Yeah, I saw that you had "liked" that review. I hope you found what I wrote at least semi-interesting.

I quite like the Red Queen arc as a whole, but that last part is undermined a little bit by Archie Goodwin's attempts to bridge the gap between his ongoing post-SW stories and the imminent start of his ESB adaptation -- such as with the hasty reinstatement of the bounty on Han Solo's head. I mean, I do appreciate Goodwin's efforts, but they feel a little bit clunky.

Still, as I say, the Red Queen arc is pretty enjoyable overall. I like that it's tone is slightly darker than most of the Goodwin/Infantino run. It also brings the Tagge family saga to a pretty satisfying close -- although this is not the last we shall see of Domina Tagge in the series.




That's interesting that your feelings are so "one extreme or the other". I do think that, as much as I love this series, it did tend to be a bit up or down in terms of quality. It's not unusual to have three or four great issues and then you suddenly get a really lame filler issue. Still, I think the standard is pretty good generally. For me though, the best era of the series starts with issue #39 (part 1 of the ESB adaptation) and goes right through to around issue #87 or #88. It's only after that, for the final 18 or so issues, that it really started to suck.

All issues were pretty much fully scripted (not done "Marvel method") and those scripts had to be approved by Lucasfilm. At this point in the run, the restrictions weren't too bad: they were not allowed to advance the Luke and Leia relationship or detail any events from the Old Republic or feature green space- rabbits (more's the pity!). But It's not until after the release of ROTJ that the restrictions got really draconian and stifling for Jo Duffy, who was the comic's regular writer at that point.

Yes, and Captain Valance dying was a great loss to the cast of original Marvel characters too. Valance was probably one of the top 3 most memorable original characters from the series.

Yeah, I kinda like this issue just for its weirdness...and Michael Golden's gorgeous art, of course. It's not an amazing story or anything, but it's a refreshing "palette cleanser" of an issue. I probably said this in my review, but I think the organic look of the alien spacecraft was likely inspired by the movie Alien. There's also a Japanese manga influence to Golden's art, I believe.

Can't say that I'd ever noticed Williamson's art was better in this issue than in earlier ones particularly, but fair enough...its all a matter of taste after all. I do rather like Williamson's take on Cloud City here though: it's much more open and spaceous than the film version, with high-level walkways and open plazas (much like some of the Ralph MacQuarrie concept art, which no doubt informed Williamson take on the gas mine to some extent).

Finished that one last night.

The “I am your father…” moment didn’t seem to have the impact within the comic. Now, I *should* know my own mind, but two hypotheses come to mind:

1.) Knowing that revelation due to having seen the film meant the impact was going to be lessened. This could apply with any adaptation that covered a twist from a film.

2.) While panels are action-driven/epic, they are also static due to the very nature of being a comic panel. Perhaps the very nature of it being an image on a page lessened it, especially when you consider point one.

Yeah, the Carmine Infantino artwork (with help from the amazing Gene Day) is pretty nice in this issue. It's up there with Infantino's best work on the series, I'd say. I also agree that this is a very memorable adventure, with plenty of action and a tightly written script. It does have its flaws, such as Kligson not being terribly well fleshed out and the entire mission to Droid World not really making a whole lot of sense, but still, I agree that this is a nice little palette cleanser from the usual Star Wars fare.