Star Wars #81Cover dated: March 1984
Issue title:
Jawas of DoomScript: Mary Jo Duffy
Artwork: Ronald Frenz (breakdowns)/Tom Palmer (finished art & inks)/Tom Mandrake (finished art & inks)
Colours: Ken Feduniewicz (uncredited)
Letters: Joe Rosen
Cover art: Tom Palmer
Overall rating: 10 out of 10
Plot summary: The morning after the Battle of Endor and the Rebel Alliance's victory over the Empire, Princess Leia finds Han Solo in an irritable mood as a result of his not having any ready money available. Leia suggests that she or the Rebellion loan him some funds, but this angers Han and he storms off, telling Leia that he's always made it on his own in the past and that he doesn't belong to the Rebellion or anything else. Heading back to the
Millennium Falcon, Han takes time to reacquaint himself with his freighter, having been away from her for almost a year, while he was frozen in carbonite and a prisoner of the bounty hunter Boba Fett. As Han wistfully explores the interior of the ship, Chewbacca boards the craft and hugs his partner, as Han is overcome with emotion.
Some time later, Han, Leia, and R2-D2 leave for Tatooine in the
Falcon, since Solo has remembered that he has some credits locked away in a bank account in Mos Eisley. Upon arriving at the spaceport town, Han learns that his account was been frozen and cannot be accessed because the banking computer believes that he is still in suspended animation.
Meanwhile, out in the Dune Sea, Boba Fett has been regurgitated by the Sarlacc creature, which had swallowed and supposedly killed him during the battle on Jabba's Sail Barge. The unconscious form of the bounty hunter is picked up by a group of roaming Jawas, who mistake him for a droid and take him back to their Sandcrawler.
Back in Mos Eisley, Leia suggests that R2 speak to the bank's computer to help them access Han's credits, but they find the little astrodroid missing and tiny footprints on the floor where they left him. Han deduces that R2 has been stolen by Jawas, so he and Leia appropriate a pair of landspeeders and head out into the Dune Sea to search for him. They soon catch up with the Jawas' Sandcrawler, which unbeknown to them also contains the unconscious body of Fett. As Han attempts to board the vehicle, he crashes his landspeeder into its Caterpillar-tracks, jamming the wheels and sending it accelerating toward the Sarlacc pit. The Sandcrawler then comes under attack from a tribe of angry Sand People. Between dodging laser blasts from the Jawas and the Sand People, Solo manges to rescue R2 from the doomed vehicle, but when he attempts to rescue Fett, the bounty hunter comes to his senses and, recognising Solo's face and name, opens fire on him. Han leaps from the Sandcrawler at the last moment, as it falls into the Sarlacc's maw and is swallowed, with Fett still on board.
Comments: Well, here we are then – adventures beyond the original trilogy at last!
Star Wars #81 is somewhat significant for being the first time in any medium that a post-
Return of the Jedi story had been told, and – putting its appallingly bad and needlessly tongue-in-cheek title aside for a second – I reckon this is a pretty fantastic start. In fact, I'm gonna pin my colours to the mast right now and say that this comic is hands down my favourite single issue of the entire run. Hell, I even picked it as my all-time favourite comic of
any run in the forum's 2014 Classic Comics Christmas event.
Let's begin with that front cover, and what about it, eh? I've noted before how lucky
Star Wars fans were to have had inker Tom Palmer working on the comic, but his painted cover for this issue is just something else. Let's have a look at a bigger version of it, shorn of the book's logos, as it was originally rendered...
This movie poster-esque painting is so gorgeous and Palmer's likenesses of the cast so good that your humble reviewer even has it on a t-shirt, dear readers...
If anything, the story inside is even more impressive than the cover. "Jawas of Doom" (man, how I hate that title!) is a stand alone, done-in-one story that begins the day after the Ewok celebration at the end of
Return of the Jedi and, judging from comments made by Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian, it certainly seems as if the Ewoks know how to throw a party!
