Agreed! I mean, of course I agree, since you're agreeing with me, but still. I'm currently re-reading the Brian Daley "Han Solo Adventures" trilogy for all those same reasons. It's fun to revisit the past when both the franchise and I were younger and maybe a little more starry-eyed. (Speaking of the trilogy, I just learned online that the robot character "Bollux" had to be renamed "Zollux" for the UK publication of the books. It's made clear in the book that the name is given to the beat-up old droid as a joke, in a line of dialogue that I assume had to be taken out of the British version b/c "Zollux" isn't a joke anymore. When I was 12, growing up here in Southern California, I had no idea what "bollucks" meant, so the joke line went way over my head.) (And now back to our regularly scheduled thread about the classic comics and not the early novels!  )

I've been faithfully reading your reviews as they come out, btw, and I've really enjoyed them. I'm with you on the highs and occasional lows of this classic series. And maybe only someone who was around the age of nine when Star Wars first came out could say this, but: Jaxxon is great! 

Great to see this thread continuing. I've been too busy to check it recently.

Kind of sorry to have missed the introduction of Plif but I will say I never liked Shira (admittedly I was spoilt befoe ever reading her stories, both because I knew how she'd turn out and because I got into Star Wars fiction through the Timothy Zahn books - Mara Jade for the win! )

Zahn actually wrote up a short story about Mara's time in Jabba's court for the anthology Tales From Jabba's Palace (which is a fun read if you can find it.)

I think the difference between Mara and Shira is that Mara only really gets to know Luke after the Empire fell, so while she was shadowing him it wasn't the same sort of betrayal as Shira, whom we can presume faked her feelings with Luke. That makes it easier to like Mara (like as a person I mean; I like Shira as a character but I wouldn't want to have a drink with her!) It's also kind of cool that Shira seems to be Vader's particular agent while Mara is loyal to the Emperor... even though their personalities are more like those of the other's master. Shira is a cunning manipulator, hiding behind a benign image like Palpatine while Mara is a closed off warrior, broiling with emotion below the surface like Vader.

Of course I may be overthinking that!

Star Wars #63
Cover dated: September 1982
Issue title: The Mind Spider!
Script: David Michelinie (plot, script)/Walter Simonson (plot)
Artwork: Walter Simonson (layouts)/Tom Palmer (pencils & inks)
Colours: Glynis Wein
Letters: Joe Rosen
Cover art: Tom Palmer
Overall rating: 10 out of 10




Plot summary: On the planet Shalyvane, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca desperately flee from the imposing figure of Darth Vader, as he advances from the ruined temple that they were investigating. Firing his blaster at the Dark Lord, Luke quickly realises that they are, in fact, facing a harmless hologram of Vader. The holographic image informs Luke that his Rebel comrade, Shira Brie, was an Imperial spy, tasked with the mission of killing or discrediting him. As the hologram begins to fade, Vader bids Luke to join him, telling him that he is now the only one who will accept him and treat him as an equal. Stunned by what he has just learned, Luke decides to travel to the Imperial data vault on Krake's Planet to gather evidence about Shira's treachery and clear his name.

Arriving on the planet, Luke and Chewbacca manage to break into the data vault's poorly guarded kitchen and coerce an Imperial officer into logging onto the computer network and downloading the files pertaining to Shira. Viewing the files, Luke realises that Vader was telling the truth and that she was personally selected by him. Taking comfort in the realisation that the Force didn't betray him when it told him that Shira was an enemy, Luke copies the files onto a data chip.

Just then, a squad of Imperial stormtroopers breaks into the kitchen area and a fire fight ensues, during which Luke loses the data chip and is separated from Chewbacca. Fleeing back to the Millennium Falcon, Luke flies the craft toward the data facility to pick up his Wookiee companion. As the Falcon escapes into hyperspace, Luke reflects glumly on the loss of the data chip, until Chewbacca reveals that he went back to get it. With the evidence to clear his name now in his possession, Luke heads back to the Rebel base on Arbra.

