With all the excitement surrounding Andor right now, it can be tough to focus on the somewhat smaller-stakes adventures happening in Star Wars comic books. But they’re still coming out weekly, and they’re still very strong.
Case in point: Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca #6 from Marvel Comics, which sees our favorite Wookiee sidekick Chewbacca imprisoned in a high-security facility on the planet Gulhadar controlled by the Benelex Marshal Service.
But Chewie’s not alone in this person. His old friend the pirate queen Maz Kanata is there alongside him– not to mention some familiar faces from the original Star Wars film (namely the mad surgeon Dr. Evazan and his assistant Ponda Baba). Chewbacca gets involved in a brawl, but he’s helped by a teenage girl named Phaedra in distracting his combatant. Then Maz and Phaedra plot an escape from the prison while poor Chewie is sentenced to 100 years for a long list of supposed crimes. Meanwhile on the jungle planet Iakar, bounty hunter T’onga has teamed up with the scoundrel Corbus Tyra (who previously posed as Han Solo’s father Ovan) to retrieve the Millennium Falcon from Imperial impoundment– and claim the urn containing Krestrel D’Naran’s remains while they’re at it. T’onga and Corbus go undercover as Imperial officers, causing havoc with Greedo as their accomplice, while Jabba the Hutt’s other employee Khel Tanna and her crew sneak into the compound.
Both the A and B-stories here are pretty fun and interesting, and I especially like how Phaedra and company incorporate Dr. Evazan and Ponda Boba into their plan– though I doubt Chewbacca would approve of the murder of innocent marshals if he knew about that part. The cliffhanger of a coda is also fairly intriguing, with a bedraggled (and bearded) Han Solo waking up on the Outer Rim planet of Escalan, having been found and rescued by a species of aquatic aliens after being attacked by Greedo in the previous issue. Writer Marc Guggenheim is doing a good job of keeping things moving and busy in this title, while artists David Messina and Paul Fry have combined their talents with colorist Alex Sinclair in this issue to deliver an eye-catching visual style that feels appropriate to the tone of its story. And I’m totally fine with Han only appearing in one panel of this entire installment, as I was hoping for the creative team to shift focus to Chewie for a while anyway. Maz’s presence is an added bonus, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the escape continues next month.
Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca #6 is available now wherever comic books are sold.