywalker when he was cured of the Crimson Forever? The cybernetic hand that Luke got after his duel with Vader on Cloud City in
The Empire Strikes Back was left untouched by his having been healed by the gems back in
Star Wars #50. Frankly, this seems like another sloppy continuity mistake on Rosenberg's part.
Happily, Valance isn't the only old character who returns in
Star Wars #108. Perhaps the single most important event in the last 40 years of comics history is the in-continuity return of … Jaxxon, the 6' tall, green, carnivorous space-bunny from the planet Coachelle Prime...
In a promotional interview with Marvel.com, Rosenberg confessed to being a big Jaxxon fan, and said that the lepus smuggler was the character that he most enjoyed writing for this issue. Obviously, it'll come as no surprise to anyone here to learn that I'm also a big, BIG fan of Jaxxon. But even if you're a Jaxxon hater, Rosenberg's still got your back, when, in a deft bit of meta-commentary, he is literally and figuratively acknowledged as being "awful" by Luke Skywalker.
For a fan like me though, it's great to see Jaxxon again, along with his partner Amaiza Foxtrain, of the Black Hole Gang. I'm also glad to see that their partnership (and possible romance) is still going strong. Amaiza is showing noticeably less flesh in this issue than she did back in the late '70s though...something no doubt motivated by modern feminist mores.
Happily, Jaxxon gets a fair bit of panel time in this issue and that results in his character being fleshed out a little more than it was in the original run. In particular, we get to see a sneaky, dishonest, and thoroughly self-interested side to him that we hadn't really seen before. Personally, I like this sneakier, more dishonest space-rabbit. To me, it makes perfect sense, given that he's a freewheeling, mercenary smuggler. It's also a lot of fun to see Jaxxon interacting with Luke, Leia and R2-D2, who he never actually met during his original appearances in the series.
We also get the reappearance of the villainous Domina Tagge, who gave our Star-Warriors so much trouble back in the day...
In its final months, the old
Star Wars comic teased us with a promised reappearance of Domina, but the series was cancelled before it could actually happen. Domina's fate after the "Crimson Forever" storyline was always something that I used to wonder about, so it's great that Rosenberg has finally given us an answer by bringing her back, just as Duffy had intended to. Interestingly, Leia's comment about Domina being "in exile near Asteph'skaff" means that the central cast actually knew that she was still at large and hadn't been turned over to the Empire, even though they never mentioned it on-page.
Overall, I like
Star Wars #108. While it certainly doesn't reach the highest peaks that the original series scaled at its best, it is a lot better than many of those old comics. And I'm sure that, like me, a lot of old fans of the series thoroughly enjoyed being back in this particular version of that "galaxy far, far away" – I know I had a great big grin on my face the whole time I was reading! However, I found the interior artwork to be decidedly pedestrian and "serviceable", rather than anything to really write home about. I also don't particularly like the version of Valance seen here, as it seems to me to be at odds with the character I know from those old issues. And the presence of a few glaring continuity errors, amongst so much other meticulous attention to detail, gives me the impression that Rosenberg did a lot of his research for this issue with online sources like Wookieepedia, rather than by re-reading the relevant issues himself. Still, these niggling problems don't detract too much from my enjoyment, and, after all, it's not as if anything sacred from the original series has been defiled or desecrated.
I think it's tempting to wish that more of the old Marvel-created characters had made an appearance. It would've been great, for instance, to have seen Dani, Drebble, Knife, Rik Duel, or even the Dark Lady Lumiya (although she's supposedly dead...but then, so was Valance!). But ultimately, I think it's a good thing that Rosenberg resisted the temptation to flood the book with fan-service appearances of old characters.
By far the biggest character omission from this comic was Lando Calrissian! I mean, really? No Lando?! That's a crying shame and a bit of a missed opportunity, especially as he played quite a large role in the original "Crimson Forever" storyline.
Ultimately, this issue's biggest success is in allowing the reader to feel as if the last 33 years haven't happened. Rosenberg hits the ground running and it honestly feels as if the series hasn't missed a beat in the intervening decades. The comic feels familiar, but new. The same, but different...with glossy paper instead of newsprint, and a more modern art style and colouring, but with its spirit of wide-eyed spectacle and playfulness intact.
I also think that this issue makes quite a convincing argument for bringing the series back as an out-of-continuity ongoing. I don't know what sales of
Star Wars #108 were like, but it seems to have gotten very good online reviews, both in the mainstream comic book press and on independent blogs or YouTube channels. It really does make me wonder whether this could be a first step by Marvel Comics to revive the classic
Star Wars comic continuity. We'll see, I guess.
Continuity issues:
- Captain Valance is shown as having survived submersion in the highly corrosive waters of Rubyflame lake, due to the majority of his body being made of durasteel. However, it had previously been established that even the toughest metals would only last a few hours in the lake.
- The Tofs are described as still being a threat to the Alliance of Free Planets, but they were shown to have surrendered in Star Wars #107.
- The Tof assassin that attempts to shoot Princess Leia has regular coloured flesh, rather than the yellow/green skin that the Tofs were depicted with in the original series.
Favourite panel:
Favourite quote: "Don't call me 'Rabbit.'" – Jaxxon expresses extreme annoyance at a Hiromi bounty hunter, seconds before blasting him.
