Star Wars Tales—Volume 2

Comic Info

Star Wars Tales #6

Reprints Star Wars Tales #5-8 (September 2000-June 2001).  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, tales of warriors and monsters, Jedi and Sith, and smugglers and pirates ruled.  Be it Darth Vader coming to terms with his past upon the discovery of C-3PO, Boba Fett hunting down a prize tied to the life he gave up, or Lando Calrissian being sent on a danger mission for the Rebels, space is vast and the tales stretch on…

Written by Dean Motter, Craig Thompson, Terry Moore, Tony Millionaire, Ian Edginton, Tom Fassbender, Jim Pascoe, Mark Schultz, Mark Evanier, Sean Konot, Scott Morse, Ryder Windham, Haden Blackman, Phil Amara, Randy Stradley, Beau Smith, Kevin Rubio, Ryan Kinnaird, Andi Watson, Henry Gilroy, and John Ostrander, Star Wars Tales—Volume 2 is a Dark Horse Comics anthology series set in the Star Wars Universe.  Following Star Wars Tales—Volume 1, the series features art by Jesus Saiz, Craig Thompson, Cliff Richards, Tony Millionaire, Carlos Meglia, Eric Powell, Mark Martin, Rick Neilsen, Kellie Strom, Sergio Argones, Scott Morse, Kilian Plunkett, Jan Duursema, Francisco Hererra, Francisco Ruiz Velasco, Mike Deodato Jr., Lucas Marangon, Ryan Kinnaird, Andi Watson, Dario Brizuela, Glen Murakami, and Francis Portela.

Before the takeover by Disney, Dark Horse had set up a big and rich Star Wars Universe…but it was also pretty inconsistent.  Though I loved Star Wars growing up, I had a hard time getting into a lot of Dark Horse’s series because I mostly cared about the characters and stories I knew from the films.  Star Wars Tales is an exception and Star Wars Tales—Volume 2 continues a great run on a fun series.

Anthology books are very lucky in that they have a ton of room for exploration.  They can be serious, they can be funny, and they can take cast off lines from the movies and expand them into full length stories.  The best issues and sequences of Star Wars Tales are stories where they expand on a minor character or someone in the background (and in that sense, often the funny stories work the best).

Star Wars Tales #8

Star Wars Tales was also trying to retcon and fix problems that had popped up in the movies.  Be it Boba Fett’s death (an explanation how a cool bounty hunter can go out like a chump to the Sarlaac) or examining Darth Vader’s relationship with C-3PO when he encountered him in Bespin (and the strange decision in the movie to let a prisoner Wookie keep the parts).  The book serves as way for writers to cleverly work around a story within the movies (like the tale of Luke’s missing hand as another example).

The series also serves as a popular touchstone.  One of the more amusing stories is “Force Fiction” which is a take on Pulp Fiction with Mace Windu and Yoda replacing Jules and Vincent (of course Samuel L. Jackson also appeared in Pulp Fiction).  It is a fun dip into what was popular at the time and how Star Wars can cross over into popular culture.

Though Star Wars Tales was largely non-canon even in the Dark Horse world, it felt like a lot of the stories could have happen in Star Wars but they just weren’t told.  Now with Dark Horse’s stories for the most part written out of existence, these tales are even more of a non-story which is too bad.  It is also too bad that Disney and Marvel haven’t hopped on the Star Wars Tales bandwagon and started created new Star Wars Tales with new creators and bringing in a whole new set of movies and stories…hopefully it will happen someday.  Star Wars Tales—Volume 2 is followed by Star Wars Tales—Volume 3.

Related Links:

Star Wars Tales—Volume 1