Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge #2 Review

Writer: Ethan Sacks

Artist: Will Sliney

Letterer: Joe Caramagna

Publisher: Marvel

Galaxy's Edge #2 is the second installment in a series set primarily on Batuu, the location of the synonymous theme park that is opening later this year. The framing story of each issue tells the story of Dok-Ondar, a crew of smugglers, and the First Order after the events of The Last Jedi, while the primary story is always a spotlight on a certain item in Dok-Ondar's collection and how it came into his possession. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this issue. I had enjoyed the framing story of last month's issue but the primary story didn't really catch my attention, I found it fairly unoriginal, though it did have some aspects. I think it was mainly hurt by the fact that it was another short anthology story about Han and Chewie doing a smuggling job, which we've had quite a lot of recently. This issue had a much more interesting flashback tale. 

Greedo is a character who hasn't had nearly as much focus as Han, so a story focused on him feels much more conceptually more refreshing. One thing I also appreciated about this issue was how it brought all three Star Wars eras together, with an opening flashback to the prequel trilogy era, a primary story in the original trilogy era, and a framing story in the prequel trilogy era. The framing story sections don't add too much to what we already knew but they were great and the ending definitely sets up some interesting things for the next few issues. 

I'm growing more and more fond of Sliney's art. I thought that the last issue had a couple of wonky faces here and there even though I overall enjoyed it. Here I didn't notice anything that took me out of the story. If this is his average quality of work he could easily be one of my favorite current Marvel Star Wars artists. 

I would say that this is a good example of an anthology story done right. A lot of the times the stories can come across as rushed or unimportant because they have a much smaller page count than a miniseries or ongoing but this was an engaging story that felt full and satisfying. The Age of maxiseries has also done a good job with this sometimes but other issues haven't worked as well for me. I was a bit apprehensive about this series after the first issue but if it keeps up this quality for the next few issues then I think it'll end up being great. The next two anthologies focus on fan favorites Hondo and Aphra so I can't wait to see how Sacks handles them.