Sunday, October 8, 2017

True Believers: Star Wars: Lando #1

I can now say that I've been to comic conventions in three countries! This past Friday, I attended the Shanghai Comic Con with the Kiddo. We had lots of fun, and I brought back a small haul (working on a somewhat limited budget):


Those two Thor comics are promos for the con, and they're in Chinese, so I won't be reviewing them here. I found a vendor selling recent American comics and picked up three Marvel books. I also bought comics from two small-press creators. Those were also both English-language (actually one is bilingual, with all of the dialogue in English and Chinese).

You may have noticed that I have not been reviewing much in the way of standard-format comics since we headed back overseas. This has mostly been an organizational issue. I brought a stack of over 100 comics with me from the US to read and review. Some of those were new purchases over the summer, while most are from my supply of unread comics in storage.

I've added these items from the Shanghai Comic Con to that stack, and I'll be starting to review them on a regular basis, beginning right now.

Title: True Believers: Star Wars: Lando
Issue: 1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: July 2016
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Alex Maleev
Colorist: Paul Mounts
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Cover: Alex Maleev, Edgar Delgado
Editor: Jordan D. White, Heather Antos

What a fun book! This is a Lando Calrissian solo story (without Solo! Ha!), and it really nails Lando's personality as he charms his way into not even having to perform the heist he's originally set out to do.

Unfortunately, debts in the underworld of the Star Wars Galaxy tend to add up, and Lando sets his sights on one more job to get himself free and clear. Not surprisingly, he finds that easy money is never really easy, as the ship he steals is going to cause him a lot more grief than he had ever planned for.

This had some good character development that never felt like it got away from the Lando we know and love. It also heavily featured Lobot, who gets some good screen time as Lando's partner-in-crime. The setup of the new heist flows smoothly, and the final complications at the end set up when should be plenty of fun in the issues ahead.

Rating: 8.5/10

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