Star Wars #107
Cover dated: September 1986
Issue title: All Together Now
Script: Mary Jo Duffy
Artwork: Cynthia Martin (layouts)/Whilce Portacio (finished pencils & inks)
Colours: Elaine Lee
Letters: Tom Orzechowski
Cover art: Cynthia Martin (pencils)/Joe Rubinstein (inks)
Overall rating: 4 out of 10




Plot summary: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Fenn Shysa, Dani, and R2-D2 and C-3PO have all been sent on an important mission to the Tof-held planet of Saijo, along with a team comprised of the Alliance's new Imperial and Nagai allies, which includes Knife and Den Siva. Spies have learned that the Tof's ruling monarch and absolute leader, Prince Sereno, is currently on the remote planet and the group hopes to take him prisoner in a surprise attack and force a surrender.

The group infiltrates the Tof's headquarters by posing as Nagai prisoners and veiled ladies-in-waiting of the royal court. Once inside the throne room, the group finds that the Dark Lady Lumiya has aligned herself with the Tofs, following the recent truce between the Nagai and the Alliance of Free Planets. As the assault begins, the Tofs call in support from the orbiting bulk cruiser Merriweather, but the fighters that are dispatched from the ship are intercepted and destroyed by Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon, and Rogue Squadron, led by Wedge Antilles.

Meanwhile, back on Saijo, Knife is knocked unconscious by a stun shot from Lumiya's blaster, as Leia comes to the fallen Nagai warrior's aid, only to have her own blaster snatched from her hand by the Dark Lady's Force powers. As Lumiya draws a bead on the princess, a Tof warrior shoots the Dark Lady in the back, seemingly killing her. Luke then captures Prince Sereno and forces him to command his troops to surrender, as the Tof traitor who saved Leia is revealed to be none other than Knife's half-brother and Han's childhood friend, Bey. As Solo, Knife and Bey reunite and make their peace with each other, Luke expresses his hope that the various races and individuals that united against the Tofs will now learn to live together in peace.


Comments: So, here we are then – at the end of Marvel's original Star Wars series. Unfortunately, it's a rather ignoble and largely unsatisfying end to the series, but this is no doubt partly due to the fact that the end came suddenly for the title. Apparently, writer Jo Duffy and artist Cynthia Martin had no idea when they began work on this issue that it would be the last one, as Duffy told the Belgian Star Wars fan club magazine, TeeKay-421, in 2011: "Cynthia and myself were preparing a story when Marvel told us that it would be the last issue. We had to adapt and change the script in order to get a decent ending of the series."

Whether Duffy actually delivered a "decent ending" is open to debate, but a clue as to the story that she originally intended to tell in this issue can be found in an early solicitation for Star Wars #107 in Marvel Age #41. The listing describes a completely different adventure, in which Luke Skywalker is hunted on a frontier world, by a number of different assassins, all intent on becoming known as the man who killed the legendary Jedi Knight. This early solicitation also reveals that the issue was originally meant to be inked by Ken Steacy, presumably before Whilce Portacio was brought in to help with the extensive re-tooling of the artwork needed to accommodate Duffy's hastily rewritten series finale.

During the same 2011 interview with TeeKay-421 magazine, Duffy expanded on her long-term plans for the series: "I had written and thought of stories months up ahead. The Nagai were being hunted by the Tofs themselves and that's why they invaded the universe of the heroes. We had a lot more plans with Bey, the half-Corellian, half-Nagai who was a close friend of Han Solo. Bey would become more and more tragic since he was torn apart between two cultures he cherished. It was foreseen that Bey and Dani, who would also become more and more depressed, would attack the Tof fleet in a kamikaze attack so that the Tof invasion could be stopped."

It's both interesting and surprising that Duffy would plan to have Dani sacrifice herself in this manner, when the readers know from the events of Star Wars #102 that her true love, Kiro – who she believes to have been murdered by Den Siva – is actually still alive. I would have assumed that there would be some kind of resolution to that dangling plot thread in the pipeline and, given that Duffy is clearly hinting at the possibility of a complex and twisted love affair between Den and Dani, perhaps a complicated love triangle between the Zeltron, the Nagai and the Iskalonian. In the end though, the Dani/Kiro romance and the heartbroken Zeltron's ongoing state of depression are unfortunately left unresolved.

