Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode IX: "Revenants" by W. Haden Blackman, et al.

Digital comic issue, 60 pages
Published 2003
Acquired and read April 2014

Star Wars Tales #18: "Revenants"

Story: W. Haden Blackman

Pencils: Dub with Niko Henrichon
Inks: Pierre-André Déry

Colors: Phiz
Letters: Steve Dutro

Year One of the Invasion (Month 6)
This issue of the late, lamented Star Wars Tales contains five stories of Boba Fett, ranging from his childhood on Kamino to his time as Mandalore, and I'm here for the last one, set during the early days of the Yuuzhan Vong War (it fits seamlessly between Ruin and Hero's Trial). Han is scouting the Far Rim to see if the Yuuzhan Vong have invaded there when he's shot down on the junkyard world of Raxus Prime and has to fight Boba Fett to stay alive. Only he seems to be killing him again and again...

The art is decent; I like the foreboding backgrounds more than I do the cartoony foregrounds, and the colors done by the so-called "Phiz" are excellent. It was unclear to me that Han was actually killing Fett over and over (until the end, when it was stated outright), not just knocking him out and escaping.

Continuing the thread of the Mandalorians working for the Yuuzhan Vong begun in A Practical Man, "Revenants" is a nice a little tale, a good showcase for Han Solo, who is still awesome even as an old man on his own. It's narrated by a series of letters from "Scoundrel" to "Princess," and it's a strong turning point, well-depicted-- this is the moment where Han goes from moping to fighting back. Which isn't to say that his demons are gone, as we find out in Hero's Trial...

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XIV: Taller Tales

Comic trade paperback, 216 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 2000-02)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2011

The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales

Writer: Bill Willingham
Artists: Mark Buckingham, Zander Cannon, Duncan Fegredo, Peter Gross, Niko Henrichon, Adam Hughes, Phil Jimenez, Michael Kaluta, Marc Laming, Jason Little, Shawn McManus, Linda Medley, Albert Monteys, Kevin Nowlan, Andrew Pepoys, Paul Pope, John Stokes, Daniel Torres, Bill Willingham
Colorists: Lee Loughridge, Daniel Vozzo
Letterers: John Costanza, Todd Klein

This collection brings together a disparate set of stories by Bill Willingham, who I guess is kind of a big deal because he wrote Fables or something? I don't know, I never read it. (Should I?) As Willingham himself points out, all of the stories here are about the telling of stories, but that's appropriate; this is the Dreaming, after all.

First off is "Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of D.R.E.A.M. I've said it before, but Merv, the Dreaming's janitor, is my second-favorite Sandman character, and this story is every bit as good as you'd expect a James Bond story featuring a man with a pumpkinhead to be, dirty sex jokes and all. The idea of a world-level threat doesn't feel very Sandmanesque, but on the other hand, I thought the car that could move out of people's dreams and even become a matchbox car when need was awesome. (But why is Matthew the Raven, my favorite character, now white?)

"The Further Adventures of Danny Nod, Heroic Library Assistant" is all right. The premise is okay-- it doesn't really do anything new or interesting with the idea of wandering into different stories-- but the art sells it, as each couple pages is illustrated by someone else, Danny himself remaining the only visual constant in the story. There are fun bits. Nice to see Goldie again. (But didn't he leave the Dreaming?) "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dreams... But Were Afraid to Ask" takes a similar point, with a bunch of two-page vignettes all illustrated by different teams. My favorite stories were the ones explaining why dreams can be sexual (it's because Merv is a bit of a sleaze) and whether dreams have dreams (they do and it's weird).

The bulk of the book is "The Thessaliad," about Thessaly, the last of the Thessalian witches, who featured in the Sandman story "A Game of You." There's some great ideas here, such as the fact that if Thessaly just reenacts the tropes of a quest story, she'll automatically end up wherever she wants to be, and I liked the interplay with her "fetch," but sometimes the characterization was a little too straightforward, and the difficulties a little too easily escaped. The end sets up some mysteries; I hope these are solved somewhere. (There's a lot of comments about Lucifer being up to something; I guess this is a reference to the concurrent Lucifer spin-off?)