Comics Star Wars #21-25: The Last Flight of the Harbinger

A new arc is coming. Marvel’s Star Wars #20 will wrap up the current story, and issue #21 will launch a fresh adventure for our heroes and their foes. “The Last Flight of Harbinger” is set to introduce an elite group of Imperial stormtroopers who will prove to be quite the foil to the Rebels. Writer Jason Aaron is joined by artist Jorge Molina in bringing this special seven-member squad to the page. StarWars.com caught up with Aaron to discuss the upcoming arc and how it begins — he says we’ll see a glimpse of the stormtrooper squad at the end of issue #20 before spending more time when them. “We really get to see the whole group in action with the next issue. It [issue #21] is both a standalone and the beginning of the next arc. It really focuses in on this new group of stormtroopers. We get to see them in action on their own little mission that also sets the stage for where we’re going in that next arc. At first it’s a mystery as to who the leader of the group is, but it will eventually be pretty obvious that it’s somebody we’ve met before.”

That somebody is Kreel. Sergeant Kreel, a.k.a. Agent 5241, was last seen working in Grakkus the Hutt’s arena. He crossed paths with Luke there and even helped him prepare for a fight with a little lightsaber coaching, but that wasn’t the last of Kreel’s story. Aaron says, “When we last saw him, he was talking to Darth Vader, and it was hopefully clear this was a guy you were going to see again, a guy who was going to get back in the game in terms of being an Imperial agent.”


Kreel will lead the squad and we’ll spend time getting to know why they’ve all chosen Team Empire instead of Team Rebellion. The motivation of the troopers was an important aspect Aaron wanted to explore. “The main thing I wanted to do was give more of a face to some of the stormtroopers. We’ve seen lots of them in the series, but they’ve all been pretty interchangeable, faceless bad guys. We haven’t gotten to know them. That was one of my favorite parts of The Force Awakens, getting to see and getting to know a real character who was a stormtrooper and somebody who, of course, has a conscience and changed his ways and joined up with the good guys. This is the opposite of that. It’s us peering inside the heads of somebody who is very gung-ho for the Empire and then the question, of course, is ‘Why? Why would you sign up to fight for the Empire?’ That’s something we’ll answer over the course of the story. We wanted to put a face on those enemies and also create a formidable group of bad guys because they’re up against our heroes,” Aaron says.

In some part, the members of the stormtrooper squad were inspired by the clone troopers. Aaron says, “Part of the inspiration for this group comes from the ‘Bad Batch’ characters who are from the unproduced episodes of The Clone Wars animated series, which I think you can still find the animatics for online. They were a ragtag bunch of clones working together in one small fighting force, so this in some ways inspired by and maybe linked to that.”

This fighting force is very capable and versatile. “[This is] a group that’s used to being dropped into all sorts of different circumstances and far corners of the galaxy. You drop these guys in, they can operate on their own, they can get done whatever sort of mission you need them to do. There are guys within that group who have different functions. There’s an explosives guy, a sniper, and a scout, and a big burly bazooka guy,” Aaron explains. StarWars.com has an exclusive early look at the squad below, though note that these are work-in-progress designs.

http://www.starwars.com/news/elite-stormtroopers-are-coming-in-star-wars-21-exclusive

 

Heh, Legacy 4 Joker Squad was the first thing that came to my mind as well. In any case, the trooper designs look so wicked, they may as well use them in a video game ala Republic Commando...although only after we get Republic Commando 2

 

How about Imperial Commando instead?

 

Oh, come on Karl, dis be for the General thread mon.

 

This looks really fun. I love Imperial centric stories and if they make this Stormtrooper sqaud likeable I'll be very pleased. I enjoy sympathetic Imperials; as long as it's clear they are on the wrong side.. It adds more depth to the conflict. I hope this squad is well developed and its members become multi arc antagonists

 

Sorry. We can get one of the mods to merge the threads.

GrandAdmiralJello or AdmiralNick22, can you guys take care of it?

 

Cheers, I do really like the look of the concept, so thanks for posting the info.

 

Just make this into the thread for issue #21 eh?

 

My initial thought is they did not look very 'starwarsy' and appear more like something out of Halo or the Ironman with its plethora of high tech. On a second look though they are actually quite neat designs and I wonder how it will turn out.

 

Interesting that he says he took the inspiration from the unproduced Bad batch TCW Arc. Having seen them on Youtube it was a really interesting take by Filoni and the crew on their own version of the 'Clone Commandos' and it worked really well.

Another thing is the faceless aspect of these troopers unlike Bad batch, although its early concept art i wonder if well see are first helmet-less Storm-troopers in these new issues.

 

Reminds me of the Bad Bach from the Clone Wars story reels. Maybe these are NuCanon successors to clone commandos?

EDIT: Just noticed that Bad Batch was the artist's inspiration

 

We've already seen one of them sans-uniform in an earlier issue of Star Wars.

 

Please include female stormtroopers, please include female stormtroopers...

 

First things first: a proper sequel to Republic Commando. If Imperial Commando is a suitable (sub)title for Republic Commando 2 then so be it.

 

How do you know they aren't already in those design images?

 

I suppose so.
Although will the writers try to write and 'humanize' by showing them working as a team and overcoming problems together like Bad batch or will they just be shown as an uber death squad.

 

I'm hoping they are. Really don't want stormtrooper armor with gravity field projectors on them. I just don't have that much faith in comic artists not to sexualize female armor of any kind.

 

OK, I was being more subtle about it, but yeah, that is what I was alluding to in the previous post.

 

The new canon's managed to avoid it with Rook Kast, and Sabine Wren - maybe that'll continue?

 

I know, just couldn't pass up the opportunity to reference a quote from EGTW.

True, but after Rae Sloane's appearance in Kanan had a couple of inconsistences from the other images we have of her, I'm not going to give comic artists the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

 

What were the inconsistencies? Remember the first pic of her is as a cadet - people change a bit over time:

 

I was thinking more about the contrast between this image and the one from the comic.

 

I think the last image was from the A New Dawn excerpt in Star Wars Insider. The comic image seems to have Young Rae's hairstyle, at least.

 

This new arc looks pretty cool. Aaron continues to branch out and get more interesting.