There is a lot I love about this issue and, alas, a lot that drives me crazy.

First the good: this a great use of Lando as a quick witted, charming scoundrel. I've complained before about how the comics have had difficulty using Lando (and to be fair they got better) but I think this my favourite use of him. Lando is a much smoother character than the scruffy Han and in many ways this feels much more like his world - sure he can fly a ship and fire but he is someone who can slip into the diplomatic world better than anyone except Leia. I also think he had a lot of fun chemistry with the very sexy Sarna, who sort of comes across as the anti-Leia (more on her in a moment.)

I also love the design of Drogheda which feels very Marvel Star Wars in that wonderful space opera way the comic can manage. The planet and society are not as ambitious as Iskalon but there is considerable beauty to the landscapes and people we see.

Unfortunately I have a couple of serious problems with the story. Firstly there is the planets name. I understand that not many Americans will have heard of the real Drogheda but to an Irishman it is just incredibly jarring to hear it be used as the name of a planet in the GFFA. Drogheda (the real one) is a fairly substantial town with a particularly important role in Irish history. It would be like naming the planet Salem for Americans or Hastings for Britain. What's worse is that having settled on an Irish name for the planet and an Irish name for the queen's sister the naming convention is dropped halfway through - Princess Danu of Drogheda is sibling to the very un-Irish sounding Queen Sarna and enemy to the even less Irish-sounding Harlech. I know the impact wouldn't mean much to someone outside Ireland but it really jarred me out of the story.

My other problem is going to sound very strange, but I found the politics of the story a bit... odd. Star Wars has a complex relationship with royalty: the Emperor is evil but Princess Leia is heroic and the very name 'Jedi Knight' evokes nobility. Sweetheart Contract has a weird vibe that seems to suggest that the problem with Queen Sarna is not that she is a spoiled airhead (though she is) but that there is a stark choice between monarchy and democracy, with monarchy being very much a Bad Thing, an idea that seems both at odds with anyone who has visited a constitutional monarchy and, again, with the Star Wars universe. It would be a bit different if Sarna was presented as a dictator directly installed by the Empire but she seems to have inherited her throne from her father. I don't see why Danu couldn't just have said she'd reform the government or let the people decide. It all seems very cut and dry, but surely if Queen Sarna is that bad she should be put on trial by the people? Unless we are meant to see Danu as more of a shady character than it first seems.

(It might be seen as a bit of irony that immediately after overthrowing the apparently despotic rulership of the world in name of 'democracy' Danu effectively issues a royal command letting her sister go free, but I don't think that irony was intentional, just like the choice of planet name.)

Wow, reading that back makes it seem like I hated the story. Despite my problems I really didn't and I'm a bit sorry we never saw Sarna again. Poor Lando.

Yes, I think I made mention in my review that a lot of this comic has a Flash Gordon-esque quality to it. I have no problem with that at all, especially given what a big influence that strip was on Star Wars as a whole.




I had no idea about this. I agree that to an Irish person, that would be jarring. I think I might edit my review to include this nugget of info. Are you from Ireland, rossn?




Fair point. And I especially agree that the ending of the story, like a number of other one-shots in the series, was unrealistically cut and dried. But I'm not sure that I see the idea of having an oppressive monarchy at odds with the vibe of the Star Wars universe. I mean, here on earth, we have benign monarchies, symbolic monarchies, and despotic monarchies...so why not in that galaxy far, far away?




Yeah, for me, the punning of the title justifies the use of an earth place name for the planet that Han and Chewbacca visit in this comic.




I think that the small squad of Imperials we see in this issue is perfectly in line with the state of the Empire in the ongoing series during this period. I have a much bigger problem with the huge Imperial armada that appears over the planet Solay in issue #89. That really doesn't fit in very well with the post-ROTJ status quo that Duffy had created.

Ha! Yes, the planet of Avalon-4 certainly sounds a lot better than Birmingham-4.




Wow! Now there's a question. I guess that ultimately he'd be much too powerful to take alive, so killing him was eally the Rebellion's only option.




Yes, and that's why it's best to treat all three continuities seperately, in my view. Although I was annoyed back in the '90s when Dark Horse and West End Games etc decided to dispense with the Marvel Comics' continuity entirely, I'm now of the opinion -- having seen three distinct eras of the "expanded universe" come or go -- that they should all be separate from each other.

Rather than viewing them as "legends", I very much tend to view the original Marvel continuity as being an entirely separate universe to the Dark Horse/West End Games/Timothy Zahn etc continuity, and that timeline as a different universe to the current Disney continuity. I know that, in reality, it's not quite as cut and dried as that (we had Shira/Lumiya in the Marvel and DH/WEGs continuity, for example), but in my mind that's how it is. To make a Marvel superheroes analogy, to me, the current Disney continuity is the Earth-616 universe, while the Dark Horse continuity might be viewed as the Earth-1610 (Ultimates Universe) and the original Marvel SW as Earth-311 (Marvel 1602 Universe).

