Things are looking bleak for our heroes of the Rebellion. Han Solo and Chewbacca are being hunted on Coruscant by stormtroopers and bounty hunters alike. When a secret mission goes wrong, Leia is left injured and floating adrift in her X-Wing with no hope of getting back to the Rebel fleet. Who will get to her first? Reinforcements from her squad or the Star Destroyer hunting them?

The short review is: this comic is great, it looks amazing, and it does incredible things with Leia. Go and read it.

Minor Spoilers Below

The slightly longer review is that this is a great continuation of an X-Wing-based story that’s better than the actual X-Wing comics ever were. The focus is a little less on dogfighting than creative problem solving in this issue, but it’s a solution that worked for me, even if it is a little deus ex machina and fraught with some logic gaps, but that’s me overthinking the situation.

Brian Wood is the perfect writer for Leia. Her current situation would make it easy to turn her into the damsel in distress. Even though Luke is, indeed, coming to her rescue, Leia is in control much of the time and displays a strength of character even in this terrible situation. This issue also sets up who may be the breakout character of 2013, R2-T4. Seriously, that little astromech droid has a ton of character this issue and was so much fun to watch.

Issue #6 can also be seen as the closing of one arc and the start of a new one for the pilots of the black ops team. There’s some suggestion that we may be witnessing the start of Rogue Squadron here, which, as a die-hard fan of the X-Wing novels, books, and comics, has me incredibly excited. Whatever the next arc brings, I’m looking forward to more sweet dogfights, fantastic character development, and droid heroes.

Four and a Half Overworked Astromechs out of Five