Writer Jo Duffy very much focuses on Han Solo in this issue and shows us something of the emotional toll that losing close to a year of his life encased in carbonite has taken on him. We see the Corellian smuggler adjusting to being back among the living, with the attendant money troubles that this has brought him. Duffy examines whether or not a freewheeling individual like Han can ever really become a team-player in a structured organisation like the Rebellion. We see him torn between playing the part of the honoured war hero and his tendency towards being a natural-born scoundrel. Duffy also takes an opportunity to show us just how far out of touch with the real galaxy Solo has become, during a conversation with a character named Garrick in Mos Eisley...
There are also some rather tender moments in the story, such as when we see Leia trying to comfort Han in a Mos Eisley cantina and coax him through his soul searching...
The underlying theme of this issue is how Han is going to adapt to this brave new galaxy that he finds himself in. The Empire is no more and Jabba the Hutt is dead, but will he settle down and remain a part of the Rebel Alliance or return to his former life of smuggling? Of course,
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens has shown us that, actually, both of these things happened in the years following
Return of the Jedi, but you've really got to hand it to Duffy for addressing these difficult questions as soon as she possibly could and as early as 1983, which is when this comic was written.
Don't get me wrong though, it's not all angst and introspection: there's plenty of action in this issue and the scripting is as excellent as ever, with Duffy capturing the "voices" of Han and Leia so well that you can almost hear Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher delivering the dialogue. There's also a decent amount of humour and a gripping, action-packed climax too, featuring the brief return of Boba Fett. From things that I've read online over the years, it seems as if many
Star Wars fans had a problem with Duffy resurrecting Fett, but personally, I think it was a bold and exciting move. Fett's appearance lends this issue a "classic" feel and a level of significance that it might not otherwise have had.
Speaking to comics historian Glenn Greenberg in
Back Issue #9 from 2005, Duffy recalled how hard she petitioned the book's editor Louise Jones to allow her to use Fett: "
We were getting away with murder even attempting that story. There was a very strict hands-off edict issued on Boba Fett. I really wanted to use him, so I argued passionately to Louise that if we took him out, played with him a bit, and put him back where we got him, we'd have satisfied our own and the audience's ongoing jones for some Fett action, without having breached any of Lucasfilm's rules. Louise agreed to let us try, and no one at Lucasfilm fired any shots when we ran the plot up the flagpole."
To my mind, bringing Fett back because the Sarlacc found him indigestible was fine and rather exciting if you were a fan of the character, which I most definitely was. However, dumping him back into the Sarlacc at the end of the story – inside a small Jawa Sandcrawler, no less – seems a little bit contrived, although as the above quote shows, it was necessary from Duffy and Marvel's point of view.
Actually, while we're on the subject of Fett, it seems pretty unlikely to me that such seasoned scavengers as the Jawas would initially mistake him for a droid. I mean, surely they could've just taken his helmet off? For his part, Fett actually spends a lot of this issue unconscious or suffering from amnesia, but he does regain his senses near the end, when he tries to kill Han. Duffy writes Han very much as a hero at heart during this scene, although the Corellian does struggle with the temptation of letting Fett die...
This is yet another example of how Duffy gives us a very nuanced, mature and human portrayal of the Corellian smuggler in this issue. It's also a good example of the little character moments that Duffy sprinkles liberally throughout the comic and, ultimately, it's these moments that make this issue such a joy to read. For example, there's an emotional and touching scene in the
Falcon's cockpit, in which Han, overwhelmed by all that has happened to him recently, breaks down in Chewbacca's arms...
Another little character moment that I absolutely love is when we see Chewie napping with some Ewok babies in the treetop village. Duffy demonstrates a formidable knowledge of
Star Wars minutia too, when she has Han examine the dice he won the
Falcon with. Those dice only appeared in a few blink-and-you'll-miss-them scenes in
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, so full marks to Duffy for incorporating them into this issue.
