Review: Our Heroes Connect with Ancient ‘Star Wars’ History in Marvel’s Star Wars #29
When I saw that the title of the mainline Star Wars comic’s 29th issue was A Little Break, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The story had just started to gain momentum again with the discovery of the second Death Star, but it sounded like this issue was going to kill that momentum stone dead while it waited for the Hidden Empire crossover to begin.
Thankfully, this issue wasn’t boring filler. While it didn’t do anything to move along the plot with the second Death Star, it does boast a fun storyline that actually seems worthwhile for the Rebel Alliance. Moreover, the content of that story actually connects with the High Republic era of Star Wars in a way that looks set to get even stronger next issue.
As a result, some people’s enjoyment of this issue may vary depending on how much you know of and enjoy The High Republic novels and comics. As someone who read most of the novels and all the comics of The High Republic‘s Phase 1, I was delighted with how they connected these two eras together. It took what could have been a boring fluff issue and turned it into something intriguing. If you’re not interested in The High Republic, you might still be rooting for our heroes to find what they’re looking for, but it does feel like a side quest compared to the discovery of the second Death Star.
A cynical person might point out that the timing of this connection is mighty convenient with Phase 2 of The High Republic just starting up, but either way the content itself is still good. If you want to use crossover stories to promote other Star Wars content, this is the way to do it.
Spoilers ahead…
It definitely looked as though this was going to be a momentum-halting filler issue at first, seeing our heroes gathered around the pool on Spira with Amilyn Holdo. Luke is busy studying the Jedi and the Force, Lando’s playing cards with Chewie and Lobot while Leia and Holdo sit around and chat.
There’s some harmless fun here — Luke force pushes Lando and Chewie into the pool after the former teases him one too many times — but it’s not long until the issue’s main adventure gets underway. It turns out that Amilyn has invited Leia to Spira to acquire some valuable supplies for the Rebellion. She brings them all to a masquerade auction to bid on a mystery item.
Holdo is annoyingly coy about providing details on her plan — a habit she clearly doesn’t shake before the events of The Last Jedi — but she soon reveals that they are there to win an auction for an old Nihil strike ship from the High Republic era. Interestingly, most people’s knowledge of the Nihil seems to have been lost to the passage of time, but Amilyn still holds some key information on them. It’s not the ship itself she requires, but the path engine hidden inside.
This might not mean a lot to readers unfamiliar with The High Republic, but the Nihil’s path engines basically allowed them to plot very specific courses through hyperspace, forgoing traditional hyperlanes in a way that no regular ship could. That was because these pre-determined “paths” were created by a Force user imprisoned by the Nihil; a member of the San Tekka family, no less.
Amilyn believes that the strike ship’s path engine contains a pre-programmed route to the Kezarat Convoy, a mythical ship containing massive deposits of tibanna and coaxium that disappeared around High Republic time, when the Nihil caused the Great Hyperspace Disaster.
Leia and Lando are extremely skeptical about this plan but they go along with it regardless. When they get outbid by the curator of Coruscant’s Imperial Museum, they decide to break into the ship’s hangar bay instead. Luke distracts the stormtroopers with his yellow lightsaber before the rest of them gun the soldiers down from above, giving us a nice bit of action. It’s been too long since we saw Luke use his lightsaber so I’m grateful for that, at least.
Amilyn retrieves the path engine from inside the strike ship, but it doesn’t appear to be functional. She tries integrating it into her ship the Skyfarer, but with no luck. Unfortunately, by this point the Imperials are on their tail so they try and escape the planet. With TIE fighters hot on their tail, the path engine starts glowing green and activates, shooting them off into hyperspace on a pre-determined route.
However, rather than take them to the mythical Kezarat Convoy, it instead takes them to a place that will be immediately recognizable to those who have read The High Republic. Our heroes arrive at No-Space, the old Nihil headquarters that were unreachable by normal hyperspace travel. Strangely, I believe this is the first time we’ve actually seen No-Space in a comic, as The High Republic stories only ever visited it in the novels.
The Nihil headquarters in a massive hollowed out asteroid have been long deserted and the place certainly looks like it’s seen better days. Hopefully, this means our heroes will get to explore the place in issue #30. It’s a story that feels ripped from the pages of Doctor Aphra, and I’m all for it.
Speaking of Doctor Aphra, Holdo mentions early on that she can’t get a hold of her Crimson Dawn contacts right now, and Luke comments on a disturbance in the Force of some kind. I wonder how much of that is acknowledging the current events of Doctor Aphra, with the Spark Eternal wreaking havoc inside Crimson Dawn’s capital ship? If not, then we should get greater clarity when Hidden Empire debuts this month.
Even if this was a side quest, A Little Break ended up being a fun adventure for our heroes and I can’t wait to see how it concludes in the next issue of the main Star Wars run.
Rating: 7/10
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
