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Star Wars #76
Cover dated: October 1983
Issue title: Artoo-Detoo to the Rescue
Script: Mary Jo Duffy
Artwork: Ronald Frenz (breakdowns)/Tom Palmer (finished art & inks)
Colours: Glynis Wein
Letters: Joe Rosen
Cover art: Tom Palmer
Overall rating: 10 out of 10




Plot summary: On the bridge of his Super Star Destroyer, Executor, Darth Vader meets with a group of Imperial officers to discuss the subjugation of the Iskalon system and the search for the Rebel spy Tay Vanis. They are interrupted by a transmission from the droid K-3PX, who is located on the planet Gamandar in the Iskalon system. The droid informs Vader that Imperial Admiral Tower has attacked the planet Iskalon and as a result endangered the life of Luke Skywalker, who was on the water world. This angers Vader, since he has been scouring the galaxy for Skywalker, in order to turn him to the Dark Side and become a servant of the Emperor.

Meanwhile, on Iskalon, Luke, Princess Leia and the warrior Kiro tend to the many dead and dying, amid the wreckage of the underwater city of Pavillion. As they ward off attacks from Chiaki – ferocious sea monsters that have been drawn by the blood in the water – their former ally, Kendle, who they have since learned betrayed them to the Empire, reappears. She declares herself the new leader of the Iskalonians, since the former leader Primor is dead and his son, Mone – Kendle's husband – is missing on Gamandar. Kendle leads a group of angry Iskalonians and offworlders against the Rebels, having convinced the mob that Luke and Leia are responsible for bringing the Empire's wrath down upon their world.

Elsewhere, in the Imperial citadel on Gamandar, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, Mone and C-3PO are being held in a detention cell. Admiral Tower begins their interrogation by taunting Mone with the revelation that it was his wife who betrayed them in the hopes that the Empire would spare him and their people. Before Tower can interrogate the group any further, K-3PX arrives with a squad of stormtroopers to arrest him on Darth Vader's orders. As Tower is led away to be executed, R2-D2, who has been posing as an Imperial worker droid, frees his friends and they escape in the Millennium Falcon.

Back on Iskalon, Luke, Leia and Kiro attempt to hold off the mob, but during the fracas, Kiro's water tank is shattered, causing him to collapse, as he begins to suffocate in the air. Luke grabs his fallen comrade and dashes towards the water, as Leia gives covering fire with her Iskalonian stinger weapon. But as Luke nears the water's edge, a large Chiaki rises from the ocean to attack him. At that moment, the Falcon appears overhead and blasts the sea beast, slaying it, but the creature's body crashes down on top of Kendle, killing her instantly. As Luke puts Kiro into the water to revive him, the Falcon lands nearby and Mone walks to his dead wife's side to grieve over her and her betrayal. Mone then declares himself the new Iskalonian leader and announces his plan to lead his people into the secluded depths, telling the Rebels that they and other "airbreathers" are no longer welcome on the planet.


Comments: Wow! What a downbeat ending to the Iskalon saga. Writer Jo Duffy deals us death, destruction and tragedy, including the complete annihilation of the underwater city of Pavillion, Mone loosing his father Primor and his wife Kendle, who – just to twist the knife – turns out to be a traitor, and the mission to locate Tay Vanis's droid turns out to be a wild goose chase. To cap it all, the embittered Iskalonians elect to hide themselves away until the Empire is no more, robbing the rest of the galaxy of their beautiful, open society and the Rebellion of a valuable potential ally. To add to the sense of downbeat finality, Luke Skywalker and the other Rebels are basically powerless to prevent any of this from happening.

In addition to this depressing chain of events, parts of Star Wars #76 are pretty brutal and violent. For example, we see Chewbacca twisting an Imperial stormtrooper's head until the soldier's neck snaps, Luke is forced to run a stormtrooper through with Kiro's sword, and then there's the dark aftermath of the Iskalon Effect, in which the wounded and dead are picked off and eaten by hungry Chiaki, while Luke, Leia and Kiro are forced to murder innocent, but aggressive, civilians, who are being manipulated by Kendle. Yeah...this is some pretty dark and mature stuff. Especially for a mainstream comic book from 1983!

One small criticism would be that the ending felt a little rushed to me, as if Duffy and artist Ron Frenz were running out of room and trying to cram as much pathos into the final page as they could. Still, that isn't enough to spoil my enjoyment of the issue at all.

As the title of this instalment suggests, R2-D2's ingenuity saves the day, as far as rescuing Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, C-3PO and Mone from the Imperials goes. As I mentioned in my review of last issue, R2 seems to have fully anticipated that Lando would mess up the mission on Gamandar and that it would be up to him to sort things out. The resourceful astro droid managed to infiltrate the Imperial shipping team and work undercover as one of the Empire's own droids – and Duffy slips in some humorous moments, with random Imperial officers trying to take credit for the little droid's work – biding his time to release his friends from their detention cell and instructing the citadel's central computer to let the Millennium Falcon escape.

It turns out that the mission to Gamandar to locate Tay Vanis's droid is a trap set up by the Imperials, with Kendle's help. Although Vanis definitely had a droid, K-3PX seems to have been an Imperial droid, or at least a droid with an allegiance to the Empire. Duffy doesn't even make it wholly clear at this stage whether or not 3PX was ever actually Vanis's. Either way, this isn't the droid the Rebels were looking for.

It's nice to see Darth Vader, in all his ruthless glory, making an appearance in Marvel's Star Wars comic and not as a hologram or in a flashback, but actually in the flesh (or armour, to be precise). Lucasfilm put a lot of restrictions on what Duffy could or couldn't have happen with the Dark Lord of the Sith during these inter-sequel years, which meant that readers didn't get to see Vader in the comic as much as they might have liked.

