A New Hope - The Special Edition TPB

To celebrate the releases of the Special Edition, Dark Horse decided to do an all new comic adaptation of the first film. It was made available in four monthly issues or as part of one collected book along with reprints of the Marvel ESB and ROTJ adaptations. Reviewed 06/08/97 Story It's obviously a significant challenge to attempt to adapt a story as familiar as Star Wars. Not every line can be included, so what do you keep and what do you throw out while attempting to maintain some pace and tell the whole story? I felt the pace in this series was very uneven. The first issue absolutely blew through details at such a pace that I don't think it would be followable to someone who hadn't seen the film. The second and third were a little better, but the fourth kept so much from the films that I felt that it really dragged and didn't work well as a comic. Of course, Dark Horse felt obligated to include panels showing most of the changes to the special edition film. (See a complete illustrated annotation of these film changes at the SW:SE Annotations) This further slowed down the pace in a few places, just to get the movie tie-in. Art For film adaptations, I like to see a good mix of film frame reproductions, as well as shots from different angles. As a series, I get that. However the first issue has mostly new shots (because the script demanded such compression) and issue four has mostly reproductions. Barreto is pretty good at biologicals. The heroes weren't dead likenesses, but nor was he trying for it. Tarkin and Chewie were well done. I was impressed with the care taken to maintain the likenesses of the many background characters. (Wolfman's still in the cantina!) Where this book is VERY weak is in the technology. Vader, 3P0 and the Stormtroopers consistently look wrong. I always thought that TIE fighters were the easiest ships to draw, but they look terrible here. Summary Generally inconsistent. 5.5/10. Not recommended.
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