I remember seeing a comic book vendor at a show some years back that had #68 priced at $75. He said the issue was priced higher because of Boba Fett on the cover. Of course I knew in the story it wasn't Fett but Shysa. I guess it could still be Boba though for the cover.

Anyway, it is probably the best cover of the nine year run.

Yeah it was a clever way for Marvel to use a Boba Fett type character after the way ESB ended.  Fenn is a good character and I was glad when Jo Duffy brought him back in the later years.

Gene Day was a big Star Wars fan. He had even advertised a Star Wars portfolio in an early issue of Cerebus, a portfolio that had to be destroyed when the rights owners refused to grant him permission to proceed.

Star Wars #69
Cover dated: March 1983
Issue title: Death in the City of Bone!
Script: David Michelinie
Artwork: Gene Day (pencils)/Tom Palmer (inks)
Colours: Glynis Wein
Letters: Joe Rosen
Cover art: Tom Palmer
Overall rating: 9½ out of 10




Plot summary: On the planet Mandalore, Princess Leia and C-3PO have abducted the bounty hunter Dengar from former Mandalorian Supercommando Fenn Shysa's encampment, in order to learn the current whereabouts of Boba Fett from him. The two Rebels are soon betrayed by their captive and taken prisoner by Imperial troops. They are transported to a nearby Imperial slave distribution centre, which is housed inside the petrified skeleton of long dead behemoth. Once there, Leia and 3PO are brought before the Suprema, the installation's Imperial Commander, who assures them that his forces will soon kill Shysa and crush the Mandalorian resistance.

As Leia and 3PO are led away to a prison cell, they are freed by one of their stormtrooper escorts, who reveals himself to be Shysa in disguise. Having tracked the princess after she was captured and followed her back to the distribution centre, Fenn knocked out a perimeter guard, stole his uniform and entered the base. Shysa offers to help Leia capture Dengar if she will help him rescue his friend, Tobbi Dala, who is incarcerated in the centre. Leia agrees and, after freeing Dala from his cell, Shysa fires a signal flare from a window, initiating a pre-planned assault on the fortress by his men.

A battle commences, with Fenn, Tobbi and Leia attacking the Imperials and the slavers from within the complex. They manage to free the slaves and apprehend Dengar, but during the mêlée Dala is mortally wounded by a blaster shot from the Suprema. Close to death, Dala dons his Mandalorian armour one last time, as he overrides the controls for the blast doors that are preventing Fenn, Leia and 3PO from escaping. As the heroes escape the installation in an airspeeder, Dala closes the doors behind them, causing the pursuing Imperial craft to crash and explode, initiating a chain reaction that turns the interior of the complex into an inferno, killing the Suprema and his men.

Back at Shysa's encampment, the ex-Supercommando interrogates Dengar, but the bounty hunter confesses that he was not in league with Fett and doesn't know where he is currently hiding. Although the mission to find Fett has been a failure for Leia and Shysa has lost his best friend, they both take solace from the fact that they have crippled the Empire's slaving operation on Mandalore.

Comments: The Mandalorian story arc continues and concludes with this issue, which, like last issue, features some incredibly impressive artwork from Gene Day on pencils and Tom Palmer on inks. In fact, I'd probably say that the artwork here is even better than last issue. There's lots of dynamic and fluid action sequences, with Day again creating some imaginative and unusual panel layouts, including more of those lovely silhouettes that are also comic panels, which I made mention of in my last review. However, one part of Day's panel layouts that don't really work for me are those found on pages 10 and 11 of the story, where he draws some weird, white frames across the panels of a double-page spread...




I'm really not sure what effect Day was going for with those white bars that intersect each of the panels. If they are, as I suspect, meant to represent cell bars, then they don't really work and are certainly an awfully annoying addition. Nevertheless, even with these two ill-judged pages, Day's art here really gorgeous for the most part. Glynis Wein's colouring is also superb, being nice and subtle when it needs to be and bold in all the right places too.

