Star Wars Tales was a comics series from Dark Horse that ran from around the time of the release of The Phantom Menace until Revenge of the Sith. These 24 issues presented lots of short stories featuring characters both known and unknown, written and illustrated by faces both familiar and unfamiliar. My plan is to review at least the first three trade paperback volumes reprinting these issues – and in the case of today’s review, that means issues 1-4 of the series. Click on the link to get my thoughts.

Things aren’t quite laid out the way they were in comic form – and I must have collected the first issue or two of this comic, as I vaguely remembered some of the stories. But it Starts out with Extinction – a strong opening featuring Darth Vader. This story takes place sometime between Episodes 3 and 4 – closer to A New Hope since we’re also given a glimpse of the young adult Mara Jade, who has tracked down one of the Jedi who has survived the purge. The Emperor decides Vader should attend to the death of this Dark Woman – and sends him to face her. The Dark Woman is someone I wasn’t familiar with, although she apparently trained Aurra Sing for a time. Ultimately we know Vader must come out on top in this match – and he does – though the Dark Woman becomes a Force Ghost and gives him a final message of hope that Vader does not want to hear.

Then we have the first Episode 1 tie in, Life Death and the Living Force. I don’t really think Episode 1 gave a lot of material for creators to work with, and this story suffers from being a meandering journey of discovery featuring Qui-Gon and his Padawan Obi-Wan. Hell, I’m bored just writing that sentence. It’s all about the moral quandary of the Jedi, helping people, killing people, etc. The artwork is nice, but it’s a forgettable story.

Then we get to the supposedly humorous Skippy the Jedi Droid, written by an author I usually enjoy Peter David. Here the humor just doesn’t work for me – basically Peter David tries to hide a story within the Red droid who winds up with a bad motivator in A New Hope – that this droid was in fact Force sensitive and ultimately sacrificed himself because he knew it was Luke’s destiny to meet R2-D2. It’s meant to play for laughs, but it just didn’t work for me – and the art is very manga styled – an art form I enjoy, as long as it’s not Star Wars.

Next comes A Night on the Town, featuring Mara Jade and written by Timothy Zahn. Here the story really shines, while the art is a let down. Zahn fits this story in between the Mara Jade By The Emperor’s Hand story and the short story where she meets Talon Karrde. She’s looking to complete an unfinished mission for her now dead Emperor – investigate an imperial governor who appeared to be stealing from the Empire. With the Rebels currently gaining control of the system, Mara winds up working with Madine to unseat the governor – both helping the Rebels and completing her mission for her former master.

Routine is a nicely drawn tale that again is unfortunately rather forgettable. Here we’ve got an Imperial Star Destroyer on patrol at the back end of the galaxy, and the only thing breaking their routine is a human and his wookiee companion who always seem to be on the return run from a delivery. The Imperials know something is amiss, but by the time they figure out that it hasn’t been the same ship all along, but different ships they’ve been smuggling out – Han and Chewie are long gone. The art style is actually very reminiscent of what I’d expect from a 2D animated Star Wars series, which I enjoyed.

Incident at Horn Station comes next, and this is another highlight of the book. First the art is a more rugged style, reminding me of Travel Foreman who drew the Legacy issue Noob – and that style fit this tale perfectly. Here we’re introduced to a stuttering ship captain who’s down on his luck and winds up on a planet that’s being run by a local mobster wanna-be. But when the pilot shows some skill with a blaster, he winds up in a duel to the death with the mobster – and proves that Jedi CAN act (despite some performances in the prequel trilogy).

Stop that Jawa is another humor story featuring Max Rebo and his Jizz Wailers – with an art style that looks like the Rugrats (did anyone ever actually like this art style?) and a rather un-humorous tale – this is again best left forgotten.

The same goes for The Death of Captain Tarpals. Because of the recent release of Episode 1 when this comic was made, we’ve got a tale featuring the highly demanded tale of how Jar Jar Binks was actually thrown out of his underwater city. You already want to skip ahead and so do I.

