Star Wars #5 (Marvel, 2015)
DEAR GOD EVERYONE IN STAR WARS IS EXHAUSTING. That was pretty much my sentiment throughout this entire issue of Marvel’s Star Wars series, which features the following people prominently:
- Luke, being like GOLLY I JUST WANNA BE A GOOD JEDI with big wide genuine eyes, while lamenting, over and over again, about Obi-Wan being gone and suppressing his rage, because he is absolutely Anakin’s son.
- HAN AND LEIA. OMFG. There are entire pages of this issue that are literally just them bitching at each other. The worst part is that they never ever find anything new to fight about, not ever, at any point. It’s always “your ship sucks” “blahblah YOUR WORSHIPFULNESS” “you suck” “fine I’ll leave” “OK” “no wait I’ll stay” and seriously: these two are MORE tiring than OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN WERE, and please recall the 17,000 Obikin Arguments I have summarized here thus far. Good grief. No wonder Luke kept leaving to go learn about the Force or whatever. I’d be making up excuses to get away from them, too.
- Boba Fett. OK, well, first of all, he actually at least does something in this issue to support his “reputation” for a change. This, as opposed to him just being a humorless dude standing around in Mando armor while Star Wars insists that I believe that he’s The Biggest Badass because they said so. Anyways, he throws down a few times in his quest to learn more about Luke and Obi-Wan, although it’s really kind of over-the-top unnecessary, like he heard me dragging him and was like “OH I’LL SHOW HER!”
Anyways, this issue has a lot of the dramatics above, as all of these folks go off in search of something: Boba, for information on his targets; Han and Leia, for a nice neighborhood to settle down and set up a Hidden Rebel Base; and Luke, for stuff to steal from a dead man’s house, just as I’d speculated. In the end, they will all mostly just end up finding Drama. How surprising. OK, let’s get to it!
Luke Skywalker, Prodigal Son of Sand
Luke arrives on Tatooine and is like “WHOOPS guess I was wrong when I said I’d never come back here! And last time I left I said there was nothing left for me here…”
Meanwhile, Boba Fett is at the Mos Eisley cantina and he’s wrecking up the place like IMMEDIATELY: who knows about Kenobi and who knows about his kid he was dragging around with him? Please allow me a moment to once again delight in the fact that Vader sent Boba Fett out on a mission to find out everything he could about what Obi-Wan was up to in his exile years. VADER IS SO OBSESSED WITH THAT GUY AND IT KILLS ME. Vader’s eternal Kenobi fixation is by a wide margin one of my favorite things about the entire franchise.
Anyways, while in the bar, one guy tries to challenge Fett, they get into it, and Fett then makes this big huge show of detailing out how much he’s kicked the guy’s ass like OK WE GET IT FETT YOU ARE ACTUALLY A BADASS AND NOT JUST A GUY WHO’S BAD AT HIS JOB SOR-RY:
Eventually, one guy at the bar tries to make a break for it, while protesting that he doesn’t know anything about the kid Obi-Wan was dragging around on some damn fool idealistic crusade! Fett is not buying it:
The Solos, Stuck In An Infinite Loop of Sass
So now we cut to a stolen Imperial shuttle that’s carrying Han and Leia, and really, this entire page can just be summarized with this smug shot of Han:
The long and short of it here is that the Falcon sustained damage, and Han needs replacement part to fix it. He wants to get said parts, but he was told he needed permission from Leia to do it. She snits back that they need every resource they can get until they can establish a new Hidden Rebel Base and Han says the line above.
Finally Leia’s like OK, well as much as I absolutely would like you to leave very much please right now, we need actual help and since Luke abandoned us for neither the first nor last time to go Feel Ways About Obi-Wan and His Dad, you have to stay here and assist us. And when we’re done, you can have your ship parts.
Han retorts that all he’s been DOING is helping her lately, and she is like “whatever that was days ago, quit living in the past.”
He’s all FINE I’ll HELP YOU, and then she’s like “…so what will you do once you fix your ship then gosh I hope you don’t leave TAKE ME NOW I mean whatever I don’t even care what you do I hate you and I hate your ass face!” and Han brats back that SHE needs to stop living in the FUTURE.