As for writer David Michelinie, Star Wars #69 would be his last issue on the series. Michelinie decided to leave Marvel's Star Wars comic after he learned that he would not be scripting the comic book adaptation of Return of the Jedi, since Lucasfilm had insisted on having Archie Goodwin – who had scripted the Empire Strikes Back adaptation – return to do it. Speaking to Glenn Greenberg in Back Issue #9 from 2005, Michelinie explained, "I'd been battling in the trenches for a couple of years, kind of treading water, keeping things going, and I was looking forward to getting the dessert at the end of the meal – which, for a Star Wars fan, was adapting the third movie, getting to read the screenplay before anyone else, seeing the stills, stuff like that. So it was kind of a slap in the face, and I felt the only thing I could do to keep my self-respect was to leave the book."

However, editor Louise Jones makes it clear on the letters page of issue #69 that Michelinie's departure from the series was regarded as possibly only being temporary, at least initially. Of course, that might just be a case of Marvel hedging their bets. Certainly it's clear from comments that Michelinie made to J. Collier in Amazing Heroes #13 from 1982 that he was, at that point, expecting to be writing the story that would lead into the Return of the Jedi comic adaptation. However, this was clearly something that changed as the release of the third Star Wars film neared, probably because Michelinie had decided to leave the book.

For his last contribution to Star Wars, Michelinie delivers his usual combination of snappy and humourous dialogue, along with lots of fast-paced action and excitement. These elements had already served to make his run on Star Wars one of the most enjoyable and satisfying of the series. His writing of Princess Leia is very in character, with her feisty reaction to the Suprema being very similar to how she reacted towards Grand Moff Tarkin on the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Michelinie even has the Suprema use phrases like "charming..." and "plucky to the last", which recall pieces of Tarkin's dialogue from that film. Also, having Fenn Shysa don Imperial stormtrooper armour in order to infiltrate the base is a nice little nod to A New Hope.

I've always loved the fact that the Imperial slavers' base is housed inside a huge fossilised skeleton of some prehistoric beast. It makes for an interesting and very memorable setting for much of the action in this issue. It's also interesting to note that the Imperials seem to be using airspeeders inside the base that look very similar to the Rebel snowspeeders that moviegoers saw in The Empire Strikes Back. However, I'm not convinced that a bunch of exploding airspeeders could destroy the entire installation in the way that they do in this issue. I mean, yes, they would cause a fair bit of damage, of course, but destroy the interior of the base completely? That seems unlikely to me. Also, how did all the slaves that Fenn and Leia freed get out?!

Michelinie also writes a very moving scene between Fenn and his old comrade-in-arms, Tobbi Dala, after the latter is mortally wounded by the Suprema. You get a real sense of the honour and love between these two fighting men, who have both endured unimaginable horrors on the battlefield together. This is some powerful stuff.

The epilogue of this issue sees us return to The Wheel, a galactic gambling station and all-round den of inequity that was a setting for some of the earlier issues of the series. Using the Wheel as a location again is a nice touch on Michelinie's part and one that helps add a sense of history or heritage to the ongoing series, by tying in older continuity to the current storyline.

I also kind of like the fact that, ultimately, tracking down Dengar turns out to be a dead end for Leia, since the bounty hunter doesn't know where Boba Fett is hiding out. The issue ends with the princess's mission a failure and Shysa having lost a beloved comrade, as Leia stoically admits that sometimes the bad guys win. That's an uncharacteristically realistic ending for a comic in this series and I like it a lot. It also provides a somewhat downbeat swan song to Michelinie's run on the series. Shysa would again appear towards the end of the series and join up with the Rebel Alliance.

All in all, Star Wars #69 is a satisfying conclusion to the Mandalorian arc. It also nicely sets up the second phase of the continuing Search for Han Solo storyline, which would be handled by the new in-coming regular writer, Mary Jo Duffy.

Continuity issues: None

Favourite panel:



Favourite quote: "Ahhh, fire. I like fire in a human. It sizzles so nicely when squelched...!" – The Suprema confidently taunts his feisty captive, Princess Leia.

Confessor I thought you may want to see this variant cover of the upcoming Poe Dameron series. Look who is piloting Poe's X-Wing-

A very perceptive comment, Confessor. GCD has updated its credits since you wrote this review, and it turns out Rick Hoberg pencilled the covers to both #2 & #4.

