Today saw the release of the first issue in Marvel Comics’ new Star Wars: Ewoks miniseries, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this debut installment.
Next month marks the 40th anniversary of Lucasfilm’s made-for-TV movie Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, and in celebration of that momentous occasion Marvel Comics is putting out a four-issue Star Wars: Ewoks miniseries that also not-so-coincidentally overlaps with the events of the current Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku maxi-series. Ewoks #1 begins– where else?– on the forest moon of Endor, where our hero Wicket W. Warrick is telling the story of Return of the Jedi’s climax to the Woklings, with this narrative being set “no so long” after the Battle of Endor. Then we cut to space, where Moff Adelhard’s fleet (see The Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising #1 for more on this relatively new villain) has amassed. An Imperial officer named General Tern Koyatta is ordered by Adelhard to return to Endor in an effort to recover a weapons stash left behind by the Empire on the aforementioned forest moon.
Back on Endor, Chief Chirpa and Logray hold a meeting for the rest of the adult Ewoks to determine what to do in the event that more strangers arrive in their village from off-world. Wicket speaks up in defense of the Rebel Alliance and suggests that the Ewoks at least attempt to live in harmony with the rest of the galaxy, but there is one Ewok called Meedro who lives on the outskirts of Bright Tree Village and would prefer to remain isolated from outsiders in the wake of the Galactic Civil War. Then we see General Koyatta having arrived in a now-crashed Imperial shuttle with a human scout trooper named Khu Fornot (who is drawn to look remarkably like a Republic clone trooper– I’m not sure if that’s intentional), the famed bounty hunters Zuckuss and 4-LOM, and a Dowutin scavenger named Koll Orvenk, who carries around a severed droid head that goes by E-X77. That’s enough new baddies introduced that I have a feeling they might be picked off one-by-one as this miniseries goes along, though they do all survive their first encounter with the Duloks– yes, these antagonists from the 1980s Ewoks cartoon are also around in the current canon– see last year’s Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Ewoks one-shot for another recent appearance.
Anyway, before succumbing to its injuries, one of the Dulok attackers pegs 4-LOM as something called “The Adversary” (basically the opposite of whatever benevolent god the Ewoks thought C-3PO was) and also names two other major threats on the forest moon: the Great Devourer and the Red Ghost– we get a peek at the latter on the following page. Most of the remainder of this issue is spent with Wicket and Meedro teaming up together on a hunt for food, encountering another creature called a Temptor (lifted straight from Caravan of Courage) along the way. Then in a final cliffhanger splash page, we see that Koyatta and his mercenary allies plan to coerce the Ewoks into helping them with their mission to recover the weapons stash. I actually thought this kickoff issue of Ewoks was pretty great, and writer Steve Orlando (Star Wars: Life Day) is doing a wonderful job so far of tying together some fairly obscure Endorian lore from the Legends timeline and incorporating it into canon. Artists Álvaro López (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi) and Laura Braga (Star Wars: The High Republic) also feel perfectly matched for this title that blends the lighthearted nature of the Ewoks with the somewhat more serious-minded tone of the current Star Wars comics. I can’t wait to see what happens next month!
Star Wars: Ewoks #1 is available now wherever comic books are sold.