Deal With a Demon is probably my favorite story in the entire collection. It features absolutely no characters you’d know – but it’s written by John Ostrander and drawn by Jan Duursema, who are both at the top of their game. We’ve got a cocky Devaronian who actually manages to be humorous (whereas previous tales that were trying to be funny, weren’t) trying to smuggle a princess and her Mistryl guardian off a planet that’s currently in rebellion against the royal family. It’s a fun story, and I was happy to see a return of this character (and creators) in Star Wars Tales vol 2.

Lady Luck is probably one of the most often quoted tales, making it very likely the canonical telling of how Lando wound up as Administrator of Cloud City. The artist here draws in a style that reminded me of the artist from the Dark Horse adaptation of The Last Command – beautiful women, dashing men, a high stakes card game – this is another highlight of the book (and it’s interesting how we begin to see Episode 1 creatures start to pop up in stories set in the classic era – which is a wise use of that source material).

Three Against the Galaxy falls somewhere in the middle of the stories in this volume. A Gamorean, a human and a Jawa walk into a bar – seriously. In this story, set shortly after Return of the Jedi, the Empire is looking to gain as many planets back as they’ve recently lost to the New Republic – and they’ve found a willing partner in the classic tale of one brother who kills his sibling to gain control of the planet for the riches the Empire promises – only his niece (the human) comes back to have her revenge for the death of her father. Not bad, not great – the Jawa was probably the most interesting character in the whole piece.

Moment of Doubt is another Vader tale (I guess it makes sense he was on the cover for this volume considering how often he makes appearances in the stories within) this time set in the small time frame between Vader’s meeting with the Bounty Hunters on board the Avenger during Empire Strikes Back but before he goes to Bespin. A Bounty Hunter arrives late for the meeting with Vader, and seeks a private audience with him to discuss the terms of the deal. But Vader is surprised to find out this Bounty Hunter has revenge on his mind, for crimes Vader committed years ago. Again, it’s obvious to the reader that Vader will strike this foe down – but what he sees is a reflection of himself, a man who was willing to sacrifice everything for revenge – and it’s an interesting beginning for the mindset Vader will have when facing his son.

A Death Star is Born could easily be an episode of Chicken Robot Star Wars – I could practically hear the voice of the Emperor from that show reading the lines in this story. It’s lighthearted (hell, there are hidden mickeys on almost every page – the Disney Empire) with Vader serving as a waiter and discussions of the ridiculousness of the design flaws in the Death Star (and how much money it will cost the Empire to change anything). It also adds in yet another layer for how the rebel alliance wound up with those Death Star plans – could Vader have wanted it to fall into their hands all along because he was tired of being treated like Tarkin’s lackey?

But Spare Parts suffers from trying to be another funny story following immediately after a very successful humorous tale – and Spare Parts fails. Here we’ve got C-3P0 and R2-D2 again being captured by Jawas – but in general it makes no sense. The saving grace is it’s a short 4 pages, so it’s easily skipped.

And the volume ends with Sand Blasted – featuring Big Gizz and Spiker. I get the feeling I’m supposed to know these two characters – but I don’t. We get one last appearance by Vader on the opening page, as he is witness to a Dark Trooper test run on a Rebel base. One of the Dark Troopers winds up on a fleeing Rebel transport – and though it kills the crew, it cannot stop the ship’s crash landing on Tatooine. That’s where it’s awoken some time later, going on a killing rampage that Gizz and Spiker wind up in the middle of. As they fight the Dark Trooper around the abandoned pod racing stadium from Episode 1, they are joined by a Jawa and an IG-97 model droid. It’s a mostly action packed finale to this book, with a typical horror movie type ending where the Dark Trooper is being rebuilt by an unsuspecting bunch of pit droids.

So, is Star Wars Tales vol 1 worth a read? Yes. Out of the fifteen stories, only five of them were true clunkers, with the rest being at least interesting, and at times downright highly entertaining. For Mara Jade fans or continuity hounds, A Night on the Town and Lady Luck are probably the biggest draws – but there are plenty of other highlights that fans will be happy they gave this volume a try. Next time, I’ll review Star Wars Tales vol 2 – and we’ll see how that holds up in comparison.