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Review: Princess Leia #4

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pl004With the Disney purchase of Star Wars, it allowed for the consolidation of well of the Star Wars products to Marvel, another Disney company.  In so doing for the first time the comics were going to provide canon stories for the series.  This got a lot of people pretty interested, even if the choice of era was a little confusing to them, the period between episodes IV and V.  For most this was not as enticing an era for the series, as the action in Hoth seemed to follow logically from what had come before.  There was a gap, but it was not one which was hard to fathom.  AS well the characters were still relatively unpowered and learning how to be something bigger.  Among the first wave of series from this release was Princess Leia.  While pretty no one doesn’t like the character, she is also rarely mentioned among people’s favorites from the series, her often aloof attitude to her allies in the story having had the same effect to those reading and watching.

Thus far this series has been somewhat successful at breaking that image, and with this issue, nearly completely erasing it.  There are some benefits to the modern presentation of this character.  With the evolution of the role of women in fiction in the past forty years since the release of the first movie, it is almost a form of revisionism to include a female action star from that time.  That is to say, one of the easiest ways to make Leia more approachable is to write her in the modern day.  This issue deals with the continuing saga to reunite the people of Alderaan after the attack by the Empire which destroyed the planet. The story gets deeper as the characters are shown to be more fragile and stronger than before, as Leia has to deal with the Alderaanian spy for the Empire.

There were many that picked up this series hoping to see a change in the character, in order to make her more approachable.  The earlier issues in this miniseries were a bit slow to get started, but at this point the series has found its heart and its hero.  Princess Leia might still have a long way to go before reaching the cult status of some other Star Wars characters like Wedge Antilles or Boba Fett, but with stories such as this one she could finally be on her way.

Story: Mark Waid Art: Terry Dodson
Story: 9.3 Art: 9.3 Overall: 9.3 Recommendation: Buy

Review: Princess Leia #3

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princessleia003When Marvel first announced that it would be releasing in continuity comics, fans get pretty interested.  Perhaps the height of the point of interest was for the ongoing main series, set between episodes IV and V, which would help to fill in some of the blanks for the characters.  So too were many interested in the Darth Vader series, presenting the complex villain as something more than just pure evil.  It seemed though that many did not know what to make of the Princess Leia miniseries.  As Geroge Lucas had conceived the concepts for Star Wars partially from the book “Hero of a Thousand Faces”, it meant that the princess was archetypal in many respects.  That she was a princess but also often a damsel in distress.  For the time she was maybe a strong female action lead, but through the modern lens she was shown to be somewhat dated.

The series set off to change those conceptions, but it did not come fast.  Another main problem with the character was that she was also among the less developed of the characters in the original trilogy, acting as a mostly unexplained parallel to Luke’s journey, though one with less focus.  This meant too that this series took longer to establish itsself and its characters.  The second issue saw the establishment of the Princess and her assistant/sidekick as credible players, but it is in this third issue where the two manage to come out looking like champions.  It can be said that in some respects that there is more potential for female characters in fiction.  As they tend to not have as much brawn to rely on, they are forced to rely more so on their brains, and that is the case here as Leia is led into a death trap, but then turns that to her advantage.

What follows is thus the strongest issue thus far of this series, and proof that the creative team was wise to go the route of using the Princess as one of its primary early focuses for establishing something more in the Star Wars continuity.  There will be fans that will find this to be too much of a stretch from what came before in the movies, but this is also Princess Leia taken from the 1970s and dropped into the modern day.  The end result is engaging and fun, and promises that the rest of this series will be a good ride.

Story: Mark Waid Art: Terry Dodson
Story: 9.0 Art: 9.0 Overall: 9.0 Recommendation: Buy

 

Review: Princess Leia #2

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princessleia002Fans of Star Wars have gone through a few ups and downs as of late.  First they were told that there would be new Star Wars films, but then they were told that the Expanded Universe was no longer canon.  Then they were told that there would be new Star Wars comics from Marvel which would be in continuity, but then they discovered that the comics would be set between episodes IV and V.  This followed with mostly acceptance of the decision to set the stories there, as it was apparently a fertile time for stories to be told, as the first issue of the ongoing Star Wars series was well received.  This carried forward into the Princess Leia series, but for the first time fans met it with neither a high nor a low.  It was neither amazing nor disappointing, and while it was of a high enough quality, it seemed as though fans expected more.

In terms of the character though, she is perhaps the blankest slate of all of them.  She has a rich background thanks to her parents as revealed in episodes I-III, but while she had a prominent role in an action/adventure movie by the standards of the 1970s, by this point in popular culture, she fits a lot more into the princess stereotype than action star.  The first issue of the series sought to break down some of these perceptions of the character, notably that there was always a lot going on in the background of the character that the viewers did not know about.  The problem with the first issue was that it was first necessary to break these perceptions before moving into a place where she could shine on her own.  As in the movies she mostly either tagged along with Han or with Luke on the various plots to overthrow the empire, it was uncommon to see her venture off on her own without reason, but after having been established the action and the fun starts, as Leia tracks down a group of Alderaanians on Naboo and ventures into her back story first to explain more of her own inspirations.

After the relatively flat introduction, this series might have seemed to be heading into the direction of mediocrity, but this second issue evidently does what it needs to do to establish something more for the character.  It may not be exactly the character that the fans are used to, but it doesn’t matter as the character is taken out of the grey zone between those two episodes and thrown into the modern day by doing so.  There are some fun action sequences here but there are also some deeper moments.  It may not be a masterpiece, but the way that this is heading, it will at least serve as an effective modern update for a beloved character.

Story: Mark Waid Art: Terry Dodson
Story: 8.6 Art: 8.6 Overall: 8.6 Recommendation: Buy

 

 

Review: Princess Leia #1

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pl001aFor those unfamiliar with the inspirations for Star Wars, among the most famous of them is Joseph Campbell’s A Hero of Thousand Faces.  As George Lucas determined his vision for Star Wars he used this book as well as others sources of inspiration from fiction to develop his space opera.  One of these inspirations was the use of a princess as one of the main characters, and with that the role of Princess Leia was born.  The character is a bit of an anachronism in a sense though.  Although considered to be a strong female character in relation to others in movies at the time, cinema has expanded women’s role since then, and her once higher status as an action/adventure science-fiction star is dwarved by others that have come after her.  The background of the character has been developed over the years, first by the admission of her true father in the Return of the Jedi, and thus that she was not really a princess, and later establishing her as the daughter of the Queen of Naboo and thus kind of establishing her as a princess once again.

What this new in-continuity series attempts to do is to explore some of the complexities which should be evident in this character but which have never been explored.  As Leia says within this issue, she has a title but no function, and while that is true of her plight following the Battle of Yavin, in some ways it could be equally true for her as a character as a whole.  Specifically this mini-series looks at Leia through the after effects of the destruction of Alderaan, and what effect that has on her as the regent of this adopted homeworld.  The resulting story of a regrouping of a diaspora is a common enough one in fiction, and maybe more so in science fiction, but it works here and works well.  Added to this is her own sidekick, a female Alderaanian pilot for the Rebel Alliance.  The pairing is not a natural one, but by the end of the issue it finds a way to work together.

The new direction that Marvel is taking Star Wars is an intriguing one.  This series is one that maybe no fans ever really asked for, but the question equally could have been “why didn’t they?”  The execution is not flawless, but the story is both engaging and entertaining enough to be an appropriate vessel for Star Wars’ first heroine.

Story: Mark Waid Art: Terry Dodson
Story: 8.5 Art: 8.5 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy