Star Wars No. 62 review: Everything comes full circle

Star Wars begins it path back to war with Leia gathering a crew to take down Shu-Torun from the inside. She says it’s not for revenge, but everyone knows better than that. Minor spoilers for Star Wars no. 62 follow.

This issue begins the story that Star Wars has felt that it’s been leading to ever since Kieron Gillen took over writing duties on the book, the destruction of Shu-Torun. Everything is beginning to come back full circle when it comes to previous storylines and, even if it didn’t feel like it in the past, everything now feels like it had purpose. While that purpose now doesn’t necessarily make those past stories any better or worse, it makes this issue better. This issue very much feels like the beginning of a heist film where the crew is being gathered for a job that is about to go absolutely wrong in the most disastrous way possible.

The most noticeable thing about this issue on its face is the incredibly fast pace of the issue. Everything feels to be moving a hundred miles per hour and that definitely feels with purpose. It wouldn’t be helpful for the story to move along at a slow pace like the last story arc did given that this arc feels like it’s going to go sideways immediately. There’s more than likely going to be a lot of ground to cover so getting all of the recruiting and most of the set-up out of the way in one issue was the very smart move to do. There’s a right amount of time spent on with each character that’s being brought into the fold which makes the pacing feel really good throughout the issue.

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As mentioned though, this issue feels like Star Wars is coming full circle with its several previous arcs, starting with “The Ashes of Jedha.” Several characters are brought back into the fold from those arcs and the entire premise of this story stems from the information that is gathered in “Hope Dies.” This issue does a really solid job of tying everything together from those previous arcs and making everything leading to this moment feel like a necessity. That isn’t necessarily from a universe perspective given how massive the Star Wars universe is, but it’s good storytelling nonetheless.

As for the art, there’s nothing incredibly exciting going on with it, which feels more like a problem concerning the story than the art itself. The art itself is good, even if faces and facial expressions are a bit wonky throughout, but most of the time, it’s able to capture the feel of Star Wars, especially when the issue makes its way to Shu-Torun in the last couple of pages. Other than that, though, not much happens on a visual level in this issue, so passable is probably the best that could have been done.

7.25/10 

Star Wars no. 62 begins what seems to be the biggest arc of Kieron Gillen’s run and brings his other arcs back into the fold in an entertaining way.