I like Han and Leia fine and all, but can we all please acknowledge that their relationship has always been pretty dysfunctional? LOL.
Luke Skywalker, Mall Rat
Boba is now torturing this poor random kid that he found at the bar, demanding details about Luke’s identity. Finally the guy spits out:
LOL. He used to hang out at Tosche Station. Wait, so was Tosche Station like the mall on Tatooine where all the kids went to chill? THAT’S why Luke wanted to go there? Was the whole power converters thing 19-year-old Luke’s way of saying “But I was gonna go to the Westbrook Mall to buy an Orange Julius!”
Recurring Theme: Boba Fett, Ends Things On a Low Note
The kid continues: I saw him in Mos Eisley one day with Ben Kenobi, but I don’t know what they were up to! They were trying to get off-world, that’s all I know! Luke just wanted to live a life free of sand just like ALL OF US!
Fett, satisfied with this information, starts to leave and then murders the guy. Well then.
They Call Him The Seeker
It’s dusk now and Luke is headed towards Obi-Wan’s old bachelor pad with Artoo in tow. I cannot handle Artoo hanging out with Luke even the tiniest bit everyone it is the best and worst thing and I will NEVER GET OVER IT. Artoo became FRIENDS WITH ANAKIN’S BOY. Kill me.
Anyways, Luke is being a sweet little desert peanut here, touchingly reflecting on how he needs to learn so much more to be a Jedi. He didn’t get enough time with Ben, but…he feels like even still, the man has something left to teach him.
He explains:
Sorry, Luke. Obi-Wan is not super great at being extremely straightforward sometimes. He was raised by people like a backwards-speaking wizard muppet and a maverick space hippie, OK? He’s doing his best. Also he kind of thought maybe you didn’t need the baggage of knowing your father was supposed to be the Jedi Messiah but then became Satan’s pool boy instead quite yet.
Recurring Theme: Luke Skywalker, Son of Anakin Skywalker
Luke is startled out of his little Wistful Musings About Obi-Wan because OH HEY: it’s the Tusken Raiders! Luke springs into action, using that one lightsaber that the Tuskens may remember from That Time Anakin Skywalker Went Absolutely Apeshit on Their Settlement a Few Decades Ago:
Recurring Theme: Leia Organa, Surrounded By Incompetence
Oh my LORD. OK, I could pretty much just show you this picture of Leia making an Anakin Suppressing The Dark Side Face here and that would be a fairly accurate accounting of the rest of the Han/Leia scene in this issue.
There’s a BUNCH of blahblahblah about what they’re doing (looking for a remote location for a new Hidden Rebel Base) and Han keeps complaining about how come HE doesn’t get to be the captain and then they spend a bunch of time arguing about how Han came into possession of the Falcon in the first place and just OH MY GOD. Get a room. Or just stop talking to each other.
Recurring Theme: Our Hope Lies With These Complainers Who Keep Flirting With Each Other
The Empire mercifully cuts in here to save me as a couple of TIE fighters show up and ask for clearance codes. Leia is like THANKS FOR LETTING THEM FOLLOW US HAN MAYBE IF YOU HADN’T BEEN WHINING YOU COULD HAVE DONE YOUR JOB and Han is like “Fine, so, I fucked up. Clearly this means I should get to be the pilot now gimme the controls” and, just like with the Clone Wars, I am once again struck by an overwhelming sense of I CANNOT BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE WERE TWO OF OUR MAIN HEROES BECAUSE HOW DID THEY EVER GET ANYTHING DONE.
Leia, focused, tells him to stop flipping out — this is why they stole an Imperial ship in the first place! She transmits a code to the other ships but Han, stupidly, is like WAIT NO THEY’LL NEVER BUY IT and takes over the controls from Leia and starts to fly away — JUST as they were about to be cleared. GOOD JOB, SOLO. WTF.