Star Wars #70
Cover dated: April 1983
Issue title: The Stenax Shuffle
Script: Mary Jo Duffy
Artwork: Kerry Gammill (pencils)/Tom Palmer (inks)/Ronald Frenz (pencils - uncredited)
Colours: Glynis Wein
Letters: Joe Rosen
Cover art: Tom Palmer
Overall rating: 8 out of 10




Plot summary: In the continuing search for Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, Lando Calrissian, and Chewbacca make their way to the planet Stenos in the Millennium Falcon. Having obtained information suggesting that Fett's fellow bounty hunters IG-88 and Bossk are on the planet, the Rebels hope that one of the mercenaries will be able to provide them with Fett's current location.

As the Falcon descends towards the surface, Luke recounts the story of how he, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, R2 and C-3PO visited Stenos some years earlier. The group were on a mission to check out a Rebel outpost that had mysteriously ceased communicating. Making their way to the rendezvous point inside a ruined temple on a high, rocky outcrop, the group were confronted by Rik Duel, Chihdo and Dani, a group of smugglers and former acquaintances of Han's. Duel explained that he and his gang had joined the Rebellion and had been left on Stenos to search for the statue of Vol, an artefact sacred to the native Stenaxes. Rik claimed that if they could find the statue, the Stenaxes would be eternally grateful and would join the Rebellion against the Empire.

However, once the statue was found by Luke, Duel and his gang betrayed the Rebels, taking the artefact in order to sell it to Imperial Governor Matrin, who was head of the Imperial forces on Stenos. Meanwhile, Chihdo had tipped-off a large group of stormtroopers and the Rebels soon found themselves under heavy attack, only to be saved by a horde of Stenaxes looking for their idol. Solo directed the Stenaxes to Rik, as the Rebels left the planet, presuming that the angry natives had killed Matrin along with Rik and his gang, before recovering their idol.

Lando asks Luke if he thinks that the Stenaxes will be grateful to the Rebels for helping recover their idol and therefore might help them in finding the bounty hunters. Luke gives his comrade a wry look, prompting Lando to land on the outskirts of the city in order not to attract attention.


Comments: Star Wars #70 was Mary Jo Duffy's first issue as the new regular writer on the series, replacing David Michelinie, who had left the book with issue #69. Duffy, who was a self-confessed Star Wars fan, had previously contributed the, frankly, below average fill-in story "Silent Drifting" to Star Wars #24, but "The Stenax Shuffle" is a much better offering. The issue mostly consists of a flashback sequence set between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, and thus features everyone's favourite Corelllian smuggler, Han Solo, fighting alongside the Rebels. With Han featuring in the comic via a flashback, the issue is reminiscent of "The Crimson Forever" from issue #50 or "Shadeshine" from Star Wars Annual #2. For us young fans of the early 1980s, it was always great to get a story that had Han in it during this inter-sequel period of the comics, when the smuggler was frozen in carbonite.

The creation of this adventure is kind of interesting because the flashback parts of "The Stenax Shuffle" weren't actually new and had, in fact, been written and drawn back in mid-1979 and not in late 1982, as we might expect, given the issue's cover date. On the letters page of Star Wars #28 (which was on sale in July 1979), there's an editorial comment stating that Duffy was, at that time, working on a new story with artist Kerry Gammill. Now, the only time that Duffy and Gammill ever worked together on the Star Wars series was on the pages that comprise the flashback sequence of this issue. So, clearly this flashback had originally been intended as a stand-alone story, to be published in the era prior to The Empire Strikes Back, but for some reason it never saw the light of day in its original form. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough time to squeeze Duffy's story into the series before The Empire Strikes Back came out and afterwards the story no longer fitted with then-current continuity because Solo was out of action and frozen in carbonite.

I guess that when Duffy got the job as regular writer on the Star Wars comic she decided to use her old, unpublished story and incorporate it into a longer story arc as a flashback sequence. The new characters of Rik Duel, Chihdo and Dani that Duffy introduces – characters that were actually created back in mid-1979 – would all go on to become mainstays of the series, pretty much right up until the end of the run. This is especially true of Dani.

