Captain America & The Winter Soldier Special #1: I'll admit that Lanzing and Kelly do a great job with each successive issue in making the Outer Circle's ability to influence outcomes more and more believable. This issue pretty much seals the deal for me.
We begin at the beginning (a very good place to start) as we watch the Power convene the Circle for the first time in 1922. He is a Latverian prince; the Money is the world's first (secret) multibillionaire, the Machine is Wakanda's former engineering chief, and the Love is Europe's most prominent underground artist. Brilliantly, the Revolution is Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian student who assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. He's there to riot against the rest of the Circle's stabs at oligarchy: to keep them honest, if you will.
As we've seen, he resolves to commit suicide after a century of failing to stop the Circle. As the Love later informs Bucky, Princip selected Bucky to succeed him because he believed that Bucky could achieve his goal. The Love warns Bucky that the Money and the Power won the last century through an iron-clad alliance and the Machine is insane, having sacrificed her own child at one point.
But all isn't great for the Circle. Four of their five Starpoints are off the table: the Destroyer is dead, Dryad is "self-aware," the Redacted is "malfunctioning," and Bucky is now at the table. As such, they only have left the Reactor: Zola.
Elsewhere, Peggy realizes that Bucky was right, and he contacts her, asking her to serve as his Starpoint to help take down the Circle. The thing I like about this entire arrangement is that he's supposed to do that. He's an inside agent in a conspiracy, just like the Revolution is supposed to be. It's what he was trying to tell Steve in "Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty "#6 but Steve wasn't listening. Somehow I doubt he will now.
Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca #7: We get a pretty great jail-break story here, and that's a high bar because I've read a lot of jailbreak stories over the years.
For the story to work, you have to believe that Phaedra is capable of devising a concoction that makes it seem like Chewie is dead but allows him to revive later. But she was on the cleaning detail so it's within my reasonable suspension of disbelief to do so. At some point, Chewie quips to Max that Phaedra reminds him of Han, a similarity underscored when the trio makes it all the way to the landing pad only to discover that the ship Phaedra planned on swiping had departed.
Thankfully, Han arrives after seeing a news bulletin on the planet where Tanna dumped him about Chewie's pending execution. The story behind Han's survival is the issue's only eye-rolling part, as Tanna objected to Greedo shooting Han again after realizing that he wasn't dead yet. Tanna claims that she isn't a murderer, which...doesn't really track with what we've seen.
All in all, it's a solid end to a tight arc. The issue concludes with Han brining Phaedra with him and Chewie to find Greedo on Tatooine. It'll be good for such old friends to catch up.
Star Wars: Hidden Empire #1: Ugh.
To be fair, this issue isn't awful when it comes to the plot. Qi'ra reveals to Darth Sidious that the Screaming Key, which the Knights of Ren previously stole from Fortress Vader, activates the Fermata Cage. She's apparently implementing a plan that Darth Maul originally devised. As she exposits, someone used the Cage to trap an ancient Sith Lord. Qi'ra wants to unfreeze them so that they can go after Sidious and Darth Vader. It's a solid plan, honestly. Sidious seems almost scared.
Qi'ra's problem is that the Archivist can't figure out a way to open the Cage. She tries using the Knights and technology that a group called the Ascendancy developed to mimic the Dark Side of the Force, but the attempt fails. Sidious now knows what Qi'ra is planning, so the clock is ticking. But the Knights quit, leaving the Archivist with limited options.
Again, I'm actually intrigued by all that. My complaint is that Soule uses an incredible amount of text boxes to get us there. Qi'ra's conversation with Sidious alone takes up what feels like pages of text. For a sequel to a sequel of an event that no one seems to want, Soule needs to kick it up a notch in subsequent issues now that he's set the stakes.
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