Meanwhile, on board Vader's flag ship, the Executor, the Dark Lord stands watching the barely-alive body of Shira Brie floating in a Bacta healing tank.


Comments: Star Wars #63 (which bizarrely bears the legend "All New!" on its cover) concludes the Pariah story arc and is certainly a worthy finale to, what has arguably been, the best original story of the series so far. David Michelinie's scripting is as tight as ever, with all the usual excitement, humour, and character development that we've grown to expect from him during his run on the book. As the arc builds to its conclusion, we finally learn the shocking truth about Shira Brie: that she was an Imperial agent, who was hand picked by Darth Vader himself to infiltrate the Rebellion and assassinate or discredit Luke Skywalker. You can't imagine how shocking this development was to me as a 10-year-old kid, which was what I was when I first read this issue. This was some truly gripping stuff!

One slight problem that I have with Shira's mission is that she was instructed to kill Luke or undermine his credibility within the Rebellion, but Shira couldn't possibly have known that she was going to be shot down and seemingly killed by Skywalker, resulting in his comrades turning against him. As things transpired, her TIE fighter was caught between Luke's own craft and the Teezl-carrying Imperial flagship, but was she about to attack him and destroy his ship or was Shira just swinging round to rejoin her fellow Rebels? It's made clear in this issue that Luke believes the former is the case and that's why the Force warned him that she was a foe. Either way, if she failed to kill him, how could Shira have been certain that Luke would destroy her craft? This particular aspect of Vader's plan seems pretty badly thought out.

Also, why would Vader (and, by extension, the Emperor) want Luke dead anyway? It was made clear in The Empire Strikes Back that Vader and his master had decided to try to recruit Luke to their cause and turn him to the dark side of the Force. For someone who was so keen to ensure that Luke got back to the Emporer in one piece during the events of The Empire Strikes Back, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that Vader would sanction an assassination attempt on his son. Still, it's kinda neat that Vader's backup scheme was to have Luke ostracised from the Rebellion, with nowhere else to turn but to him and the Emperor.

On a related note, it's a little bit of a shame that the surprise appearance of Vader on Shalyvane turns out to nothing more than a pre-recorded hologram of the Sith Lord. After the jaw-dropping cliffhanger of last issue, it's a disappointment to find that Michelinie was just faking us out, but realistically, with Lucasfilm tying his hands and preventing him from having Luke and the Dark Lord meet in the comic, what else could he do?

Those criticisms aside, there's a lot to like about this issue. For one thing, I've always loved the bluff that Luke pulls on an unfortunate Imperial officer, slipping some harmless soap flakes into his soup and, as the officer is gripped by searing abdominal pain, telling him that he put deadly poison into his food. That's damn sneaky and pretty resourceful. It's also a nice touch how we have Chewbacca bravely going back into danger in order to retrieve the data chip that can clear Luke's name. That feels very in character and is an excellent example of the famous Wookiee loyalty.

This issue also does a good job of underlining how cold-hearted the Empire is, with their destruction of the city of Chinshassa for no other reason than to provide a convincing cover story for Shira's early life. Speaking of her early life, we also get a glimpse of her time on the Imperial capitol planet, which would later be named Coruscant by author Timothy Zahn. Michelinie first mentioned the existence of a capitol planet in Star Wars #61, but this is the first time that we've seen it and, in fact, it's the first appearance of Coruscant in any Star Wars media.

It's interesting to learn that the Empire enhanced Shira's physiology with an accelerated healing factor and a resistance to pain. That's how she was able to survive the destruction of her TIE fighter in issue #61. Also, the penultimate panel of this issue, in which we see the gravely injured body of Shira floating in a Bacta tank is one of the most memorable – if not iconic – images of the whole series (see my favourite panel below). Although we didn't know it at the time, Shira would return later in the series to yet again menace Luke and his friends.

