Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Star Wars Tales volume 3 is fantastic. Of the three volumes I’ve reviewed so far, it is far and away the best – well worth a look by any Star Wars fan. This TPB collects issues 9-12 of the comic series of the same name, and these issues must have been around the time of Attack of the Clones since there are a few cross references to that film. If you want a detailed summary and review of the individual stories within this volume, click on the link and I’ll give you all the sordid details.

In a return to form like volume 1 (and unlike volume 2), this volume starts out strongly with Resurrection. The only weakness of the story is the set up – at this point I’d swear we’ve been plotted out every second between when the Rebels first get the plans of the Death Star to the opening crawl of A New Hope. But knowing that Vader is on a mission to recover the plans isn’t critical to this story – in fact, it’s not needed and could just as easily be any other mission for him. What is important is that his shuttle arrives on a planet a sect of Dark Side worshippers live. This sect has decided that Darth Vader is an unworthy apprentice for Sidious – and have cloned Darth Maul to face Vader in a duel to prove who should carry that mantle. While the end is never in question – the duel is fantastically choreographed, and the finishing move is well done and Vader’s line so fitting to his character at this point in the story. The final pages where Vader confronts both the sect and his own Master provide a nice epilogue to the story – this is a complete and worthwhile story all on it’s own, and I was pleased things started out so well.

Hate Leads to Lollipops features superdeformed Maul escaping from the Coruscant Home for Wayward Boys – and into the arms of Senator Palpatine who’s ready to take on his education. It’s mostly a series of visual jokes – where things in one panel affect the next, and in all it actually worked pretty well for me. It’s not hysterical by any measure, but it was inoffensive.

The Rebel Four is the kind of story that would please any fan of the original Marvel Star Wars comic series. It’s a short few pages, using the old dot matrix style art/printing of that era – and it serves as a kind of Issue #0 for A New Hope. There’s nothing here to link it to any continuity – but it harkens back to the more serial aspect of the comic.

Trooper is another great story, putting the reader inside the head of a Stormtrooper about to board a Rebel ship. He knows he could be killed at any time, and through flashbacks we follow him from his homeworld through his recruitment to the Empire’s service. We see how he survived to become a Stormtrooper, through various actions on different planets – all leading up to the day he leads the attack on Tantive IV. Will he survive the opening scene of A New Hope – you’ll have to read it to find out.

Skreej is my least favorite story in this collection – and even this one isn’t that bad. This is the story of the guy who’s clothes (and identity) Lando stole so that he could infiltrate Jabba the Hutt’s palace as a guard. It goes on too long, and Skreej is so incompetent that it makes you wonder how he lived as long as he did – and the ending is a little off-putting because of what Lando winds up doing to the guy – but I question how canonical this story really is, so it’s best to just let it go and move on.

Nameless is the story of how Darth Maul came to use a double ended lightsaber. He’s defeated in battle by a Jedi Master with a Bo Staff – and so he decides to create a similar weapon out of two lightsabers – and when his Master asks for the name of the weapon – well, you can guess the rest. This was a fair story – not bad, no great.

The only real problem with A Wookiee Scorned is the art – it’s got a very flowery manga style, like a romance book. But the story itself is good – here we’re shown how Chewie was jealous of Han’s attention to Princess Leia in the aftermath of Endor, and how Leia and Chewie learned to accept what they both mean to Han. This is not the only story to take place in the wake of Return of the Jedi in this volume, which could be somewhat of a continuity problem – but I choose to believe these tales either take place just before, or just after The Truce at Bakura.

Free Memory takes place sometime after RotJ – though when exactly it doesn’t say. What we do get are glimpses of the big three – as each makes R2 record a message for the others to hear just before (or after) a big moment from one of the movies. C-3P0 and R2 have a touching moment wherein the former realizes that R2’s memory of these events shouldn’t be wiped – making this a winner for anyone who wants to see more of our favorite droids.

Prey is one of my favorite stories in this volume – with a slight manga style that works well when featuring these two main characters; Boba Fett and Darth Vader. Tarkin has hired Fett to track down the deserter Han Solo – but Vader believes the Empire should take care of the problem of deserters itself. So he goes off in pursuit of Solo as well – resulting in a face off between Vader and Fett in a bar on Tatooine. There are so many great little plot points in this story that I’m willing to overlook any minor inconsistencies (like the fact that Vader has broken his promise never to return to Tatooine many times). Here we see why Fett was first hired to get Solo – which circles back nicely to later stories featuring them both. We see Fett’s reputation as a badass as he holds his own against Vader – and we get to see Han do one of his signature moves for the first time in the final few panels.

Continuing with stories featuring Han Solo, next we get In The Beginning – where Han first wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando in a card game. There isn’t a lot to this story – but it’s one of those critical continuity moments that hasn’t ever been captured anywhere else. This story does a nice job of introducing the cheating which will be brought up in future references as well.