On the subject of Vader, he informs a group of assembled Imperial officers that, "The Empire will be making it's final assault against the Rebel forces very soon now...", which is a clear reference to the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, which had been in cinemas for almost two months by the time that this issue appeared. Marvel's decision to not publish the comic book adaptation of Return of the Jedi as part of the ongoing Star Wars series, as they had done with The Empire Strikes Back, meant that Duffy didn't have to worry about writing a lead-in to the third Star Wars film without giving anything important away. The fact that her lead-in continued to be published for six months after the release of Jedi allowed her to drop in nice little foreshadowing references like this and generally made for a much smoother transition into the events of that movie than Archie Goodwin had been able to give us prior to The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

As for the art in this issue, Frenz and inker extraordinaire Tom Palmer have been turning in some fantastic work on this book, month-in, month-out, for quite a while now, but issue #76 is one of those occasions where they really knock it out of the park. The artwork here is probably the best of all the three parts of the Iskalon saga; it looks tighter and more detailed than the preceding two issues, with some really gorgeous panels throughout the comic.

In particular, page 12 of the story, in which Admiral Tower is placed under arrest by K-3PX, is a real favourite of mine. This page seems somewhat indebted to a style of storytelling that Walt Simonson first introduced to the series, in which we see the same scene, from the same "camera angle", repeated at an interval of a few seconds...




I don't know whether Frenz was consciously composing this page to homage Simonson or not, but regardless, it provides a nice sense of stylistic connectivity to earlier issues in the run, which I like a lot.

Overall, Star Wars #76 is a fantastic comic, with the creative team firing on all cylinders. The downbeat and poignant tone of the ending makes for a nice change of pace and adds a sense of realism to events, by showing that the good guys can't win 'em all. The new Iskalonian character Kiro, who we met last issue, is an excellent addition to the supporting cast and is right up there with Dani as one of Duffy's best original character creations. It's something of a shame that he elects to go into seclusion with his people at the end of this issue, rather than joining Luke and the others, but we shall meet the orange skinned warrior again in the not-too-distant future and he will eventually become a regular supporting cast member.

Continuity issues: None.

Favourite panel:



Favourite quote: "I save my hate for my enemies, Princess Leia, why would I feel hate for you and Luke?" – Kiro rejects Princess Leia's suggestion that he must feel resentment towards the Rebels for having provoked the Empire's attack on Iskalon.

Also that panel reminds me of Rey a bit. I like it.

These reviews continue to make me desperately want to keep going with my re-read of the series. I really need to get on it.

Hope you don't mind, philfrombrentwood, but I edited your original post to separate your comments from the quoted portion of my review that you were talking about.

Anyway, yes...the follow-up, with a bewildered-looking Tower realising that he is about to be executed, is a great page (and I love that you've included a copy of it taken from the old Return of the Jedi Weekly comic -- ah, I remember that strange duo-tone colouring that they used on certain pages very well. ) The thing about my inclusion of the page showing Tower being arrested is that, although I get a kick out of the dialogue and facial expressions/body language of the characters, I really included it to illustrate the Simonson-esque panel layout, rather than because I thought it was the best page in the comic or anything.

That's a lovely, detailed rendering of the Millennium Falcon by inker Tom Palmer on that page you included, BTW. Everything's better with added Tom Palmer.

I totally agree with you that the entire overarching Search for Tay Vanis storyline made for a fantastic prequel or lead-in to the events of ROTJ, as I believe I noted in one of my semi-recent reviews. It also made for a much smoother lead-in to Jedi than we got with Archie Goodwin, prior to the comic adaptation of the ESB (as I noted in my review of SW #76). Of course, the fact that the whole Tay Vanis saga didn't culminate until 6 months after ROTJ was released in cinemas helped by freeing Duffy from having to guard against spoilers and giving her the room to tie the events of the story arc into the events of Jedi that much more closely.




Yes...yes you do, my friend.




Agreed. This is pretty much as dark as mainstream Marvel comics got in the early 1980s.

I really don't understand those that dismiss the original Marvel series as being childish. Like I said right in the very first post of this thread, "...at its best, Marvel's original Star Wars comic featured some truly excellent stories, some incredible artwork and examined some fairly mature themes and concepts."

Man, do I agree with (most of! ) the comments above... This story arc was phenomenal. So dark! I remember thinking: the same franchise that brought us the Ewoks brought us this? I was aware, of course, that different creators were involved in coming up with these different stories, but still. I may have liked the Ewoks had I still been nine when ROTJ came out, but I was 15, and this darker tale that you've been reviewing, sad as it is, was a much more satisfying story.

Related: I remember thinking, waaaay back when the prequels were coming out and underwhelming us all, that this comic book arc would have been a much better story to serve up in the prequel trilogy. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan could have crash landed, or trade negotiated or whatever the heck they were doing, on Iskalon, and met Kiro and the others. Then as the story progresses through the films, it would be Anakin who causes the destruction of Iskalon in the third film and that would be our sign that he had truly turned to the Dark Side. This plot would obviously need a lot of work, but we would have cared about the secondary characters and their fates much more than we ever did in the actual prequels, IMO, and Kiro would have been a far more interesting CGI character than the painfully unfunny borderline-racist caricature Lucas served up to us.

There are, of course, a million reasons why that would never have happened, starting with the fact that the story already exists here in comic book form, and of course Lucas was interested in sharing his personal vision, and that's what we got. But it was a thought I had.

And now, a marked change of tone for the next issue...