A reminder of just how good Marvel's run of Star Wars comics has been.

The majority of this collection is taken up by the start of Dark Horse's 2013 series, titled simply "Star Wars" and marketed as a return to good, honest, bread-and-butter SW after years of series with increasingly tangential links to the movies.

A nice idea, but it's so damn slow. There's a lot of intrigue on spaceships that feels more like Battlestar Galactica and a lot of fiddling with made-up tech that feels more like Star Trek. Han spends most of the run crawling through a single action sequence. There's an interesting central mystery, but it's overextended and the reveal doesn't pay for your patience.

It doesn't help that Marvel's two 2015 flagship series (Star Wars again, and Darth Vader) were built on exactly the same premise and executed it much better. Those series (particularly under Kieron Gillen) built their drama as tragedy: we know where things end up (because anyone reading the book has presumably seen The Empire Strikes Back), so how do you use that to create dramatic irony?

This series, by contrast, levels empty threats (no, Leia isn't going to die) and gestures towards future developments without mining them for any sort of drama (oh look, it's Endor). Like a lot of late-period Legends stuff, it feels overly conscious of everything that's already been written, restrained from making any big swings.

The result is a high-profile relaunch that is long, drawn-out and inconsequential.

N.B. Worth mentioning the accompanying strips that open the collection. They're imperfect but a bit more interesting. "To the Last Man", in particular, offers an unusual take on the rank-and-file Imperial officers, exemplifying the Empire's internal rot through the story of one good soldier. ( )