The Princess Leia Diaries is the perfect example of why I believe a series of young adult novels should be made featuring her as the protagonist. We get to see little snippets of Leia’s youth, from how she would rebel against her upbringing to her discovery of her father’s involvement in the Rebellion – and ultimately to her own ascension to the Alderanian Senate seat and her place in that same Rebellion. It’s a fine story, both providing just enough and yet leaving plenty open for future exploration of this same time period in her life.

Tall Tales takes place much later in the timeline – where a group of characters are playing a game of cards in some unknown bar on some backwater planet. Here the reader is shown just how stories can get distorted by retellings, as familiar parts of the saga are taken completely out of context and mixed up (and I’ll also note that they do an extended sequence on the whole ‘who shot first’ Han/Greedo Special Edition fiasco). We’re given hints throughout that one of these characters is one we’re very familiar with (by now you should be sensing the trend and the cover of this volume is a dead giveaway), though it’s got a bit of an odd ending.

I got out of buying comics right around the release of Episode 1, so I’m only vaguely aware of the characters introduced in the Republic comic – and Ghost features Quinlan Vos meeting up with a teenaged Han Solo. Han is seeking treasure, Vos is on the run from a Swoop gang that thinks to hand him over to the Empire for a reward. That the stories intersect is obvious, but what’s interesting here is that we get a glimpse into why Han might feel the way he does about the Force when we first meet him in A New Hope (and it just might be because of a little Jedi mind trick).

Are you a fan of Wedge Antillies? Come on, aren’t we all. Well, A Day in the Life is the story for you. A few days after Endor (again a little trouble what with Truce at Bakura) Rogue Squadron are flying a mission where they discover the remains of the SSD Executor crashed on some rocky planetoid – and before finishing off the thing, Wedge loses a pilot. Back on Home One; Wedge consoles a member of his squad, writes a letter to the family of the deceased, and meets up with Luke for a meal. It’s all in a normal day for Wedge, but it’s another great story in this collection – even putting aside the ridiculousness of the Executor surviving it’s crash into the Death Star II (and the placement days after Endor). Place it after Bakura and give it a different SSD name and there’s nothing wrong at all with this story.

A Jedi’s Weapon is the first time I feel like we’re getting into Attack of the Clones territory. Anakin looks like he did in that movie, and here we’ve got a story where Obi Wan teaches the same lesson to his Padawan that Qui Gon taught Obi Wan in Episode 1. This story is pre-AtoC, where Master and apprentice have been sent to help guard a diplomat’s wives as he visits Coruscant – except that this civilization prides itself on being master thieves – and Anakin’s lightsaber goes missing. While this story isn’t going to change your view of any character, it again is non offensive and worth the read.

The Revenge of Tag and Bink is a story sits with Skreej near the bottom of this issue (for me). While I’ve heard of these two before, I’ve never read anything with them in it – but it’s best described as the adventures of Mary Sue in the Star Wars universe. Tag and Bink are in every scene of the movies – you just don’t see them. This time they’re in the Sarlaac’s gut when Luke frees Han from Jabba in Return of the Jedi – and we flashback to how they got there (in a scene where Lando attempts to board Fett’s Slave I and rescue Han before he can be delivered to Jabba – probably the best part of the comic) – and then gives an alternate view to how Boba got out of the Sarlaac. There is a reference here to Fett screaming like a little girl – a joke I believe they used in Robot Chicken as well – and the art is nice but otherwise I could have done without it.

Once Bitten is a cool little story taking place between the Millennium Falcon blasting off from Mos Eisley and when Han comes back to the passenger area to see Luke fighting the remote. In a scene we didn’t see in the movie – Obi Wan comes up to the bridge to talk to Han, and in a flashback relates to him a story from when he was a Padawan. Qui Gon and Obi Wan attempt to save a Jedi named Mana Veridi from Aurra Sing – and fail. It’s an interesting little piece – nothing that changes the overall narrative, but at the same time something that easily could fit there in the cannon.

And finally there’s Duty, a dark tale of a Jedi making a last stand and defending a group of younglings as they flee from Darth Vader. I imagine they are part of the Well project, as this seems to take place well into the Dark Times – and there’s no hope that this Jedi will make it out of the story alive – only that he will buy enough time for the others to escape. But when Vader offers him a deal he can’t refuse – what is his ultimate Duty?

Unfortunately, I felt like the last story wasn’t a good way to end this volume. I don’t question its inclusion – but my biggest problem with this volume overall is that they stuck too hard to keeping everything in the exact same order as these stories were told in the Tales comics. Of course, the problem with that is, it’s not like these stories were told in any order in those comics. I’d have stacked the stories in sequential order – especially considering the Han centric theme of most of the tales. Having them in order would have made far more sense to me (and would have resulted in ending on either Free Memory or Tall Tales – either of which would have made a more fitting ending). Still I can’t argue with the fact that the vast majority of the stories included in this volume were great – and the ones that weren’t great were inoffensive at worst, thus making them better than the worst of the previous volumes. There’s lots of cannon connections in this volume, and if I was going to pick up only one of the Tales volumes I’ve read so far – this one would be it.