Lando #5 Review

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The cards are stacked against Lando in this final issue of his miniseries! Dennis doubles down on the review.

This article contains spoilers for Lando #5.

Writer: Charles Soule | Artist: Alex Maleev | Colors: Paul Mounts | Cover: Alex Maleev | Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Having recognized her prey as someone she was acquainted with, bounty hunter Chanath Cha has decided not to kill Lando Calrissian. However, she still has a job to do for the most unforgiving employer in the galaxy. The Emperor wanted the Imperialis back and the crew taken alive, or he wanted the ship destroyed. Cha can’t bring herself to turn over Lando, so she insists on destroying the ship, despite the pleas from Sava Korin Pers and Lobot that the artifacts aboard are priceless. Just as she is about to set the self-destruct, Lando informs Cha that Lobot is hurt and in a bacta tank. Cha and Lobot apparently have a past significant enough to give Cha pause. Aleksin and Pavol arrive and demand the others “get off their ship.” They declare that all are to die, except Pers as she is a victim of Lando’s scheme. However, after showing her one of the Sith artifacts, Aleksin kills her with a lightsaber. Cha then traps the twins in a passage by destroying the mechanism that locks the door and engages the self-destruct. Lando retrieves a still injured Lobot from the bacta tank while Chanath Cha departs to prepare the Scimitar for docking with the Imperialis to engineer their escape. Lobot is desperately fighting off his implants from wiping out his personality as the implant attempts to optimize his cognitive functions in the wake of his injury. Cha discovers that O-66, the caretaker droid of the Scimitar, has adequately repaired itself and having detected the activation of the self-destruct on the Imperialis, refuses to dock. Lando dispatches Aleksin with the assistance of some smooth talking while Cha handles Pavol. Lobot is surprised to see Cha aboard the ship, and once he is informed that the escape pods are locked out, he sacrifices his identity to allow his implants to crack the code to unlock them. Cha goes her separate way from Lando and Lobot as they all flee the ship in escape pods. As their pod flies from the Imperialis, Lobot plays a prerecorded message for Lando in which he frankly tells Lando that he is a leader that inspires people to do things they shouldn’t and he encourages his friend to get out of that game and find a worthy cause to devote his abilities to…

Issue five is exactly what this series needed. For all the timing flaws of the previous issues, there was a good underlying story if you could suspend your disbelief (which, yes, has to be done at the door when dealing with a space opera). For many reasons, this issue was a jackpot of a payoff for the series.

Aleksin and Pavol continue to develop not only as characters, but as representatives of their species as well. Although, their appearance in issue one made is possible that they were members of the Mahran species introduced in Christie Golden’s Dark Disciple. However, despite similarities in appearance, the behavior of the Mahran in Dark Disciple and that of Aleksin and Pavol differ significantly enough that they are unlikely the same species. Whatever they are, their species believes their voices to be sacred and all others not of their race who hear their voices must die according to their laws. This development reveals that they aren’t the mindless warriors that their earlier portrayal in this series would lead the reader to believe. A lot of depth was delivered to Aleksin and Pavol in just the first ten panels in which they appeared in this book that cast their appearance in the previous four books into new light.

A nod is due to the writer, editors, and story group for managing to tell a story of how Lando and his crew managed to discover a ship full of Sith artifacts, but somehow, the identity of the Emperor as Sith Lord Darth Sidious managed to remain a secret. Sava Pers and Chanath Cha were the key plot devices for this story element. Sava was the reader’s guide to the significance of the treasure room on the Imperialis. She identified everything as rare Sith antiquities. However, she never had to identify any particular piece. That wasn’t important. In some ways, every treasure on the ship served to create one large McGuffin in the larger story of Lando learning a very large and costly lesson. One of those pieces turned Aleksin and Pavol into Sith monsters, but what that device was never had to be named because it didn’t survive the end of the story thanks to Chanath Cha. Her loyalty to the Emperor demanded that she finish her job. Her instincts and street savy told her, and the reader, that no matter how valuable the artifacts were, Lando’s crew could not collect them and live. The only one that had any use for the artifacts outside of their value was Sava Pers, and she died at Aleksin’s hands. Therefore, the artifacts had to be destroyed. With their destruction, their source, identity, function, and the extent of their value became immaterial.

This was the book that saved the series. This was the issue where all the characters quit talking about the consequences of Lando’s actions, and the reader finally got to see those consequences. The question remains: is Lando solely to blame? Lando has charisma, and Lobot and the others found it difficult to say no to him. His smooth-talking made believers, at least temporarily, out of the doubters that were Sava Korin Pers and Lobot. Still, at various points in this series, Pers, Cha, and Lobot all told Lando that his plans were risky, got people into deep trouble, or worse yet, got people killed. However, none of them could ultimately deny Lando what he wanted. This is what made Lobot’s final message resonate and so poignant. Nobody could deny Lando, and Lando doesn’t seem to see how dangerous his ability to persuade people can be. It managed to get three members of his crew killed, and for that matter, it might as well have been four, as Lobot—his “brother,” as Lando knew him, was gone. This issue turned expectations for the series on their head. This story was set up as a heist in issue one with the potential score being what allowed Lando to purchase Cloud City and the mining colony on Bespin. This may still be the motivation that leads him down that path, but it isn’t the source of funding. Ultimately, this story was about how Lando came to learn that he needed to be responsible and the new man Han encountered on Cloud City.

Favorite Panel:

One last thought that ties into the “Favorite Panel,” Lando has something of a dark side. When confronted by Aleksin while attempting to rescue Lobot, Lando talked him into deactivating his lightsaber, which gave Lando just the chance he needed to shoot the saber out of Aleksin’s hand and then shoot Aleksin in the chest, klling him. One might argue that Lando had no choice but to kill Aleksin. One could even say that this act of cold blooded behavior is part of what made Lando a scoundrel, just as some argue about Han when he shoots Greedo in the cantina. However, Lando brought Aleksin, Pavol, Pers, and Lobot into this mess. He didn’t make any attempt to redeem Aleksin. The argument that he had no choice doesn’t ring as true when Lobot’s reaction is taken into consideration. Lobot always believed Lando hated blasters and he calls Lando out on him bluffing. Lando responds that he has to keep up this act in order to be able to bluff later, and that the “only ones who know different are dead.” Lobot is taken back, and as well he should be. He becomes incapable of sharing Lando’s secret in short order. It’s up to the reader to decide what this says about Lando, but he doesn’t seem to be quite the charming, mostly harmless rogue that Star Wars fans have come to know over the years. These two panels are thought-provoking and this issue’s favorites.