Today saw the release of the twelfth and final issue of Dark Horse Comics’ all-ages Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories series, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this climactic installment.
Hyperspace Stories has been a messy, uneven ride since its launch 16 months ago, but when it hits it hits, as it does in the final story, entitled “The Little Things.” This last tale is set during the events of Return of the Jedi (in honor of that film’s 40th anniversary, according to the cover– they really got it in at the last minute) and begins with a refugee ship called the Dorlanna narrowly escaping Imperial capture in the Outer Rim. In the ship’s cockpit, an engineer named Basch scrambles desperately to keep the vessel in one piece as its passengers evacuate to the planet below. His quest takes him to the hold, where he encounters a young alien girl carrying the same Wookiee doll we’ve seen pop up in every other issue of Hyperspace Stories. The girl escapes, but accidentally leaves the doll behind for Basch to take care of until they hopefully meet again.
Sometime later, after Basch makes his own daring escape from the situation, he joins the Rebel Alliance fleet as it prepares to attack the second Death Star orbiting the forest moon of Endor. Admiral Ackbar assigns Basch to Lando Calrissian’s crew aboard the Millennium Falcon, and he brings the doll along with him for good luck. Then, as text on the cover also promises, we see the Battle of Endor from a new perspective– that of the Falcon’s engineer, retconned to be this newly introduced character. The doll serves as a metaphor for hope and inspires the Falcon crew to successfully destroy the Death Star, and Basch joins our heroes for the celebration on Endor’s moon. There, Princess Leia discovers the holographic information that was hidden by Yarua in issue #11. Luke Skywalker notes that this map may lead him to ancient Jedi locations, setting the Jedi Knight on the next leg of his personal journey, and then Leia donates the doll to an orphanage for children displaced by the war.
I’m loving the symbolism here, and the ultimate fate of that doll– although we do see it later on in the Star Wars timeline in other issues of this comic– really does pay off having tracked it across the entire run of this Dark Horse title. It’s a shame that Hyperspace Stories has been so scattershot overall, because I would love to be able to recommend it as a whole. Instead, I’d suggest going back through these reviews and finding the ones on which I was the most positive, as those would be the issues I’d suggest picking up to read. As for the fate of all-ages, anthology-style comics set in A Galaxy Far, Far Away– I’m hoping Dark Horse cooks up something akin to IDW’s Star Wars Adventures or their own Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories again in the not-too-distant future. It’s a fun way to explore this universe without being moored to any one point or era in the timeline, and where the writers (like Cecil Castelucci, who in #12 proved to be the title’s MVP) and artists have a much wider, more varied array of characters to work with.
Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories #12 is available now wherever comic books are sold.