Star Wars #31: This issue isn't particularly exciting, as Soule spends most of it setting up the narrative framework for where we go from here. But it does give me hope for future issues now that he's accomplished that task.
The issue begins with the Kezarat Colony's leader - a green-skinned, one-eyed humanoid named Captain Blythe - expositing the Colony's history to the team. He describes the convoy's initial encounters with the Nihil and their Killdroids and the original colonists' suspicion that the Nihil had technology allowing them to come and go from No-Space. The original colonists eventually raided the Nihil's home base, the Great Hall, but found only the Killdroids. To this day, the Colony doesn't know whether the Nihil left No-Space or the Killdroids eradicated them.
Blythe's surprisingly human-looking son, Forvan, expresses disdain for Blythe leaving out the most important part (to him) of the tale, of a Jedi finding her way to the Colony and helping it fight off the Nihil. Blythe explains Forvan and others believe in a legend that a Jedi will one day free them and asks Luke to let Forvan down easy. When Luke tries, Forvan isn't having it. (Of course, *we* know that Forvan is right, so...)
Meanwhile, Chewie offers to go through the Colony's records to see if other people missed a clue, which Blythe agrees to let him do...in six months, when they start thinking like "olds" instead of "news." Blythe then separates the team into three groups: Chewie and Lobot, who sit around quietly; Holdo and Lando, who make out; and Leia and Luke, who discuss Luke's anxiety over leaving the sacred Jedi text on Holdo's ship. The issue ends with Chewie realizing that the glowing green light on the mural that Forvan showed them (the one that depicts the Jedi) is the Nihil path engine.
In addition to this issue's exposition, we thankfully get some characterization, particularly through Lando and Holdo's flirting. Lando asks if Holdo has any cards for them to play, and she tells him that she wouldn't play cards with him after everything she's heard about him from Leia. Lando laments that he feels stuck as the person that he was because no one believes that he is trying to change. Holdo encourages him not to worry about what other people think of him, a little disingenuous given she's the only who dismissed him based on what other people said about him. Maybe that's why she made out with him.
At any rate, hopefully we'll get some action - and not just Lando and Holdo's version of it - next issue.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #31: This issue's suspense coms from the fact that Valance is almost a match for Vader, but, of course, Vader eventually gets the upper hand. Vader being Vader, he doesn't just get the upper hand by physically besting Valance; he also destroys the village that Valance spared last issue. In so doing, he underscores for Valance the Empire's ability to negate his attempts to be a hero.
Haydenn volunteers to serve as Valance's executioner but instead uses her cybernetic eye to shoot him in a way that he'd survive and conveniently send him off a cliff where T'onga and her crew can collect him. Later, on Vader's ship, Haydenn dispatches Inferno Squad to track down Valance.
Meanwhile, on Corellia, as she listens to underlings plotting to replace her with Cadelia, Vukorah recalls her father forcing her as a child to kill her cat to prove her loyalty to the Unbroken Clan.
Overall, it's a solid issue, but I still feel like we're missing something. For example, I felt barely anything when Haydenn and Valance ended their relationship at gun point, because I don't really feel like Sacks did anything to convince me they really cared for the other one (despite their declarations here). It's probably a reflection of the fact we have way too much characters. Hopefully with Valance with T'onga's crew Sacks can focus the lens a little more tightly.
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