Review: ‘Star Wars’ #32 – ‘A Little Broken’ Keeps The Fun Going With Plenty of Action
While the events of this No-Space arc are still travelling a little too slow for me, A Little Broken was still an entertaining issue of the mainline Star Wars comic series.
The first half of the issue is really concerned with getting the Kezarat Colony captain’s permission to leave the convoy, which thankfully only takes as long as it needs to before getting to the action. The dialogue is mostly pretty funny too, with plenty of irreverent humor on display from the Colony guards to keep it entertaining. The rest of the issue is a fun read, as our heroes put their plan to the test and try to recover the Path Engine from the Nihil robots. We get a good fill of blaster and lightsaber action this time.
I was left feeling mildly frustrated at the end that the writers found another way to stall the progress of this arc, but the cliffhanger is a cool one, and it at least felt like the story had moved forward. I’ve mostly enjoyed the No-Space arc, but if our heroes haven’t left this place by the end of Star Wars #33, then we might have some problems.
Spoilers ahead…
I really enjoyed the humor from the colony prison guards at the beginning, as they debated semantics over the Wookiee language. It reminded me a lot of the banter seen in the Red vs Blue machinima or the British film Four Lions, taking a pause from the larger plot to argue over something insignificant.
They take Chewie to Lando — who hilariously realizes that he and Holdo have been getting frisky in their cell — who then brings the Wookiee’s info to the Kezarat Colony’s captain. The captain was so eager to brush off their information that I wondered for a while if he was corrupt, perhaps keeping the people here so that he could remain in a position of power. That would have been a bad excuse to extend this run even longer so I’m very thankful we didn’t go down that route.
Instead, it really does seem like he believes he’s tried everything and there’s nothing they could possibly know that he doesn’t. As soon as they reveal they have a Path Engine back on their ship, he admits that would work. He still seems reluctant to believe in them though, not even giving them a fully functioning ship to retrieve the engine, which feels like cutting off his hand to spite his face.
Once again, I was afraid that they would stall the story’s progress even further by taking forever to fix the ship, but thankfully it’s done really quickly. It actually gives a bit of time for Leia to update the captain on the state of the known galaxy. It’s interesting that these people obviously don’t know what’s been happening, and I waited to see the captain’s reaction to the news. He asks Leia if there were people fighting back against the Empire, to which she simply responds “yes”.
I’m not ruling out that he might still decide against returning to the galaxy while the Empire reigns, but it seems the Colony is setting itself up to join the Rebellion.
Eventually, the heroes all head out to The Grand Hall — minus Leia, who stays behind for leverage — and their plan goes surprisingly smoothly. Luke, Lando, and Holdo do a great job of distracting the droids while Chewbacca swipes the Path Engine, and there’s an awesome moment where Luke Force-pushes all the droids out into space that makes for some great artwork.
Chewie heads back to the ship while Luke makes his way to his Jedi text. However, before he can get it, the book falls off the side, and his machine hand is grabbed by a Nihil droid. It’s a fun cliffhanger which looks badass, but hopefully we can wrap this all up next week. What I thought would be a fun two-to-three week arc is threatening to drag on way too long, so hopefully we can keep this pace going and see our Star Wars heroes return home soon.
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.