As for why the series was cancelled, Duffy has given conflicting explanations about that over the years. Back in 1987, she told Starlog magazine that the main reason Marvel decided to cancel the comic was because the increasingly restrictive instructions coming down from Lucasfilm about what she could or couldn't do with the franchise's main characters made it increasingly difficult for her to write interesting stories. Duffy reiterated this in a 2005 interview with Back Issue magazine: "The restrictions from Lucasfilm are what effectively canceled the book. It got to the point where they said that I couldn't do this and that with the characters … we got the feeling that whoever was in charge of approving all this at Lucasfilm didn't want there to be a comic book at all anymore." In 2011, Duffy also revealed that Lucasfilm's restrictions even extended to her own original characters: "It was a bit strange because Lucasfilm started to tell us what should happen (or not happen) to the characters that I (or Marvel) had created. I thought that was a rather alarming evolution."

However, in the aforementioned TeeKay-421 interview, Duffy seemingly contradicts herself by saying, "I can guarantee you that it was not Lucasfilm who wanted to end the Marvel Comics; it was Marvel itself that decided to spend more time on the superheroes. Cynthia and me were asked to work on other projects, but we both would have wanted to write Star Wars forever." One thing's for sure though, despite the book's shift to a bi-monthly schedule, it wasn't declining sales that were the problem, as Duffy told Back Issue: "Star Wars was still selling over 100,000 copies a month, better than most of the mid-range superhero books, up until the end."

Regardless of the whys and wherefores of the series' demise, this final issue is a mess. For one thing, it's excessively wordy in places, as Duffy desperately struggles to tie up all of the loose ends and bring the Nagai–Tof War – as well as the series – to a conclusion. Cynthia Martin's artwork is wildly uneven and every bit as annoyingly stylised as we've come to expect from her. Of course, an awful lot of this comic was hastily redrawn by Portacio, but the end result – a blend of Martin's cartoony, manga-influenced work and Portacio's delicate detailing and hatching – looks like an ill-matched collision of two very different artistic styles.

However, by far the most glaring problem with the artwork is Luke Skywalker's overall appearance. The former skinny farm boy from Tatooine and lithe-bodied Jedi Knight has suddenly turned into...Rambo!




I mean, seriously...what is up with that?! Luke's hair seems to have grown a full five inches since last issue and he's suddenly gotten very buff indeed. The fact that he's constantly shirtless throughout the issue, brandishes a huge laser cannon and sports a ridiculous headband leaves me in no doubt that Martin was attempting to tap into the popularity of the Rambo films in the mid-80s. I have to wonder if this was supposed to be the start of a new, "action hero" direction for the character, which Duffy and Martin had planned to introduce with this issue, before they learned that it was to be the last? The mind boggles!

While we're on the subject of the artwork, the front cover is also pretty dire, with a woeful rendition of R2-D2, a weird dog-faced creature standing in for Chewbacca and … is the Wookiee actually cradling Lando Calrissian in his arms? It's a pity that we couldn't have gotten a glorious painted cover from Tom Palmer for this issue, like we did for issues #81 and #100, but I guess that the rapidity with which this "Final Issue" was knocked up precluded any such creation from Palmer. Weirdly, the bumbling and annoying Hiromi are pictured on the front cover too, but, thankfully, they're nowhere to be seen inside. Plif and the Hoojibs also don't appear in this story.

Another problem I have with Star Wars #107 is the appearance of the Tof's Crown Prince and absolute ruler, Prince Sereno, who seems like a totally contrived character, designed as a means of quickly wrapping up the Nagai–Tof war. We also get the supposedly shocking return of Han's childhood friend, Bey, but it's hardly much of a surprise. It becomes pretty obvious early on in the issue that it's Bey who is the "most trusted and skilled agent" of the Alliance that Admiral Ackbar speaks of, and the fact that the characters are suddenly discussing him again, after having not mentioned him for months, telegraphs Bey's return long before the big reveal.

Although Duffy never makes it explicit, the inference here is that Bey's seeming betrayal of Han Solo in issue #100, was all part of an Alliance plan for him to go deep undercover with the Nagai on Saijo, after which he infiltrated the Tof's ranks. While that's kind of neat, I strongly suspect that Bey's undercover role was not something that Duffy had really planned all along, but rather something that she quickly pulled out of her arse at the last minute to tie up Bey's storyline.

This issue also sees the return of Lumiya, with her all-consuming hatred for Luke still very much intact. I noted in my review of issue #97 that Lumiya's promise as a top-drawer villain goes largely unfulfilled in the Marvel run and her final appearance isn't particularly memorable either. Even when she's gunned down and seemingly killed by Bey!