*eyeroll*
Recurring Theme: Leia Would Have Fit In Really Well With The Space Family
Of course, their random attempt to bolt comes off as more than a little suspicious, and so now they have to haul ass out of there. Han steers them towards the Monsua Nebula, where he then proceeds towards a place that their nav computer doesn’t even recognize as a planet — which Han declares to be All Part of His Brilliant Plan. Leia, furious, declares him to be the worst smuggler ever, and he tells her she’s not much of a princess.
In response to all of this, Leia literally says the following and I die forever because A) this is the most Anakin thing, B) this is also the most Obi-Wan thing, C) this is the most Ahsoka thing, and D) HER FACE:
Careful not to choke on your stupidity, Han.
LOL. Wow. At what point does this leave the orbit of “tee hee they’re yelling at each other because they Wuv each other” and enter the orbit of “I don’t think this is a healthy dynamic anymore”?
Recurring Theme: Han Solo, Wanted Man
They head towards whatever the hell this place is, and as they do so, the bounty hunter tracking Han from the last issue reappears. He muses that of COURSE Han is headed back to the Monsua Nebula: “a dog always returns to its favorite den”. Dun dun DUUUUUN!
Luke Skywalker, Estate Sale Patron
Back on Tatooine, Luke has been successful in shooing the Tuskens away from Obi-Wan’s house, and he watches as they flee. As he calms down, Luke muses that He Was Feeling Dark Ways About the Tuskens Just Now:
He tells Artoo that all he felt right now was “anger and frustration” and that he’s not 100% sure, but he’s going to go out on a limb and presume that those are NOT desirable Jedi traits. Oh. *sniffle*
He now turns his attention to the contents of Old Ben’s house, which looks like it’s been hit by several natural disasters. Commenting that it didn’t look like the Tuskens took anything with them just now, he notes that it’s probably not like there was much here to begin with — despite the fact that the entire house appears to be filled with junk right now. So…we’ve seen Obi-Wan’s house before, and there is no way there was this much stuff in there before. Were random desert people using this place for storage? Did some squatters come by and strip the copper wire and then set up a shanty town in there? Where did all this crap come from?
He starts making his way through the clutter, and starts to wonder aloud: what was Obi-Wan even DOING on this shithole planet? He could have lived out his Fugitive Retirement anywhere in the galaxy…why Tatooine? Um, Skywalker: IS IT NOT OBVIOUS? You know he knew your dad. He TOLD YOU HE WAS FRIENDS WITH HIM, and also one can safely presume that he might have had a vested interest in seeking out new people to help become Jedi. It is not some gigantic leap to guess that maybe, just maybe OBI-WAN STAYED HERE BECAUSE OF YOU. Oh, Luke.
Anyways, this is going to become a lot clearer to Luke in about 3 seconds, because Artoo now comes across a book (AWWWWW) and calls Luke over to examine it. Luke takes a look — it appears that Obi-Wan has written something on it:
Awwwwwww. Obi-Wan WROTE LUKE A BOOK. Because he gave up his life to watch over him because he’s Anakin’s son and I’m full of feelings but it’s FINE.
OK, this is touching and also confusing because HOLD UP: Obi-Wan wrote a book full of stories about watching over Luke and being a Jedi and if memory serves he also mentions that Luke is Anakin Skywalker’s son at least once and he just…left this book sitting in his house? Where anyone could have come across it before this? I suppose taking it with them when they left Tatooine would have posed its own risks but it still seems generally safer than just leaving it to the elements on a planet known for being home to an unusually large criminal population.
Speaking of criminals, at this very second as Luke discovers The Book of Kenobi, someone has managed to track down what they’re looking for:
Uh oh! Well, that can’t be good! With that, today’s issue is over. How is our sweet desert farm boy going to escape this one? Will Boba Fett make a dignified escape, or will he just fall into a pit somehow? Does Obi-Wan’s journal begin with I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE HOW MUCH BULLSHIT YOUR FAMILY’S PUT ME THROUGH? Will Han and Leia careen into a sun because they got too distracted yelling at each other? We’ll just have to find out next time! Thanks for reading!
