The final piece falls into place today as Rebel Heist #4 by Matt Kindt and Marco Castiello arrives in comic book stores. It’s Luke Skywalker’s turn to take the spotlight!
Han’s captured, Leia’s captured, and Chewbacca’s captured. That leaves Luke Skywalker to save the day and the Bothan Imperial spy to narrate the events. Can he get all three of his friends out of jail and still pull off the mission?
This review contains some spoilers.
The narration formula has definitely lost its charm by this point although I do appreciate Matt Kindt’s attempts to change it up by using a different point of view for the narrator each time. (I’m curious whose decision it was to have the Imperial spy be a Bothan though…) To his credit, the plot and subsequently the story does tie together very nicely as our Rebels heroes’ master plan works out fairly well even if they are a bit worse for the wear. One of the nice things is that Kindt didn’t forget the narrators from the previous issues. However, I probably could have done without the inevitable final narrator turning to the Rebel Alliance’s side of the war even if it does make more sense for a bothan to be a Rebel than an Imperial. I also could have done without some of the very strong film tie-ins on the very last page.
No major complaints about Marco Castiello’s artwork this go around even if I’m not entirely in love with how he draws Luke’s face. You can definitely tell that Castiello had fun getting to draw battle scenes that involve a lightsaber. He really got a chance to draw the full range of the Star Wars standards over the course of this issue from space freighters to blasters to rancors.
While this review might seem a fair bit critical of the issue, there are definitely things to enjoy about this limited series. While seasoned Star Wars readers are likely to not be quite as excited by another story in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, it’s very much accessible to new readers and is a nice contained tale.
Star Wars: Rebel Heist gets an overall 3.5/5 from me for an interesting premise that grew old and for the decent story.