What's interesting is that, even though this is an old story, it sets up Dani as a possible romantic interest for Luke Skywalker, which ties in perfectly with the new romantic status quo in the book (which was probably Lucasfilm mandated), in which Leia is now 100% in love with Han and has no interest in Luke. I'm not sure if any of the dialogue that Duffy originally wrote for the story back in 1979 was altered to tie in with current continuity, but Gammill's art makes it plain that when he originally drew these pages, Dani was intended to have the hots for Luke from the outset. That's some fortuitous writing on Duffy's part and it's pretty clever how she weaves the Luke/Dani relationship into coming issues, usually for comedic effect.

One thing that's immediately noticeable is that the writing in this story is head and shoulders above Duffy's earlier work in Star Wars #24. The plot is fairly interesting, the characterisation is really strong, and there's some great, humorous dialogue, which is very much in keeping with the snappy and amusing scripting that Michelinie brought to the series. In particular, I love how Han, who is jealous of the amount of attention Rik is showing Leia, says to Chewbacca, "Chewie, you stay here and keep an eye on... on Leia. And things." Then, later on, Rik attempts to rile the Corellian smuggler, as he heads into town, by saying, "I'll stay here and keep an eye on... on Leia. And things."

There's also a nice little moment when we see Lando still feeling guilty over his double-crossing of Han back on Cloud City during the events of The Empire Strikes Back, which feels very in character. Duffy and Gammill also give us some nice visual gags too, like when R2-D2 attempts to help with the laborious excavations in the temple by carrying a tiny rock, as a clearly annoyed C-3PO struggles with a huge bolder. These scenes show just what a good grasp Duffy had on these characters right from the get-go. Yep, no doubt about it, Duffy really hits the ground running here.

Something else that I like is the fact that the winged Stenaxes are disgraced and forbidden from flying, with their old mountain temples now beyond their reach, until they can find the sacred statue of their god, Vol. That feels like a fairly original situation for this once proud alien race to be in.

As for the three members of the Rik Duel gang, who we shall see a lot more of in future issues, they are all immediately memorable, both visually and in terms of their individual personalities. Rik is a brash, cunning smuggler, and a real ladies man – much like a less principled version of Han, in fact. His name even follows a similar pattern to Han's: Han Solo and Rik Duel (as in "dual", geddit?). Anyway, it's clear that Han and Rik have some history together and Solo doesn't really trust him, although he and the Rebels are still gullible enough to believe that Rik and his gang have joined the Rebel Alliance. The Wookieepedia website tells me that Gammill based Duel's appearance on the likeness of his friend, special make-up effects creator Rick Baker, who had worked on such films as An American Werewolf in London, The Exorcist, and as a second unit make-up artist on Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Here's Baker and Duel side by side for comparison...




Chihdo is a Rodian thief (the same race as Greedo), and serves mainly as Rik's slimy and conniving lackey. Dani, on the other hand, is a red-skinned Zeltron, a cunning femme fatal, and an uninhibited, over-sexed schemer, with a body built for sin. The whole gang can be seen in my favourite panel below.

Gammill pencilled the parts of this issue that date from 1979, while Tom Palmer inked that work. Although Gammill's work lacks the inventiveness of Gene Day or the cinematic story-telling chops of Walt Simonson, it's still very serviceable and puts Duffy's script across perfectly adequately. An uncredited Ron Frenz pencilled the framing sequences for the flashback in this issue, which are set in current continuity, and Palmer inked them. I must say that Palmer's strongly identifiable inking has really helped give the book a sense of continuity amid some rapid artistic changes of late, what with Day taking over from Simonson for two issues, a fill-in issue with Ron Frenz on pencils, and now having Gammill doing most of the art in this issue. Frenz will become the new regular artist on the book from next issue and Palmer will continue to bring his beautifully slick and detailed inking to proceedings for some time to come.

Overall, this issue is a great start to Duffy's run on the book. The story itself is fairly run-of-the-mill Star Wars fare, but there's plenty of action, humour and double-crossing intrigue to be found within its pages, while the transition from Michelinie's tenure on the book to Duffy's is basically seamless. What's nice though is that, although this is a very accomplished start to her run, Duffy would give us better and better issues in the coming months.

Continuity issues: None

Favourite panel:



Favourite quote: "Well, I must say, it's absolutely charming. Those falling down buildings are a real nice touch." – Han Solo sarcastically passes judgement on the crumbling capital city of the planet Stenos.