Of course, based on the character's subsequent appearances in later expanded universe materials, Lumiya clearly survived Bey's shot and escaped from Saijo in the confusion.

However, it's definitely an interesting development to see that the Dark Lady has now aligned herself with the Tofs, claiming that she was only in league with the Nagai because she believed that they could help her kill Skywalker. While Lumiya's flip-flopping allegiances seem totally in character for such a vengeful adversary, allying herself with the Tofs seems like a stretch because they appear to be little more than brutish thugs. They also look pretty ridiculous...




Certainly the Tofs aren't nearly as cunning or ruthlessly cold-blooded as the Nagai and I find it hard to believe that someone as fiendish and scheming as Lumiya would align herself with such clods. Again though, I'm sure that Lumiya was not intended to appear in this issue originally, but was shoehorned in when the creative team learned that this would be the series finale.

On the plus side, Duffy paints a fairly convincing picture of the uneasy alliance between the Nagai and the Alliance of Free Planets, although at one point Luke actually refers to Knife as "friend", which seems a bit much, given all the evil deeds he's done. But at least Han is a little bit more cynical and grudging towards the Alliance's new-found allies. It's also a nice touch to see that the ex-Mandalorian Supercommando Fenn Shysa and Wedge Antilles, that perennial survivor of the original trilogy, both appear in this final issue.

For all of its faults, this is actually a pretty exciting and action-packed issue, that returns us to the planet Saijo, which we first saw in Star Wars #93, "Catspaw". It's just that things never quite come together in a wholly satisfying way. The climax to the Nagai–Tof war never lives up to Duffy's intentions of creating a sweeping, thematically complex intergalactic epic, and this final instalment desperately races to its conclusion in a badly paced and decidedly unfulfilling manner. When Luke states, in the final panel, that he hopes that all the races of the galaxy will have a fair chance at making peace, it feels forced and totally unconvincing. A series as popular and as important to Star Wars fans of the era as this, should've gone out with a real bang. Given the creative team's lacklustre track record of late though, along with the rapidity with which the series was cancelled, that simply wasn't going to happen.

Part of the trouble is that Duffy's earlier work on the series was much, much better than what we've been getting from her over the last year or so. The meddling restrictions that came down from Lucasfilm no doubt had something to do with this drop in quality, but I also wonder if Duffy's own enthusiasm for the comic waned?

Maybe that's unfair of me, and certainly it goes against the obvious enthusiasm that Duffy still displays for the book, even after all these years. Talking to Kurt Anthony Krug in Star Wars Insider #91 from 2006, she said of the series, "I absolutely love those characters. I got to work with some of the best characters on the planet – it was amazing." In 2011, Duffy said of her work on the series, "Some people write stories because they're getting paid for it. I wrote Star Wars because I loved the movies and the characters."

After the series came to an end, it would be another five years before fans got additional post-Return of the Jedi stories, starting with the June 1991 publication of Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire novel. From there, Dark Horse Comics would take over the publishing of Star Wars comics, beginning with the Dark Empire mini-series. But those stories and the countless other books and comics that followed would be set in a different continuity to the older Marvel series, for the most part.

Myself, I would love for Disney to have Marvel Comics launch a monthly continuation of the old Marvel Star Wars continuity, under the "Legends" banner. It could pick up right where issue #107 left off, with Jo Duffy writing the book again, and maybe later on we could have guest writers like David Michelinie or the return of artists like Walt Simonson. Now, that would be a Star Wars series that I'd be all over in a heartbeat!

Viewing Marvel's Bronze Age Star Wars series in its entirety, it was, on occasion, uneven, but, for the most part, it was a damn good read. For countless fans like myself, this comic was the Star Wars saga back in the '70s and '80s, at least in terms of ongoing adventures between the films. It introduced us to memorable and beloved characters such as Valance the Hunter, Fenn Shysa, Shira Brie, and Dani, all of whom found a place in fans' hearts, right alongside their better known, George Lucas-created cinematic counterparts. As I said in the very first post of this review thread, back in December 2014, at its best, Marvel's Star Wars comic featured excellent stories, incredible artwork, some fairly mature concepts, and, above all, it captured the innocent wonder and wide-eyed spectacle of the original trilogy perfectly.

I still miss it.


Continuity issues: None

Favourite panel:


Favourite quote: "'Now … good luck to you all and may the Force be with you.' Not a bad send off, when you think of it." – Luke Skywalker recalls the words of Admiral Ackbar, prior to the Alliance of Free Planets' assault on the Tof headquarters on Saijo.