Continuing to catch up on recent comic reviews, Star Wars (2020) #37 was released last week by Marvel, and it’s the title’s first crossover issue with the Star Wars: Dark Droids miniseries event.
Star Wars #37 begins with Lando Calrissian’s cyborg pal Lobot waking up from his slumber aboard the Rebel Alliance’s Mon Calamari flagship Home One. His cybernetic implants start going haywire and suddenly the ship’s systems are stripped from the controls of Admiral Ackbar and his subordinates. When Lando is awoken by the subsequent alarms, he finds Lobot in a state of hypnosis and must smash the cyborg’s implants to get the ship’s functions to return to normal. One covert meeting with a 2-1B medical droid later, and Lando learns that the implants are reverting back to their old Imperial programming, though for now this is seemingly unrelated to the Scourge’s droid invasion as seen in the pages of Dark Droids #1. So Lando comes up with a plan to return to Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine with Lobot, and have the ancient “Talky” droid (see previous issues of this volume of Star Wars for more on that) repair the cyborg’s implants, hopefully bringing Lobot back to his old personality. Unfortunately this requires Calrissian to mislead some of the Rebel Alliance leaders who have put their trust in him, including Princess Leia Organa, even more than he already has been.
Along the way we also get a flashback to the “good old days” of Lando and Lobot’s relationship, as a particularly lucrative win in a game of Sabacc forces the gambler to make a decision between paying off old debts or doubling down on his luck– you can probably guess which one he chooses. The escapade ends in disaster, leading Lobot to give his faithful friend a stern talking to about using his charm for good instead of chaos. In the final few pages of this issue, writer Charles Soule and artist Madibek Musabekov cut to Jabba’s Palace, where the Hutt isn’t quite taking very good care of that Talky droid, sending him down to the droid torture chamber in the palace’s dungeon after it disappoints him in a negotiation with the Black Sun crime syndicate. As readers, we know that the Talky needs to be in good working order so that Lando can save Lobot’s life, so that gives us a pretty good cliffhanger going into the next issue. And as is almost always the case, Soule’s writing is sharp and energetic here– with Lando’s voice in particular shining through the dialogue– and Musabekov’s artwork is moody and appropriate for the ominous story being told. The only thing I was moderately disappointed by was the fact that the sole identifiable connection to Dark Droids in this issue was C-3PO’s possession by the Scourge virus, but I’m sure that seed will continue to grow as the events of the miniseries begin to pay off in all the individual titles’ crossover installments. Speaking of which, I’ve got this week’s new issue of Star Wars: Darth Vader to get to next.
Star Wars #37 is available now wherever comic books are sold.