Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Ramon Rosanas, Guru-eFX, and VC’s Travis Lanham
Release Date: September 18, 2019
Cover Price: $3.99

Well we start a new Star Wars one-shot story by Tom Taylor. A writer who anything he writes, I will give it a shot and recommend it even before reading it myself. But it seems like all of his Star Wars one-shots aren’t getting much attention from the general reader. Guess it’s time to see what the issue is with everyone not discussing these stories. Let’s dig in and see what we have here…

Right now these comics are canon to the Star Wars franchise, and the fan base couldn’t be more split on the direction it is heading. Personally, I am enjoying the direction it is going but I don’t know how I feel about having comics and the movies being canon together. Rumor has it that there is going to be an evil C3PO that is from a Vader comic years ago. That I have no issue with… hopefully they have had time to read the material and figure out a way to make it fit in the movie. But having a comictake place during the Sequel Trilogy is still iffy in my mind and I’m hoping no continuity issues end up happening.

The issue starts off with a cold opening of Rey’s origin story and it’s something that could have been done in the recap section. It Kind of feels a bit useless and the way it’s presented, it didn’t really do much for the overall story.

Now we flash forward to the present, and see a moment between two characters that we did not see in The Force Awakens movie. Something small like that, I don’t mind. Actually, I appreciate it. It’s a little bit of fan service that probably should have been in the movie.

Now I will say this, the majority of the art is really good! Except for a couple of panels of Rey, just looks a tad bit rushed, but besides that, I really dug the art.

General Leia’s character in Star Wars for me is a bit dull and unfortunately, Tom Taylor nailed that because, she is pretty dull throughout the issue.  We get a nice chat between Rey and Leia byt it did end up going a bit too long.

But now it’s on to finding where Luke is! Unfortunately, things don’t go quite as planned and in a Star Wars story, that is as common as it is deadly. Now I think the villain in that new Spider-Man book is the villain here, either that or both of the artists watched Aliens before drawing their comic.

The issue continues and ends with Rey foiling the plan of the bad guy, but there is a twist of what all the trouble was about…a lot of plans within plans type of stuff going on.  How Rey gets out of it in the end is a little confusing, but there is no real tension anyway since we kind of know Rey isn’t going to die here.

Final Thoughts:

As much as I enjoy Tom Taylor’s work, this issue didn’t do the trick for me. The art was very good for most of the issue but this just feels like a wasted opportunity.  It Could have done so much more to show why we all love Rey, but this certainly does not. Would I recommend this issue? Not really.

5.5/10