For a Rebel Princess Leia is not very rebellious.

I said it before and I know that is a weird thing to say. Of the main cast Leia is by far the most ideologically commited to the Rebellion. In many ways she is the heart and soul of the movement. That being said, as Confessor's choice of quote makes clear, Leia did not come to the Rebellion as an adult, after some personal turning point or tragedy. She was raised in opposition to the Empire and her beliefs are Bail Organa's beliefs. That doesn't mean she doesn't think about them - she comes across as far too smart and passionate a woman to simply be parroting someone else's view - but it does make her different to Han or Luke or Lando, and in think in some ways she probably does still have the most black and white attitude to the Galactic Civil War.

I've always enjoyed issues where Leia is forced to come face to face with dedicated Imperials who disagree with her politics but don't fall easily into a corrupt, power hungry standard Imperial box. In many ways they make a fascinating counterpart to Han confronting his own foils in the Rik Duel Gang. This story is the most memorable, and given the Alderaan connection, the most personal but equally interesting is her dealings with Major Grau in the World of Fire arc (from Star Wars Weekly) and Admiral Lieutenant Giel in Golrath Never Forgets! (#65) - respectively an Imperial patriot who refuses an offer to defect out of principle and an officer who even after being demoted is willing to sacrifice himself if it means killing Leia on the belief that her death would be a far greater blow to the Rebels than his would be to the Empire.

As I've said though this probably the most memorable of the stories where Leia has to confront someone who simply rejects her beliefs without being an unthinking drone, who considers her a traitor. As you say Confessor, the TIE pilot doesn't have the most well thought out philosophy but there is genuine weight to his conversations with Leia, and to the fact that she is able to get through to him. None of the previous encounters had truly happy endings, and perhaps neither does The Alderaan Factor! but I think this is the one that shows her best, at her most mature, wisest and most compassionate.

Weirdly, I think the original Marvel comics run was one of the few things out of continuity during the 90's - Splinter of the Mind's Eye got a graphic novel treatment by Dark Horse in 1996, and both the Brian Daley Han Solo books and the L. Neil Smith Lando books were slotted into the timeline by A.C. Crispin in her late 90's Han Solo book. 

West End Games seems to have been pretty much always in continuity - Timothy Zahn researched WEG books when he was writing the Thrawn Trilogy and WEG produced sourcebooks for most of the novels.

I think the problem the 90's writers had was that while it was very easy to make something like Han Solo at Stars End fit continuity because it was set at some indeterminate point before the films started it was much, much harder to work in the Marvel comics.

Back in the day of 1983 I was too young to even read anything from Marvel Comics whether it was Spider Man, original Uncanny X Men or even the old Marvel Comics Star Wars. Return of the Jedi at the drive in theater in summer of 1983 was when I got into Star Wars.

Then in 1984 thats when the old Return of the Jedi 1-4 issue mini series was around at the time in stores at small town pharmacy stores etc.

I didnt get into the old Marvel comics Star Wars comics until later at the tail end of 1984 and a little bit of 1985 and then I was more into Groo, Power Pack, Alpha Flight, G.I. Joe, Spider Ham and the NOW Comics series of Ghostbusters and Terminator.

For those older than me. Im 36 so you people who are in your 40s or even 50s you are the ones that grew up  more with the old Marvel Comics Star Wars series so you know more about that stuff than I do.

yeah I  bought the Dark Horse Omnibuses that are the trades of the old Marvel Star wars but all I know a little bit is that theres weird wacky stuff such as fish alien people that wear bubble helmets to breathe water and then theres space pirates that look like they came from the old X Men comics.

I definitely agree with all of the praise given to SW #81.  After ROTJ came out in Summer '83, my focus was really on that film & the action figures, etc. (I obviously saw the movie several times in the theater).  I wasn't really collecting the SW comics to any great extent after the film came out that May.  Plus, my comic collecting was limited at that time anyway, due to being a kid & not having a drivers license, etc.

However, when SW #81 came out that fall, I ended up borrowing it from a friend - and, at the time I thought it was cool that they were expanding the story beyond ROTJ.  This issue remains possibly my favorite post-ROTJ SW issue; I thought it was interesting how the story almost made you feel sorry for Boba Fett to a certain extent, especially given that Han/Leia tried to save him from falling back into the Saarlac pit.  I also liked the return to Tattoine aspect, since it brought to mind the earlier issues where Luke went back to Tattoine (that took place between ANH & ESB).

And, that cover art by Tom Palmer is gorgeous!