Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Star Wars Rebellion #16
Dark Horse Comics
Williams, Weaver & Glass

Vector wraps up its stay in the Rebellion era with a bit of a fizzle of a battle and a quickie escape. The last issue was terrific, but this issue left a flat feeling. Perhaps this arc should have only been the one issue. The artwork is stellar again. The use of Luke, Han and Leia fell short of my expectations though. Basically, this story was a mix for me.

The issue opens with a nice recap of the feelings of the Jedi trapped with the Sith artifact, Celeste. She desired to be normal, but it didn’t quite work out that way. I also liked how she referenced Zayne more than once. She seemed to really connect with him in the Knights series and it’s good to see that character development didn’t get lost from creative team to creative team.

What is odd here is that last issue appeared to have both Luke and Leia captured, but this issue picks up with only Luke in Celeste’s possession. I’m not sure what went wrong here, but somehow Leia was outside of the cave for this issue. Anyway, Celeste attacks Luke and Leia runs in for the save. Able, the clone, also rushes to Luke’s aid.

Meanwhile, Vader stares out the window from afar and ponders his next move. He thinks of his son. It’s an excellent way to show the turmoil Vader has. Ultimately he decides to go with the strength of his personality: his brutality.

Han escapes the planet, which is odd that he would leave behind Luke and Leia, even for a second. It’s an okay use of Han, but I would have liked to have understood how he could have even gotten as far away as he did under the circumstances.

While Luke tries to defend himself he gets some flashbacks from what Obi-Wan told him about Vader and the dark side. It almost seemed like Luke was ready to give up when Leia and the Able enter the fray. Things get crazy and eventually the artifact chooses Luke over Celeste as the host.

After some thinking it over, Celeste decides to take the host back. This seemed really odd. I don’t understand a) why she would want it and b) how she can control which host it takes. To me the story kind of fell apart here. It just felt like a jiffy fix.

The story ends with a massive battle and a couple of escapes. Vader attempts to kill off everyone but it doesn’t quiet work out that way for him.

The issue read fine, but it just didn’t stack up to the set up issue. The artwork provides a great rendition of all the actors from the original trilogy. The artwork adds some excellent lightsaber duels and space scenes. It’s a very well told story visually.

The flaws in the overall plot don’t really make it a bad story, it just makes it an odd one. I would think Celeste would stop at nothing to be rid of the artifact and I would think she would be ready to take on death to get rid of it. Also, it seems like Luke and Leia got off too easy as well. Both are children of the chosen dark one – Vader. Yet, the artifact so easily takes back Celeste. It just felt like there was more that needed to be told in this story.

With the end of Vector in Rebellion comes the hiatus for the title. I haven’t been thrilled with the title to this point, but overall this arc provided some better use of the core trilogy characters. While, I thought this issue didn’t quite live up to the previous issue, it was still a decent story. It should be interesting to see how Celeste gets along with Cade in Legacy.

3 out of 5 geek goggles