Written by Tom Taylor, G. Willow Wilson, Chris Eliopoulos
Art by Matteo Buffagni, Elsa Charretier, Javier Pina
Colors by Chris O’Halloran, Nick Filardi, Guru FX
Letters by Travis Lanham
Cover art by Phil Noto
Editor Mark Paniccia
Assistant Editor Tom Groneman

I’ve been relatively sympathetic to the new post-Endor period in Star Wars canon. Generally I feel that there has been more good than bad. Undoubtedly though the sequential Marvel comics shift from Age of Republic, to Age of Rebellion over to Age of Resistance (the current focus for
these stand alone titles) has shown the period to be a difficult one in story telling terms. I think that this is largely because the stories being told have to be set within a still incomplete Trilogy and therefore there is too much at stake in cinematic terms to give too much away in terms of overall narrative.

This week we have the Age of Resistance Special issue which has three tales. The first is Maz’s Scoundrels written by Tom Taylor, the second is The Bridge by G. Willow Wilson, and the last is Robot Resistance by Chris Eliopoulos. Let’s dive in and see how they fare.

The first outing in this issue is the tale Maz’s Scoundrels and it turns out that Tom Taylor is the perfect writer to bring out that playful interaction between Han and Maz, alongside Chewie here, that
was one of the fun elements of The Force Awakens. We see Maz’s affection for Chewie touched upon again, and a kind of patronising Auntie-rougish nephew vibe played out between her and Han.

The second tale is a somewhat lacklustre tale of how Admiral Holdo got her purple hair with a basic message of why we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. It was, unfortunately, an extremely boring tale. Thankfully my favorite artist Elsa Charretier was on board on this
story and I could look at her wonderfully nuanced art all day, so that brought the overall enjoyment levels up.

Finally we get a fun little disposable BB-8 adventure in Robot Resistance by Chris Eliopoulos. As enjoyable as this was it was
entirely a tale of fluff, centered upon the courage of BB-8 saving the day. The little droid that could. If you have seen the various adventures of R2-D2, or read almost the exact same plot line featuring BB-8 in the earlier issues of Charles Soule’s Poe Dameron series then there isn’t too much new here. That does not detract from its fun nature.

Final thoughts

As has been the trend for these three-tales-in-one specials for the “Age of” books this is something of a mixed bag. Good to average stories with some very good art deployed at points. For the cover price though this is one for the most avid collectors of Star Wars canon only.

5.8/10