Brian Wood and Carlos D'anda's Star Wars #1 is out, and it's good!
It starts out with three pages of talking -- but hell, it's Star Wars; it's always been big action set pieces separated by slow buildups.
The conversation's mostly between Luke and Leia (with Wedge along for the ride); they're both off-center after the events of the first movie. Leia has the weight of Alderaan on her shoulders, and Luke doesn't know what the hell to do with himself -- he destroyed the Death Star but now he's back to being a guy who just lost the only friends and family he's ever known, plus the one guy who seemed to have a working idea of what he should be doing with himself.
Later in the issue, we see those sentiments echoed in Han -- roped into the Rebellion by his own moment of heroism and now facing death warrants throughout the Empire -- and Vader, who's still feeling the sting of defeat and humiliation, but who, more than that, is troubled by his son's sudden appearance on the Rebel side.
All of this is really pretty great character stuff, exactly the kind of thing I've said I want to see in Episode 7 when it rolls around. And because this is Star Wars, the bombastic, over-the-top narrative captions fit perfectly and enhance the mood, rather than being an unnecessary distraction.
But aside from all that, there's action. I haven't seen D'anda's work before but he's good; he walks the "draw the character, not the actor" line, he keeps Wood's talky-talky scenes dynamic, and he really cuts loose in the action scenes. There's a reason that the preview pages they kept showing were Leia's X-wing crash and subsequent takedown of the TIE that had been pursuing her: those really ARE the best two pages of the book. Though I gotta say I love his Vader sequence at the end, too.
On the whole, it's good shit. I don't know how long it's going to run what with Disney planning to move the license back to Marvel, but I think I'll enjoy it while it lasts. (And hell, it's not out of the question that Wood would continue the series at Marvel; he's been doing some work for them lately and, from what I understand, selling pretty well.)
