Classic Star Wars: Han Solo at Stars' End

Classic Star Wars #5

by Archie Goodwin, Alfredo Alcalá (Artist)

Collects Classic Star Wars: Han Solo at Stars' End (1980) #1-3. Adapting Brian Daley's classic novel! For fans of the film -- fans of all ages -- this is one worth waiting for. Searching the galaxy for a rogue shipbuilder to repair the Millenium Falcon, Han Solo and Chewbacca battle fierce enemies and travel to the desolate asteroid known as Stars' End, a planetary prison.

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 1997

About the author

Archie Goodwin was an American comic book writer, editor, and artist. He worked on a number of comic strips in addition to comic books, and is best known for his Warren and Marvel Comics work. For Warren he was chief writer and editor of landmark horror anthology titles Creepy and Eerie, and for Marvel he set up the creator-owned Epic Comics as well as adapting Star Wars into both comics and newspaper strips. He is regularly cited as the "best-loved comic book editor, ever."

Reviews

[Matthew Ward · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oof! Glad this one was a short read. Powered through to the finish. Didn’t care about any of the side characters. The characters I was supposed to care about, I only cared about because they were established in the universe already. Art was not great and there was more dialogue in this comic than was likely in the book it was based on.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

fun story but completely out of canon.

[Druss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to read the original comic strip. Read the Daley book so many years ago. Very reminiscent as a graphic novel of the original Marvel Star Wars. Interesting droid name!

[☮ morgan ☮ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think my issue with this one is that there was too much going on for how short it was. So some of the stuff gets jumbled up and confusing.

[Jono Carney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bollux...

[B.A.G. Studios · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine introduction to Han Solo. I’m glad I read the comic version over the novel, because this honestly doesn’t feel like it would be my thing per se. This plays much better in my opinion when it’s in this shorter format. From what I can tell on Wookiepedia, the most major changes were to the climactic battle/escape scene, and I can live with missing some of that. I wish the other two books of this trilogy were adapted to comic form, but as is, I don’t intend to read those. At least for a very long time. I’m reading in semi-chronological-order-mostly-except-when-I-forget, but I’m not reading literally everything. This didn’t so inspire me that I feel the need to read those in prose. In my opinion, Han Solo’s introduction should just be Episode IV. I like it better if we just get glimpses of his past, like the references to his imperial days in Allegiance. I don’t need whole stories to take place back then. So this being a quick, short, entertaining and fluffy pulp story is perfect. Basically it works as a teaser trailer for Han Solo.
I do find it interesting how much of this I see in Solo: A Star Wars Story. The climax here, juxtaposing droid rights against a prison break, is combined to the film’s second act; the not quite rebel band here matches up to the not quite rebel band there; they swap the Corporate Sector for the more general underworld; and instead of finding the love interest’s father, he’s finding the love interest. They took this story, put it in a blender with a scoop of origin prequel goo, and spread it out over a reshoot sandwich. That said, I honestly couldn’t say which version I like better from a story perspective, despite my misgivings with that movie. Although I can confirm that this is the better comic adaptation between the two. And it does a better job at remembering that Han’s character arc happens later and can’t take place at this point in the timeline. He’s still the hero here, but not for the moral reasons he will be one day. The movie drops the ball on that hard, so it’s nice to see it handled better here.

[Spencer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible Adaptation of a Much Better Novel

If you're wondering which At Star's End to read. Don't. The novel is much better. Story is cut to bare bones to fit it in to 3 issues, and what's worse is the art does nothing but take away from the experience. (Example: when disguising the Falcon as a grain barge the entire ship literally pokes out at one end.)

Things are also just changed for absolutely no reason. When learning of a traitor among the spy's gang, the droid that Han is delivering to him literally gleens from the ether that there is a probable traitor in his midst for absolutely no reason. In the book Han brings the Droid to the spy, and that's when the spy informs him of the possible traitor. Why was this change made? They could have used the same amount of panels to do either one.

There's much more wrong with this adaptation, but I'd rather not write a short story.

TL;DR
Art 3/10

The Novel is superior.

[Adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oof, this is really bad. I remember the Daley novel being pretty competent overall, but this is a mess in pratically every respect and loses whatever quality the source material presented. The art is both ugly, empty, and wrong. It lacks the campy brightness of the Russ Manning comics or the polish of later series. The story is shoddy and does a poor job of emphasizing its interesting beats. The way the prison is launched into atmosphere and then falls back to the planet in the climax seems like a decent action setpiece, and yet it's shown in the weakest way possible. All of the new characters, like Bollux, Bluemax, and the fighting robot, are hideously ugly in a very boring way.

[Stephen Theaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very simple story with very small panels, being a newspaper comic strip that was rejigged to fit the comic book format – and it would have been helpful if this edition of the book had mentioned that. Enjoyable enough in a retro way, but the best thing about it is the name of Han's new robot friend: Bollux.

[Arthur Cravan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked Daley's Han Solo's Revenge... but this was very generic, in every way. Might read the actual novel if I come by it.

[Tom Armbruster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't even know this existed until I saw portions of it on Tumblr. It was a favorite book as a child but this adaptation caught me off guard with a plot twist ending!

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the classic look and plot. Star Wars stories like this are exciting because the universe was wide open and the possibilities were endless. The only thing that was canon was Star Wars: A New Hope. This was originally published in strip form in 1980 or so. A few thing haven't aged well, like the notion of a blue cube that can do pretty much anything related to computer systems without and visible moving parts. Nevertheless it's great fun and the final battle at the end is paced well, even as it cuts back and forth to different parts of the action.

[Chad Hansen-Saunders · Rating 1 out of 5]

So painfully bad. The story is pure 70's cheese. The artwork is terrible. It is a colorized reprint of the comic strip based on the book Han Solo at Star's End. At least it was short so I could force myself through it.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Han Solo helps some people out against the Empire before he joins the rebellion. A short story, that is ok in itself but did not really grab me. I don't think it was the style of the artwork that put me off, maybe it was the lack of depth of character. An ok read.

[C Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Years upon years later, I still love these Daley stories and was thrilled to see visual depictions of the characters and settings. Still, that's not to say it is a collection that holds up to many of the other (excellent) Star Wars graphic novels.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty cool. short and sweet

[Seant · Rating 2 out of 5]

poor art work and feeble retelling of novel

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't bother...

Stilted dialogue, uninspired artwork, and a dull storyline. This one was not worth the time to read...Trust me true believers unless its for nostalgia or sheer bloody mindedness--I would give this one a pass