The Lesser-Known EU: Infinities: Return of the Jedi

This is another guest post by Amara Z who was nice enough to do yet another review of the last of the Star Wars: Infinities comics

Star Wars Infinities – The Return of the Jedi

The last version of this series is The Return of the Jedi. This was probably my least favorite of the three. The comic didn’t vary that much from the movie to make it very interesting, the art was pretty bad if not awful, there was so much going on at times it was occasionally hard to follow, and some of the things that happened are just too bizarre for words. I actually debated how to organize the review. I thought about listing just the differences from the movie (it would be a very short list), but I’ll go through it like I did the others. I will probably go a little out of order of the events, though, since they sometimes did a lot of switching back and forth between storylines.

* SPOILER ALERT * – this contains spoilers. So if you were planning to read these for yourself, then nothing to see here. Move along; move along.

The big change, if you can call it that, is that the plan to rescue Han from Jabba’s palace fails miserably.  The comic opens with Leia dressed as Boushh and she is negotiating the price for her “captive” Chewbacca. Unfortunately, Threepio is incapacitated while she is talking with Jabba and negotiations stall. Leia eventually reveals herself and threatens Jabba with the thermal detonator, but she’s shot in the arm, and drops it while it’s activated. Everyone has to run for it and Jabba and Threepio are the only two that don’t make it out in time. Even Han, still in carbonite, is removed from the palace before it blows up, but unfortunately, Boba Fett has him. Leia tries to rescue Han from Fett, but when she fires, she misses and hits the controls of the carbonite instead. Definitely cringe worthy and it will play into later events.

At least we get a nice pic of Leia in this particular sequence. I just kind of liked it. She looks ready to kick some butt.

The others regroup with Luke and decide to split up to search for Han – Luke by himself and Lando, Leia, and Chewie. From here, we end up with two different story threads.  I’ll start with Luke. While Luke searches for Han, Yoda and the Force ghost of Obi-Wan have been wondering why Luke has not returned to Dagobah yet. Apparently Yoda is dying and time is running out. Luke feels Yoda die through the Force and abandons his search for Han to go to Dagobah.

By the time Luke gets there, it’s too late and Yoda is gone. It doesn’t seem to matter much as Luke is able to commune with the Yoda’s Force ghost and still finds out about his parentage and family and that he needs to face Vader. The only real difference from the movie is that the Emperor feels Yoda die in the Force as well and dispatches Vader to capture Luke on Dagobah. Vader manages to do so and Luke is taken to the second Death Star to meet with the Emperor. Yeah, real different from the movie. On the upside, Luke sends a couple of messages to the Alliance for Leia before he’s captured.

Meanwhile, Leia, Lando, and Chewie have been searching for Fett and finally find him. He’s going to sell Han to the Imperials. The comic says they are “on a forest world on the edge of the galaxy,” but it looks a lot like Endor to me. You be the judge.

That's just one several odd things in this comic. Leia gets to play sniper, though, which I thought was cool.

 Leia and crew get Han back, but of course it takes a major fire fight to do so. At least Fett kills himself with his own detonator. (Ha!)

They get Han back to the Rebel fleet and he is thawed out by a doctor there. It’s actually kind of sad at first because the doctor talks about the damage to the carbonite unit and everyone is looking so guilty. At least Lando gets a funny line in about Han.

I’ll have to admit I saw the page of the doctor wanting to see Leia alone as a preview page on the web. And it’s what interested me in this version of the series. I wanted to see if it would go in the direction I thought it would and it did. The doctor informs Leia due to the length of time in carbonite and the damage to the unit, there’s little hope Han will regain his sight. That’s a total bummer, but not unexpected. We’ve seen it before in fanfic.

They end up needing to go to a briefing and, interestingly, Mon Mothma isn’t mad that Leia has been gone or that she’s late. It’s not pertinent to the story, but it caught my attention. We find out at this point the Rebellion is going to make a move against the Death Star and there is already a strike team on Endor. Unknown to the Rebellion, the whole thing is a trap.

Leia and the rest of the group are in some down time when the Alliance receives the transmission from Luke. In one of the stranger moments, the message is played in front of all of them, including Ackbar and Mon, and poor Leia has to find out that Luke is her brother and Vader is her father in front of basically everyone. Wow. That really kind of sucks and I’m feeling for the girl about that one. Yikes. In one of the sweeter moments, though, Han asks to be taken over to Leia.

The second message is about Luke being captured and he instructs them not to come after him. Of course, does Leia listen? Nope. She had confiscated Fett’s ship, Slave I, and uses it to go after Luke. Lando, Han and Chewie go after her and there is a cute scene where Han is more of himself and trying to convince Lando to let him go with them after Leia. Lando agrees cause he’s going to need someone to talk some sense into Leia.

I kind of felt like this next section seemed very much like the movie. The only thing that differed is who did what. The shield generator on Endor is destroyed with some help from Han, Chewie, and Lando (including a blind Han on the Falcon’s guns). In a very odd twist, the Ewoks attack both the Imperials and the Rebels during the battle. I think they were upset that some of their own tribe were collateral damage, but it’s only mentioned in a panel or two. It struck me as so random.

Leia makes it onto the Death Star and she is brought before the Emperor. He orders Vader to kill Leia, but Luke intervenes and it ends up in a fight mostly between Vader and Luke. In the end, Vader is told Luke and Leia are both his children and he decides that he can’t kill them.

While this was going on, the Rebels destroy the Death Star’s reactor and Luke and Leia realize they need to get off the station. Leia decides to save Vader, but in a variation from the movie, Palpatine is not killed and he escapes. Fortunately for Luke and Leia, the Falcon comes after them and gets them off the Death Star in time. There is a funny scene where Han hears someone being brought on board.

 They all regroup back at the fleet and vow to find the Emperor. This scene is a good example of the artwork in this comic.

 That’s supposed to be Leia, Mon Mothma, and Luke in the top photo. And check out Han in the second pic. I didn’t know Cyclops from X-Men was going to be in this. Cool!

 As it turns out, they have some extra help to search for the Emperor.

Yep, that is a redeemed Vader in white. So if you’ve seen it on the web, now you know where it’s from. It has to be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen and was a definite “what the…” moment for me.

Not sure how this review ended up longer than the other two, especially since I didn’t enjoy this one nearly as much. I think there was so much more going on to describe, but not necessarily in a good way. And the differences from the movie are more in the fine details. In my opinion, if there’s one comic in this series to skip, this is it.

Thanks again for taking the time to do this review, Amara!