Star Wars:Dark Encounters

Reprints Star Wars (1977) #21-38 and Star Wars Annual #1.
Written by Archie Goodwin, Jo Duffy, Chris Claremont and Michael Golden.
Penciled by Carmine Infantino, Michael Golden and Mike Vosberg.
Inked by Gene Day, Bob Wiacek, Terry Austin and Steve Leialoha.

Summary:
Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca are still imprisoned on the casino space station known as The Wheel.  When they are finally able to escape, the heroes rush directly into the clutches of their arch foe Darth Vader!  The Dark Lord is obsessively pursuing the heroes so he can learn the name of the pilot who destroyed the Death Star.  Through his use of the Force, he contacts Luke telepathically and learns he is the pilot he's been seeking.  Fortunately, Luke is able to mentally fight off Vader before he can learn his name.

When Leia and Luke are returning to the Rebel base on Yavin, they're attacked by a ship owned by the House Of Tagge company.  The Tagge family, led by Baron Ormon Tagge, are a wealthy family of nobles who have close business ties to the Empire.   Baron Tagge is a rival of Vader, who once defeated Ormon in a lightsaber duel blinded the Baron, forcing him to where cybernetic glasses in order to see.

Ormon is close to finding the Rebel's base on Yavin.  The base's location has been shielded from the Imperials due to the planet's gaseous clouds.  Capturing rebels and their hidden fortress would gain the House of Tagge favor in the eyes of the Emperor and simultaneously threaten Vader's power.  Can Luke and the Rebel Alliance beat back Tagge's ships and keep the location of the base a secret?

Next, the bounty hunter called Valance plans to kill Luke.  Because Valance is a cyborg, he is deeply prejudiced against droids.  Luke's friendship with C-3PO disgusts the bounty hunter so much that he plans to kill Skywalker.  However, Luke is saved by a strange twist that has a major impact on Valance.

Elsewhere, Han and Chewie's luck runs out when they're cornered by Jabba the Hut and his henchmen! Han still hasn't paid back his debt to the gangster and Jabba will take it out of Han's hide if necessary.  Can the Wookie and the scoundrel pilot escape from this encounter with their lives?

On another planet, Darth Vader tortures a captured rebel prisoner into giving him information about the pilot who blew up the Death Star.  The Sith Lord learns of a rebel named Tyler Lucian who deserted just before the Battle Of Yavin.  Lucian believed the rebels had no chance against the Death Star.  Vader learns that Lucian is hiding out on the planet Centares and decides to personally capture him, believing Lucian will give him the name of the pilot he seeks. But Valance is also chasing after Lucian, which leads him into a face-to-face conflict between the bounty hunter and Darth Vader!

After that, Princess Leia goes on a solo undercover mission on the planet Metalorn.  Her goal is to contact her old political mentor so he can spread word that the Rebel Alliance is powerful and growing in strength.  Unfortunately, Baron Tagge has arrived simultaneously and hopes to capture or kill Leia.  This leads to a confrontation between the princess and the baron!

Later, the heroes visit the planet Tirahnn.  Skywalker and the princess are attacked by a group of Catumen who are acting on orders from a flying, bat-winged woman named Kharys, the Majestrix of planet Skye.  Han has battled Kharys before and decides that the best way to defeat her is to attack her on her home planet.

When Chewbacca and Han are captured by Kharys, Luke and Leia must team up with some natives of Skye to save their friends.  The star warriors are aided by Katya M'Buele, an old smuggler friend from Han's past.  Luke learns that his old mentor Obi-Wan visited Skye before, which makes them sympathetic to Skywalker's cause.  Luke is fitted with a pair of wings and ends up in an airborne lightsaber duel with Kharys!

Following that, Luke returns to his home planet Tatooine on a mission to recruit blockade runners for the rebellion.  When he visits his family's old moisture farm, Luke is surprised to see it inhabited by his old friends Fixer and Camie.

Fixer informs Luke that he serves as caretaker of the farm, the land is owned by the House Of Tagge! Baron Tagge and his scientist brother Silas are using moisture farms to develop a superweapon they hope will lead to the absolute destruction of the rebellion!

Silas Tagge's superweapon is called the Omega Frost.  It can flash-freeze anything that contains moisture.  The Tagges lure Han and the rebel fleet into the Asteroid Corridor, where they plan to freeze the Millenium Falcon and all the other rebel ships!  Making matters even worse, Luke has been captured by the Tagges so that Ormon can test his lightsaber abilities against Skywalker.  How will Luke, Han and Chewie escape Baron Tagge and his imperial troops?

