From: tmw4r@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (Thomas Munroe Walsh)
Subject: Re: Star Wars Miniseries from Dark Horse Comics
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 16:05:44 GMT

In article <92270.224713DCC117@psuvm.psu.edu> <DCC117@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <92262.102147ACPS0685@RyeVm.Ryerson.Ca>, ACPS0685@RyeVm.Ryerson.Ca
>(Sylvie Coleno) says:
>>
>>>   Hey, doesn't anyone here remember the old Marvel comics series?  Yeah,
>>>it may have been lame, but it _did_ exist!
>>
>>Yeah, and there were even a few that weren't all that lame, too!
>>The particularly good ones were those by Jo Duffy;  she'd
>>obviously put a lot of effort into plot development and
>>characterization.  Some of those post-ROTJ Marvel stories outshine
>>the Dark Horse series by a longshot, IMHO.
>>
>>Sylvie Coleno
>
>Yeah, some of the post-ROTJ stories in particular were pretty good....
>I liked that they finally showed what became of Shira Brie, because ever
>since the "Pariah" - "Trial of Luke Skywalker" storyline, the readers knew
>that Shira was still alive and in the Empire's care.  I'm glad they finally
>did something with her, and it was cool to have Luke fighting the Dark Lady
>with a curiously oriental double-lightsaber fighting technique.
>    IMHO, a lot of the stories, even back in the years between SW and Empire,
>were really good. The Valance character seemed to be the forerunner to Boba
>Fett and the others in Empire, and Vader and Valance "fighting" it out to the
>death was pretty cool. They made a super-gaffe by claiming to have killed off
>Han Solo in one notorious issue, and I can't for the life of me remember how
>he was supposed to have lived. They also expanded the Jabba the Hut(t) charac-

The story that I remember where they "killed" Han was during The Wheel story-
line.  The Wheel was a gambling satellite and Han and Chewie became involved
in the "Big Game" not knowing initially that the other was involved.  Since
the Big Game was to the death, they couldn't both get out of it alive.  They
both made it to the final round and it came down to just the two of them and
one other.  Chewie, at Han's urging, shots Han, then gets rid of the other
competitor.  At an earlier point, however, Han had stuffed one of the hand
held laser deflector shields under his shirt while under the cover of an
exploding object in the game.  Chewie carries the "lifeless" body out of the
game and they effect an escape.

>ter and did some interesting stuff with him, using the way Jabba appeared in
>the comic version of the SW film, i.e. yellow-skinned, whiskered humanoid.
>Again, a gaffe, though: as a result of one of the stories, Jabba renounced
>the price on Solo's head. Oh well. The whole Pariah/ Shira Brie storyline was

Since Lucasfilm had to have approved the script, they probably allowed that
part of the story only if Marvel promised to undo it before the start of the
Empire adaptation, which is what they did in an epilogue of the second to 
last issue before Empire.

>well done, IMO; it was neat how Luke's reliance on the Force caused him to
>kill a fellow Rebel and become shunned by the rest of the Alliance. Still, it
>doesn't seem like the kind of stuff I'd want to see happen to Luke in one of
>the films...it just disrupts that "hero" aura around Luke. ( Which makes it
>really neat in its own way. ) I thought that the period between Empire and
>Jedi was sort of contrived, and for all I know the comics could have really
>conflicted heavily with what was laid down in Jedi, what with time discrep-
>ancies and all that. It sure seemed like they should have. That whole thing
>about "chasing down other bounty hunters to get more information about Boba
>Fett's whereabouts" was really a stretch.

They could have come up with a better way of figuring out where and when
Fett was going to hand Han over to Jabba but they kind of had to do some-
thing to search for him because I can't imagine Chewie, Luke, and Leia just
leaving the search to others.  The issue whose cover featured Luke and
Lando standing in front of a figure sealed in carbonite with the caption,
"The search for Han Solo ends here..." still strikes me as the one that
impressed me the most when I got it off the stands.

Oh yeah, the Pariah story was also another of my favorites.

,------------------------,----------------------------------------------,
| T. J. Walsh            | "You are in command now, ADMIRAL Piett."     |
| University Of Virginia |                                              |
| tmw4r@virginia.edu     |                                              |
`------------------------^----------------------------------------------'

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