Around Thanksgiving of 2022, Marvel Comics released the first Star Wars: Revelations one-shot, which teased the comic-book company’s upcoming year’s worth of stories from A Galaxy Far, Far Away, culminating with the current Star Wars: Dark Droids crossover event. And now, a week before Christmas 2023, Marvel has issued the second volume of Revelations, which promises to do the same thing for its 2024 titles licensed from Lucasfilm Publishing..
But the cool thing about the teases in last year’s Revelations was that they were all tied together via visions to Darth Vader provided by the enigmatic creature known as the Eye of Webbish Bog. This new Revelations, out today, has no such unifying factor. Instead, it’s just a collection of short stories intended to springboard into upcoming comics. After being pretty excited to pick this up (and having assumed, based on the cover seen above, that Jabba the Hutt was the common thread this time around instead of Vader), I was admittedly kind of bummed when I realized what it actually was. But I kept an open mind regardless, so let’s see how each of these seven stories stack up. The first is maybe the most intriguing, and comes from one of my favorite current Star Wars writers Charles Soule (who helms the flagship title set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi at the moment), but it’s also pretty short. It serves to further set up the upcoming “Trial of Lando Calrissian” story arc, introducing the woman named Advocate Salli Georgio, who will evidently serve as Lando’s lawyer during the proceedings. In this entertaining five-page story, she loses a case for bounty hunter Dengar, but not without attempting a fairly bold defense.
The second story also involves Dengar, and takes place at the Bounty Hunters Guild Social Club on the planet D’Assem. There, another hunter named Raslin Grace (also newly introduced here) relates a tale about a bounty gone wrong, and nobody else present seems to believe her– even we, the readers, are tipped off that some of the details may have been fabricated. This slightly longer adventure by Allyssa Wong will apparently lead into the pages of her comic Doctor Aphra, though that’s scheduled to end next month, so I have to wonder just how large a part Raslin will play. For the third story, writer Ethan Sacks (Star Wars: Bounty Hunters) takes us back to the prequel era for a quick, exciting caper with Jango Fett. There’s a cameo appearance by Aurra Sing at the end pointing us toward Marvel’s Star Wars: Jango Fett miniseries, due to begin in March. And next we get a preview of the Star Wars: Mace Windu miniseries by Marc Bernardin (Star Wars: Darth Vader – Black, White & Red), sending the Jedi Master to shut down the illegal trade of “skeleton keys” that can open any door in the galaxy. It’s fine as these things go, but I can’t say I’m personally all that thrilled that Marvel is shutting down ongoing titles set during the Original Trilogy to focus more on characters from the prequels.
Then there’s a story from Greg Pak leading into an upcoming arc for Star Wars: Darth Vader, and this one confused me a little bit, as its content hew a little too close to what we’ve been reading over the past few months in Dark Droids. Maybe the implication is that Vader was inspired by what the Scourge tried to accomplish in that crossover, and attempts to use a similar strategy to corrupt some Rebel Alliance cyborg troopers. That’s the best assumption I can make given the information provided, but this didn’t really pique my interest too much either. The penultimate story rewinds time to Star Wars: The High Republic and sees Jedi Knight Keeve Trennis searching for a wayward Jedi outside of the Nihil Occlusion zone. No complaints with the actual content itself here, as I always enjoy the writing of Cavan Scott, but again Revelations just feels so scattershot. And the final tale does indeed bring in Jabba the Hutt, but only as a supporting role to a character lifted from the old Legends-timeline Marvel Star Wars comics– the smuggler named Rik Duel who’s antics here are mostly played for laughs.
It’s always cool when they resurrect characters from Legends, but writer Marc Guggenheim (Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca) doesn’t– or most likely isn’t allowed to– clearly indicate where this is going, and we aren’t told where Duel might pop up next. I dunno, honestly I picked up this issue thinking Revelations would make me super excited for Marvel’s 2024 Star Wars offerings like it did last year, but instead I just feel kind of deflated. Mostly I was expecting– and really hoping for– an indication that the main story would be approaching the events of Return of the Jedi, but there’s none of that here and no indication that the flagship Star Wars title (or Darth Vader for that matter) will be coming to a long-awaited climax anytime soon. We do also get some preview pages for Star Wars: Thrawn – Alliances, but that’s an adaptation of a story I’ve already read. Eh… my hope for these comics to continue into a post-ROTJ universe are dwindling, as it feels like maybe Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau are clamping down on that era and saving it for their own purposes. For now I suppose I’ll have to make do with what I’m given, and as always I’ll approach these forthcoming stories with an open mind.
Star Wars: Revelations (2023) is available now wherever comic books are sold.