Subsequently, a spaceship arrives at the rebel base.  It contains representatives of a religious sect called the Order of the Sacred Circle, they reside on the planet Monastery. Their leader, a priestess named Sister Domina informs the alliance that her order has remained neutral in the galactic civil war, but that some members now want to join the Empire.

She invites the rebels to send a representative to argue their case in front of the order.  A quick attraction develops between Luke and Domina and when he hears that the Darth Vader will be the imperial representative on Monastery, Skywalker insists he be the one to oppose his arguments.

Leia is worried, since Luke has little experience with politics and diplomacy.  She, Han, Chewie and the droids follow Luke to Monastery.  Luke will need her help, because Domina and her order aren't exactly what they appear to be.

Finally, Luke and Leia are transporting medical supplies when they're attacked by a Star Destroyer.  The Imperials chase them into some sort of uncharted void in space. The Princess and Luke encounter a gigantic green spaceship which swallows them!  The heroes learn that this "ship" is a living being and it attempts to expel them into space!

All that, plus a previously untold adventure of Obi-Wan Kenobi!

Review:
Star Wars:Dark Encounters is a fun book that marks the end of an era for Star Wars comics and the franchise in general.  The stories reprinted here are the last tales published before the release of The Empire Strikes Back.  Up to this point, Marvel had only the first movie to use as a basis for stories and introduced lots of interesting characters and planets.  From here onward, Marvel's Star Wars series would be forced to march more strictly in step with the movies.

Story:
Archie Goodwin wrote most of the tales reprinted in this book.  These adventures of the Star Wars gang are filled with drama and action from start to finish.

Dark Encounters features a nice combination of old and new antagonists.  The first issue reprinted here features Darth Vader's first comic book appearance since the end of Marvel's movie adaptation.  I felt like Vader was written in a way that was consistent with his portrayal in the first film.

The House of Tagge are also great adversaries for Luke, Leia and co.  Kudos to Goodwin for creating such memorable villains.  Baron Tagge's feud with Vader adds an interesting element to the Rebels vs. Empire dynamic.

Jo Duffy wrote the story about young Obi-Wan Kenobi.  I always liked Kenobi and this is an entertaining tale.  It's worth noting that this is the first depiction of  the "Old Republic" in any media.

Chris Claremont penned the Skye adventure and it's pretty good too.  One of Claremont's trademarks is his "travelogue" descriptions of real places.   Here, he provides us with a great travelogue narration about the fictional city of Tirhann.  Claremont also creates good villains to battle the rebel heroes.

The only real problem I had with anything here is the idea that the Rebel Alliance stayed in their base on Yavin after the battle with the Death Star.  I'm pretty sure would have known they were still on Yavin.  We're told that the base is hidden by gaseous clouds, but that sort of strains credulity, even in the context of the Star Wars universe!

Since these adventures pre-date The Empire Strikes Back, there are several plot points that have since been contradicted.

When the heroes visit the planet Skye, we're told that during the Clone Wars, Skye was saved by three Jedi:Obi-Wan, Darth Vader...and Luke's father!  Of course we know today that the last two are one and the same.

We also get a story where Han and Chewbacca save Jabba The Hutt and thus, pay off their debt to the gangster.  We get one page near the end where we learn Chewie and Han have done something else that's cost Jabba lots of money, which puts a bounty back on their heads.  This reads like something that was added at the last second because someone from Lucasfilm caught it too late and needed to restore the bounty, since it was a big part of the next film.  It's worth mentioning that Jabba looks nothing like he does in Return Of The Jedi and the word "Hutt" is spelled with only one letter T in these stories.

However, none of these "errors" ruined my enjoyment of Dark Encounters.

Art:
Carmine Infantino pencils most of these stories.  As I said in my review of the previous volume, Infantino's depiction of the characters takes some getting used to.  But I like his work here.  This two-page spread of Han and Chewie is a nice example of Infantino's art in this book:

The best art in Dark Encounters comes in the last story.  Michael Golden and Terry Austin make the living starship something you're unlikely to forget.

How Does It Look?:
Here's a scan from my copy of Star Wars #28:

And here's how the same pages appear in this TPB:

Star Wars:Dark Encounters contains nice work from some of the biggest names of the Bronze Age and is highly recommended to Star Wars fans who don't mind that the stories it contains are "contradicted" by the later movies.

J.A. Morris rating:

4 Sals!