Something that puzzles me, however, is whether all of this issue takes places the day after
Return of the Jedi. We learn from a denizen of Mos Eisley, who initially propositions Leia as if she's a street walker (what is it with Duffy and prostitutes lately?!), that since Jabba's death, the Jawas have become much more aggressive – even going so far as to attack the Sand People on occasion. This comment means that there must've been a delay of a few days, if not weeks, between the start of this issue and Han, Leia and R2 leaving Endor for Tatooine. The beginning of this comic definitely takes place the day after the destruction of the second Death Star, but if the scenes on the streets of Mos Eisley are occurring in the same time frame, then Jabba would've only been dead for a day or two at most, which obviously wouldn't allow time for things to change that much on Tatooine.
On the subject of Tatooine, I should also note that there's what looks to be a tiny continuity gaff when Garrick mentions that the last time Han left Mos Eisley he failed to pay his docking fees, to which Han replies that he was "in a bit of a hurry." This is almost certainly a reference to the scene in
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope where Han blasts his way out of Mos Eisley in the
Falcon, narrowly escaping the Empire's troops. However, within the Marvel continuity, Han had actually been back to Tatooine and Mos Eisley since then, in
Star Wars #31 and #32. He last left the spaceport at the beginning of issue #33, but there's no mention in that comic of it being a particularly hurried departure, although it does mention that the
Falcon's crew and passengers are relieved to have gotten off of the planet without attracting any unwanted Imperial attention. So, I suppose it's feasible that Garrick is, in fact, referring to that later departure, rather than the one seen in the original
Star Wars film. As such, I'm gonna let this slide and not log it as an actual continuity problem. Something I will be logging, however, is the fact that the
Millennium Falcon's sensor dish is still intact, despite it being knocked off inside the Death Star during the Battle of Endor, just the day before!
As ever, Ron Frenz and Tom Palmer's artwork shines in this issue, but there's an additional inker this time, in the shape of Tom Mandrake. In 2011, Frenz told the jedinews.co.uk website that he ran late on this particular issue and that's why Mandrake was brought in. No doubt having Palmer tied up with painting that gorgeous cover was another reason why a second inker was needed.
Mandrake inks the second half of this story and his work is noticeably different to Palmer's slick style, being slightly more "cartoony", for want of a better term. However, the transition between inkers isn't too jarring and Mandrake's work is quite inventive at times. I particularly like how he tries to create a motion blur effect in the panel where Han and Leia are speeding side by side across the plains of Tatooine in their landspeeders...
The effect is quite impressive and definitely gets the point across. This was in the days before digital manipulation of comic books made adding things like motion blurs relatively easy, so I think Mandrake does a very passable job under the circumstances. I should also note that Glynis Wein is erroneously credited with coloring this issue, when actually it was Ken Feduniewicz, as noted on the letters page of issue #85.
Overall, this is simply a fantastic issue. It's great to finally have Han Solo back in the
Star Wars comic again, and not as a carbonite slab or in a flashback sequence, which is how he'd made his few appearances since issue #43 (not counting the
Return of the Jedi comic adaptation, of course). Although David Michelinie, Archie Goodwin and Jo Duffy all did a fantastic job of telling exciting stories without using Han, let's be honest, Solo is one of the best things about the
Star Wars saga, so he was always going to be a sorely missed member of the main cast.
Star Wars #81 is a bold, daring comic, in which Duffy resurrects Boba Fett and examines the difficult subject of Solo's post-carbon freeze dislocation with aplomb. This is Duffy at the height of her powers. She's in complete control of her characters here, firing on all cylinders, supremely confident and delivering an exciting, fast-paced adventure that really does feel like a
Star Wars film. If I could give this issue 11 out of 10, I would.
Continuity issues:
- The Millennium Falcon is shown as still having its sensor dish intact, when it had been destroyed during the Battle of Endor, only the day before this issue takes place.
Favourite panel:
Favourite quote: "No … No, I'm not, uh … working. I'm waiting for a friend. He has business inside." – A flustered and shocked Princess Leia explains to an alien what she's doing, after being mistaken for a prostitute.
