Lit Rebel Heist #4 (of 4) - Luke

You want a cover? Here - Adam Hughes at work:



Oh you want a story too? What that cover not good enough? Very well:

Sounds good.

 

Hot damn. I always buy the trades, and sometimes the digital versions if I'm feeling impatient. But if anyone could get me to buy individual issues for the covers, it'd be AH!

 

That is quite a nice cover. More than Star Wood, I'm quite liking Rebel Heist's covers (well, Cooke covers aside). Not to mention nice, simple summaries. It'll be a short miniseries, and most of the issues sound good already, so I'll try to pick up this miniseries, especially as its part of Dark Horse's last hurrah for Star Wars.

 

Ha ha, they sure got the hair right!!

 

Wow! The cover looks great, and the story sounds promising too! Thanks for sharing, JB!

 

What's he trying to do, trim a loose thread off his jacket?

 

You know what would be great?

If the spy was Cross from Agent of the Empire.

 

So anybody else pick this issue up? And so that's it for Dark Horse's last Star Wars miniseries. Well, at least that was their own idea rather than adaptation of something else (Maul) and wasn't an ongoing (like Star Wood or Legacy). Another POV issue (of course), not bad art, and sort of ties together everything from the first three issues. This is a bit of a spoiler but also an awesome moment I felt.

Spoiler

We see Chewie standing on top of that rancor's corpse, triumphant. No wonder Jabba didn't drop Chewie in the rancor pit, or else he would have lost his rancor sooner.

Oddly enough while Luke is running around, they're flying in what looks just like a Defender-class ship, the Jedi class ship from SWTOR, just in blue. Which is odd, given that that design was used about 3600 years earlier, but whatever, I like the artwork. And its only a cameo, and hopefully not the famous one, but I think there's a Firespray silhouette in the background of one panel.

Not bad miniseries in all, not super-great or an instant classic, but at least it doesn't leave a bad taste in my memories unlike a certain other series. Though they had to throw in a few movie links, but at least it was a bit different from normal. And Luke does deflect a lot of blaster bolts, but he also notes that a lot of it is luck, so I don't mind since he's still supposed to be mostly self-trained at this point.

 

The gold jacket is from the medal ceremony of ANH right? Has it been used in any other comics besides Rebel Heist 4 cover? I ask this because one of the upcoming marvel star wars series promo images shows off Luke in his gold jacket.

The first thing I thought off when seeing that image was the Rebel Heist 4 cover!

 

I'm not sure why this story had to tie into a big movie moment, make that two movie moments. I'm not a big fan of these "Hero Worship" stories that have us follow audience stand-ins that are only there to ooh and aah at the Big Three, but this still had some enjoyable moments.

Spoiler

Man, Chewie just singlehandedly killed a rancor with an axe? That is awesome. Then again, what was a huge axe doing in a rancor pit? I don't even understand how the purpose of this mission was to steal the freaking shield generator that they use on Hoth. It was my understanding that the generator was massive. It appears to be the size of a landspeeder here. Also, the design of the generator looks like a permanent installation. It sure doesn't look like it was designed to be portable.

Also, the audience stand-in in this one, a Bothan spy named Ellak, is revealed as the Bothan who discovers the construction of the Death Star II. I guess he then passed that info on to Koth Melan? It's super weird to see an Imperial Bothan spy, and then have him be immediately accepted as a Rebel spy. I guess that vetting process is pretty lax at the Bothan Spynet.

I agree with Nobody145, nothing too special about this with some cool bits here and there. Definitely didn't change my mind on these types of stories, which I personally dislike. I did like how the artist included a bunch of background species, from Utai, to a Noghri, even if its appearance was a blatant copy of the Noghri illustration from the New Essential Guide to Alien Species.

 

Maybe they can retcon it as some sort of prototype tech and that they reverse-engineered it and built the full-size version themselves? Meh, doesn't really matter, since this is basically the end of the old EU so they won't care about retcons, but at least I'm glad it didn't turn out to be something like "location of Hoth" or "list of planets that include Hoth". And at least since this is set post-Yavin, they're not looking for Death Star I plans.

While this issue is sort of recap, I'm glad it explains just exactly what Han was up to in issue 1, and also proves it was all part of a plan. Though Han breaking out was perhaps a bit too easy, but oh well, it was just a cool moment. Using a Jedi Defender to fly around still seems a bit odd, but oh well, just all around good/decent artwork so I don't mind.

I just love that image of Chewie standing on top of a rancor corpse. Its off-screen awesomeness, but at least its still clear.

