Star Wars: Rebel Heist #1 Review

By Charles Joy on Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

Welcome to the war! Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Note: Your rebellion experience may vary.

The official description from Dark Horse:

A young Rebel meets one of the Alliance’s best for his first mission. But the young man’s hero worship is crushed by the reality of Han Solo. A botched escape, a ship that doesn’t work—could it be that Solo is just a lucky bumbler whose luck has run out?

* Han Solo–the truth behind the myth!

How else would you train new recruits? Teamed up with the best in the biz, in the line of fire, on the job training at its best! The sales pitch seems right – who wouldn’t want to join the rebellion for a chance to meet one of the famous four? Then again, there is that old saying,

“Never meet your heroes.”

And for the recruit in this story, it is likely sound advice. For that matter, he probably should have just stayed home reading about the myth, instead of meeting one.

I have to be honest, I am not up on all the Star Wars lore. Yes, I have seen the movies; I understand the hype; I even acknowledge the greatness. I am just not ga-ga over Star Wars. In fact, my preferred space stories involved gates and stars, not necessarily in that order…

But you know what? Matt Kindt has me hooked. In this one issue, I am ready and waiting for the next three. As far as I am concerned, this is a great jumping on point. The learning curve entails reading the introduction, and a little knowledge about the famed characters. Even then, if you didn’t know about Han Solo’s bravado before, you will at the end of this issue.

I think this is just wonderful. As we all know, Matt is known for his fabulous creator-owned works (most notably (for me anyway): Mind MGMT), as well as countless writing credits for all the best publishers. But did we also know he had a stellar Star Wars script lurking among all that greatness? Well, now we do.

And let’s not forget the art. The pencils (Marco Castiello), inks (Dan Parsons), and colors (Gabe Eltaeb) work wonderfully for this cosmic adventure! The story really comes to life at the hands of these fine artists.

Oh, and the covers? Well what has to be said? Adam Hughes did a fine job capturing the essence of the issue, the man, the myth and the legend…and Matt Kindt lived up to all my expectations for an amazing variant cover!

So, I am not sure what the die-hard Star Wars fanatic is going to think, but this casual Star Wars informed, Matt Kindt fan really digs this first of four part mini-series.

And one final note, if I were to sum this issue up with a hashtag, it would be: #AllPartOfThePlan