The Force Is Not Strong With This One

Writer: Alex Segura
Artist: Phil Noto
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Release Date: May 7, 2025
Cover Price: $4.99

I am a huge Star Wars fan, or at least I was for most of my life. However, a couple years ago I had to take a bit of love/hate inventory and realized that I now hate more things in a galaxy far far far away than I love. It kills me to say it, but I want to be completely honest. I still do love the original trilogy and had a long-running Star Wars podcast that was killed by the Dark Droids Event last summer. Yep, those damn Dark Droids made me give up a podcast because I just couldn’t take it anymore. So, I was looking forward to this relaunch, hoping that I’d enjoy it and possibly get the band back together and restart the podcast. After reading this first issue, I’m not so sure that’s going to happen. Of course, I’ll have to get a couple of issues under my belt (my moral compass points under my belt as well!) before I write Alex Segura and company off, but I have to admit, by the last page, I was debating with myself if Dark Droids was such a bad thing afterall! On to the review…

The issue opens with the typical “spaceship in space” scene, and while I would have preferred the “planet pan to spaceship” classic, we do get Luke and his X-Wing squad so I’ll let it pass. What I won’t let pass is the total lack of a Crawl! What the FUCK?!? How can you restart Star Wars and not have the Crawl. Where is Greta to shout “How Dare You” at everyone involved?!? Besides it being a complete given, it would have set up the issue so much better than the random chatter from the random pilots flying with Luke.

Speaking of Luke, did someone give him a thesaurus for Christmas because I know he didn’t learn that fancy speech from Yoda!!! His line, “But the Battle is over, Rynn. It’s okay to take solace in these moments of peace,” sounded more like Shakespeare than Skywalker! It’s all small talk anyway and gets shoved aside when they are attacked by Pirates, and a Star Destroyer suddenly appears. I’m not sure whether it came out of hyperspace or is just great at hide-and-go-seek because Luke and company were as shocked as I was when they saw it.

And then it happens! A just-named rando X-Wing pilot gets all blown up, and I was scratching my head wondering if I should care. A tiny bit of setup might have helped, but I doubt it. I mean, this Sandrin is no Porkins! Rynn was sure upset, though, so maybe I’ll just make a backstory up in my mind that Sandrin and Rynn were the rhythm section of the punk band, FU Max Rebo and just do this X-Wing thing between tours. It works for me!

While Rynn and Luke chase down the pirate scum who did Sandrin dirty, we go see cold harsh reality slap Princess Leia right across her royal face. She has asked Kezrin Almovar (Yes, THE Kezin Almovar?) of Chandrilar to join the New Republic, and Kez (I can call her Kez, right?) tells her to pound sand. Leia gets a bit to sassy and is told to leave and worse by the end of the issue.

While that’s happening, we tie up the Trinity by seeing Han help out Valance (I guess he got uglied up again in Dark Droids, huh?), and while I both characters, they aren’t doing much. I’d say their part was the most boring, but that would be splitting hairs since the whole damn issue is pretty much a snooze fest. The issue ends with Luke being a complete moron who would easily fall for the “your shoes are untied” line and Princess Leia finding out that shit just got real!

Alex Segura’s script is filled with “and then this happens” scenes that are neither exciting or memorable and instead of felling like a kick ass #1 issue, this feels like an issue in the middle of an already boring third trade… though if this doesn’t get better, Segura might not make it that far! I may sound negative here, but I’m still a bit shook that what’s their name died in the beginning. Where is FU Max Rebo gonna find another bass player on such notice?!?!

Phil Noto’s art is fine. Some of the faces come of as a bit eerie at times, but for the most part it’s… fine. It couldn’t save Alex Segura’s boring ass writing, but he gave it the old college try.

Final Thoughts:

Star Wars #1 was not the exciting first issue I was hoping for. Actually, it was pretty boring overall. I hope this was all just an odd misplay and things get better, but coming out of the gate this slow is a bold strategy Cotton, but I guess we will have to wait and see. I didn’t sense any hype leading up to this issue and I worry that this is just DOA – like what’s their name!

4.0/10