Comics Lando #4 (4 of 5)

Do women get in free to Land O Land?

 

Needs moar Hologram Fun World.

 

Another great issue. This is my favourite of the mini-series' so far.

 

This issue is a mixed bag for me, Lando and still awesome and I like his interactions with Sava but I am a little confused with the twins? lovers? and their talk about a clone. Another nitpick I have is that we have another "mysterious" masked character that turns out to be a woman (surprise!), it may have worked once but its starting to become too predictable for me. That being said, I'm still waiting for the last issue and see what happens with the sith artifacts.

 

I wonder who wore the mask. We know that Momin sculpted it, but for who?

 

Up until the unmasking there was practically zero proof Chanath was a woman

 

I'd like an in universe explanation for the similarity of Chanath's helmet and a typical helmet of a Mando. It's very similar, perhaps it is a Mandalorian helmet of some sort?

 

There was no indication that she was a guy, either. Men aren't the only ones who wear helmets.

 

Or just generic armour, not only the Mandalorians build such things after all.

 

I think the twins have been watching a bit too much Game of Thrones if you know what I mean.

 

Probably for a woman

 

Lord Momin WAS a woman too

 

I don't know why, but when I read it, the first pronunciation of Momin's name that came to my mind was French

Lord Mom-aa-n

 

Well, this one was pretty great. I don't know what I expected when this series was announced but it wasn't this, so consider me very pleasantly surprised. Not because I had low expectations, but because I love the direction it's taken. I've really liked how Lando always seems to be completely over his head but either doesn't realize it, or projects an air of confidence that fits the character.

So many expectations subverted with this one. Chanath being a woman isn't a huge surprise, I'd suspected it before, especially right before she removed her helmet, but I chose to favor my preconceived notion of her being male. It was Korin who was the real twist. Well done, comic.

And then the twins. I don't know what's going on there. Initially I thought they were a gay male couple, but given the other revelations in the comic and the fact that this is the first time we've heard them speak, I figure they could be two males, two females, heterosexual, part of some asexual species that does indeed need cloning to propogate the species, genetic clones that did fall in love, but because they're alien who knows if the rules (i.e. that clones are basically identical twins) would be the same... it could be so many possibilities and I love it. I hope the creators never clarify.

The mood of this comic has just been so good. Getting the close up of the blue eyes, that red flash in the single panel, unnoticed by Lando or Korin, there's a fantastic creepiness that not only adds to the atmosphere of this story but to allure of the Emperor in general. This is what I like to see.

 

Read this issue again - one thing I consistently like about this series is that Lando is, like, thoroughly ungood. He's not a nice person. He's aware that he's not reliable. He has to do bad stuff sometimes. He looks out for himself. Same goes for Han in his comics, too, and I think the EU became really good at forgetting that about these characters.

 

That's a great point. Lando was always best in the old EU when he was doing some sort of zany business venture. And while he frequently did that in the earlier EU books, he didn't have the opportunity in the NJO and acted like a reformed businessman in the LOTF/FOTJ (where he rarely appeared... maybe that bit with Jaina in FOTJ, but his role was brief). The NJO-FOTJ being several dozen books, that's a long time both in and out-of-universe to have Lando -- and Han for that matter -- behave as characters different than the ones they started out as.

 

There was an interesting essay on Eleven-Thirty-Eight about how Lando was best in the EU as a general - and how moving him back to zany businessman was a mistake:

http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2013/11/the-case-of-the-disappearing-generals/

 

Yeah, but the problem is that Lando wasn't really used as a general much in the EU. Mindor was one of the few books that pulled that off. Most of his role NJO-onward was pretty forgettable.

 

His generalling tended to be more in comics than books (Dark Empire in particular) though in Hand of Thrawn he does take command of the fleet above Bothawui, even if we don't see him do much with it - since the battle against the ISDs mostly takes place "offscreen".

That said, in Lando Calrissian & The StarCave of ThonBoka, he's, in practice, the general of the Oswaft force, since they've never made war before.

 

It didn't bother me so much in post-RotJ stories, but I always noticed that stories that took place before ANH the old EU was always somewhat unwilling to paint Lando and Han with a less than admirable brush.

 

I don't know - Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy did show his dark side - even if he was unwilling to smuggle slaves, he had no qualms whatsoever about smuggling glitterstim.