As you might expect, Luke spends a lot of this issue reeling from the shock of the revelations about Shira and the feelings of betrayal that it engenders. Personally, I would have liked to have understood a little bit more about the exact nature of Shira and Luke's relationship in the lead-up to this story. I mean, clearly Luke was attracted to her and clearly she's very flirty with him, even enthusiastically embracing him and planting a big smacker on his lips at one point. But Shira was Vader's hand-picked spy, so her behaviour towards Luke raises the question, did she actually kind of have the hots for him? Or was it all just a coldly calculated cover for her true mission? I guess ultimately it's perhaps better that it is left ambiguous, but it's intriguing to ponder whether Shira had begun to have feelings for her target.

There's also some good character development for Luke in this issue, as we see him effortlessly using the Jedi mind trick on a female Imperial officer and taking on a squad of Imperial stormtroopers in a very bad ass fashion. Micheline is really setting the stage nicely for Return of the Jedi here, as we see the once naive farm boy from Tatooine turning into a powerful Force user and a formidable opponent. Just check out these excellent Walt Simonson and Tom Palmer panels of Luke in action...




The above panels are one of my all-time favourite sequences from Marvel's original Star Wars series. Simonson and Palmer really are firing on all cylinders here! Simonson only had time to do rough layouts for this issue, leaving it to Palmer to do the finished pencils and the inks. I'm a big fan of Palmer's style anyway, but the artwork here really is fantastic and effortlessly conjures an extremely authentic looking version of that galaxy far, far away. I also love the design of the Imperial info centre on Krake's Planet...




The structure is revealed to be of organic construction, having been extruded from and shaped by native slug-like creatures under Imperial control. The data vault resembles a huge Spider, and presumably is the Mind Spider from this issue's title. As a whole, the design is pretty inventive and certainly very memorable. Plus, the whole idea of using sonics to coordinate and control the slugs to build the structure seems like a suitably "Imperial" thing to do.

On a related note, when Luke destroys the vault's power generator, he does so by turning on the Millennium Falcon's deflector screens and flying the Corellian vessel straight through the middle of the structure. That seems rather improbable to me and so does the fact that the Falcon escapes from this manoeuvre without so much as a scratch. I'm pretty sure the Falcon's sheilds don't work like that or else why were Han Solo and the other occupants of the ship so worried about colliding with the asteroids in The Empire Strikes Back?

When viewed in the context of the series so far, I'd have to say that the Pariah story arc has been an unrivalled success. The way in which Michelinie skilfully set up the players in preceding issues and then really put Luke through the wringer, raising doubts in both the reader's and the main character's minds about his ability to use the Force, was fantastically done. In the years since its initial publication, it has become known that both Michelinie and Simonson wanted the Pariah arc to go on for longer than it did, but they were forced to truncate it in order to ready the series for the Return of the Jedi adaptation (although in the end, that adaptation was released as a stand-alone mini-series).

In closing, although I do have some nit-picky complaints about certain parts of this issue, the reality is that the rest of it is so damn good that those niggling problems don't affect my enjoyment of the comic in any way. As such, this issue still gets top marks from me.

Continuity issues: None

Favourite panel:



Favourite quote: "Chewbacca, you're one in a million!" – Luke Skywalker gratefully commends his Wookiee companion for bravely retrieving the data chip that can clear his name.

Interesting theory. It kind of makes sense too.



Well, as Obi-Wan said, the Force can be a strong influence on the weak-minded. So, it's clearly gonna be more effective on men than it is women.

Yeah, from Daredevil! That is pretty funny, although the reference went right over my head back in 1982, not being a fan of ol' horn head at the time. In fact, I didn't get the reference until I read about it online somewhere (probably on Wookieepedia) only about 4 or 5 years ago.

Did you get the joke at the time, Roquefort?

Hey, I'm a guy and I'd call that sexist if it weren't true.

Still it will be interesting to see if the new canon ever violates that unwritten 'rule'.