Okay, I know it’s a kids comic and they don’t want to talk about blood and stuff, but “red with danger”?
Droids #3
Star Comics (August, 1986)
“The Scarlet Pirate!” WRITER: Dave Manak PENCILER: John Romita INKER: Joe Sinnott COLORIST: George Roussos LETTERER: Grace Kremer EDITOR: Sid Jacobson EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Tom DeFalco
R2 and 3Po are assigned to care for Llez, the son of an ambassador. With his father not around, Llez follows a show about space pirates and assumes they’re all good guys, including Reddjak. When his hero is arrested Llez goes to rescue him and gets invited to join his crew. The Droids sneak aboard the getaway ship to protect their master and when Llez finds out Reddjak isn’t just evil but about to attack the peace conference his father is taking part in (the pirates want to loot the ships during the conference), Llez and the Droids work to stop him. Llez’s father shows up to take down Reddjak, revealing he used to be a space ranger. Llez now looks up to his father and he decides to bring his son along on future missions.
What they got right: It’s certainly the happiest ending of the Droids comics I have. Llez is pretty smart for his age and I like how it ended.
What they got wrong: More ignorance of the Star Wars universe. They never established that there couldn’t be fictional TV-like broadcasts in that galaxy (Holiday Special aside) but the pirates all act like the typical yo-ho-ho Treasure Island pirates. Pirates of the 1990s didn’t act like that if any of them did, so why would pirates in space act like Earth pirates of fiction?
Recommendation: That plothole aside, it’s not a bad story, but not one I’d call a must-own. This is also the last of the Star Comics/tie-in comics, but more Droid adventures are coming next week as we get into the Dark Horse comics run. I do hope to get the rest of the Star run in the future, however.
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