 

This was a nice close up issue. I know that some of you hate Wood but that series along with these 4 have been in the top 100 in sales. Legacy Volume 2? Not even close, Clone Wars The Dorks of Dathomir? Not even on the Radar, final Legacy Volume 1 issues? must have had a masking device, J.J. M and his vaunted KOTOR and all that jazz? Yep hit and more miss in the sales department. Now the trades are a bit different, but over all the sales have gone off the roof for the 19 issue Wood series, the 8 issue The Star Wars and the 4 issue Rebels arc here. In some way, on top of everything else, it is not wonder that Marvel chose to do more star wars from Episode 4 on forward with a serious concentration of OT characters. Luke, Vader and Leia. It is kind of hard to argue this guys.........no prequels in Marvel stuff (maybe for now).

 

Yeah. Being ongoing helped as well I imagine, as it creates more "immediacy" than the mini-series.

I know that my purchases dropped the moment Dark Horse switched to mini-series, as I no longer felt the same urgency to buy, so where they would have had multiple purchases from me every month a few years back, that swapped to... frequently zero, with me back to trade waiting instead (as why rush, when the next arc would be a 6 month wait anyway?). I don't know how many others did the same, but before KOTOR and LEGACY, that always used to be my preference when it came to Star Wars comics-- and since Dark Horse keep their trades in circulation, I've often wondered if that's why their issue sales aren't as high as Marvel's, whose trade and omnibus behaviour is... much less predictable, from what people have been saying in threads.

 

Legacy Volume II is a horrific sales bomb? That's a shame.

But if we had to suffer through star woods in order to allow stuff like legacy II then it's worth it.

Legacy II is not as bombastic or in your face as Star Woods. It's not as epic as Legacy I.

The difference in sales makes sense. From some comments here it seems Dark Horse even lost a fair amount of followers after the switch the mini's.

I think the best time to capitalize on Legacy II would have been immediately after Legacy I. Also there was a lot of uncertainty going on with DH star wars after the whole disney sale. Uncertainty that lead to fear which fears became reality.

 

Well, no not exactly. Its a combination of different things and a change of philosophy at the time. When Dark Horse got the license, they came out with a kick ass series (Dark Empire) that sold off the charts, and I'm not talking about no 65, 000 issues but well over the 200,000 frame. Numbers that unfortunately have declined thanks in no part to the internet. Dark Horse did well back then because they did what Marvel did not do, which was make star wars comics good and widely available. No more waiting month to month just to get an issue. That went well with the fan base back then, and I am one of them. They also covered different eras and different aspects of star wars. Those stories were succesful and very highly enjoyable. With the success of Aliens, Predator, The Thing, Judge Dredd, and Robocop cross overs, star wars became the pinnacle bench mark for the entire 1990's. The fact that different series were coming out covering different aspects of star wars made Dark Horse the king.

Yes, trades sell and people buy them and Dark Horse has done wonders on that, but don't assume it is because people stopped buying individual issues. No, in many places they don't have access to comic shops, so people ain't going to drive 40 to 60 miles to get comics. My shop that I go to is 33 miles away and I frankly don't have time every week, so I get most of my orders from midtown comics via internet. Others just wait for the trades because they can get them at a barnes and noble which is every where or amazon which seels them even cheaper. Thats why some of those sales are up, while others just buy digital versions of it. Their are benefits to that, one being that the colors are brighter in amazon kindle and itune screeens as opposed to a regular comic which has the colors faded due to printing. Then you have others that just look through an issue whether on line or at the store and don't buy them at all. The biggest thing that has hit the comics market is the internet/fast streaming and the ever evolving technology that make animation look even more eralistic than before and movies that are on the wow side of things. Just look at the sci-fi movies from 1980-1986 and see the difference from just 2000-2014. The technological leap is amazing, and look at what they got coming out right through almost 2020.

Marvel has the right approach, a combination of series and two on-goings. You guys ain't going to like it because they are going to cover a lot of the OT characters, and not youe 501st, or X-wing and stuff like that. Also if you want to buy an issue you can or wait for the trade, price will still go up and people will buy either or in any format. Marvel will definitely make sure of that with there numerous variations.

Regardless of whether you decide to buy and individual issue or wait for a trade, Marvel will definitely make its money on star wars. They are a bigger company and they will give you on-goings and individulal series (3,4, or 5 parters) and I think that is very good.

 

I was fascinated by the recent "Superheros" documentary on PBS where one of the interviewees mentioned how comics used to regularly sell hundreds of thousands of copies, even the lesser-known ones, and nowadays it takes a truly exceptional book to sell a hundred thousand.

 

Piracy today doesn't help either.

I introduced Legacy to a number of friends... but then nearly all of them just ended up downloading it via torrents. That seriously shocked me, as I never previously had associated them as the pirate types, but... they just didn't seem to care about paying for comics-- which is rather depressing.

 

No mention of the Rebel Fleet? For shame, Rebel Heist!

--Adm. Nick

 

This is so true, the difference really is hard to explain but back then a star wars comic was selling well over a hundred thousand issues and the very good ones were north of 250,000.