Review: ‘Sana Starros’ #3 – ‘Good Times’ Is a Fun and Lighthearted Adventure
The last issue of Sana Starros took a beat to delve into the Starros family secrets, and while that was still interesting, I was looking forward to a more action-heavy issue this time around. Thankfully, Good Times delivers on that in abundance while still managing to raise the stakes for Aryssha.
More family secrets are exposed, confirming some strong suspicions about another of the “Starroses”. After an initial conversation with Deva Lompop, the story doesn’t take long to throw us into a heist mission involving a rancor. While it’s ultimately a side quest, it’s very entertaining and means this issue’s cover art of Sana Starros riding a rancor isn’t as misleading as the previous issue’s cover.
It looks like next week’s issue will delay Sana from rescuing Aryssha once again after the family run into more complications on the heist mission, but thankfully it all still remains interesting. This series is very well paced, so deviations from the main plot are not unwelcome just yet.
Good Times is a fun read, and I’m looking forward to next issue’s adventures already.
Spoilers ahead…
The issue starts off with an interesting reveal; it turns out Phel was the one who stole the Starros family artifact on his last visit and delivered it to the Imperials. Oh, and yes, it turns out Phel is an Imperial after all. I’m not sure why his current whereabouts was such a thinly veiled secret last time as it was the most logical conclusion, but at least it’s out in the open now.
Sana is furious to learn that he stole Avon’s journals and angrily accuses her grammy and aunt of helping to fix her traitorous brother’s mistakes. Her family argue it’s not like that, but it’s difficult to disagree with Sana’s accusation. Shortly after that, she gets roped into doing a job for Deva Lompop, who apparently looks out for the Starros family and styles herself as Sana’s unofficial “auntie”. The brief is to steal a rancor from one of Deva’s business associates who broke their contract, a tantalizing proposition.
The Starros family accompanies Deva and her crew to the zoo on Hon-Tallos, and Deva outlines her plan, which is pretty simple: Lanitra will cause a distraction that allows Sana and Deva to sneak into the rancor breeding pens, at which point they’ll ride the rancor out of there.
There’s some pretty cool animals in the zoo, as we see a caged Nexu, Boga, and another goat-like creature I couldn’t identify. Unfortunately, Lanitra’s distraction involved freeing a hragscythe, a three-headed dinosaur-looking monster native to Onderon whose species debuted in The High Republic novels. Sana and Deva have a cool standoff against it, rescuing a small child in the process, until Deva puts it to sleep with some poison. It’s a brief encounter, but monster fights are always a fun part of Star Wars so it makes for an entertaining one nonetheless.
Once they reach the rancor breeding pens, Deva reveals a hidden step in her plan; in order to ride the rancor, Sana will need to douse herself with a vial of rancor urine to convince it she’s a small rancor cub. It’s a hilarious development, and I loved Sana’s horrified reaction. Sana Starros has always had a fairly light-hearted tone, but nothing that made me laugh out loud like this. Sana reluctantly agrees to pour the vial of urine on her head, and the panel showing her do it keeps the laughs coming. It’s a good thing Aphra’s not around to see it.
The plan works, and Sana manages to ride it, but then we hit our next wrinkle. Wollina has employed the bounty hunter who chased the Starros family through space in the last issue, who is still intent on reuniting with his old flame Mevera.
He is quite easily dispatched when Sana gets the rancor to smash his speeder bike, another comedic moment that I appreciated in keeping with the rest of the issue.
I didn’t think anything more of what appeared a very minor character, but once the rancor is safely stowed and ready for transport, the bounty hunter contacts Mevera via holo to announce that he’s kidnapped Grammy Starros and will only release her in exchange for Mevera. It seems that the next issue will focus on rescuing Grammy first before the family can turn their attentions back to Aryssha.
Speaking of Aryssha, we get a small but intriguing update with her aboard her Imperial husband’s vessel. She’s spent most of her time confined to her quarters but eventually gets an opportunity to sneak around the ship once again on a trip to the refresher. It’s a tense scene but it seems she’s gotten the better of her husband once again. That is, until he catches her trespassing this time. The big reveal though is that Phel himself has arrived and helped track her down.
I’d been wondering when we’d see Phel after the confirmation he was Imperial at the beginning of the issue, but I was surprised to see him so soon. He certainly acts like an Imperial, displaying all the arrogance you might expect of an officer of the Empire. He clearly views the rest of his family with contempt, speaking about the “Starroses” as if they’re an entity separate from himself.
At the moment there seems nothing redeemable about Phel, so I’ll be interested to see if spending time with Aryssha brings out a more sympathetic side to him. The cover art for the next issue suggests that Sana and Phel will confront each other; I’m intrigued to see what happens when the two siblings come face to face with each other for the first time in the Sana Starros series.
Rating: 8/10
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.
