Star Wars Legends, Droids and Ewoks vol. 1: The Original Marvel Years

Date Completed: 24 June, 2025

Grade: B

While these are meant to be kids books, this is a fun little volume, and a quick read. I’m not the biggest fan of Star Wars, but I remember watching the Ewoks cartoon show as a kid. I can remember little of that show (and have intentionally not gone back to watch it so it doesn’t take away from my impressions of this book), but as far as I can tell, the comics are original stories, and not retellings from the cartoon. I say this because I distinctly remember a stone that had a light and a dark side that was being fought over by the Ewoks and the witch Mogray which is never depicted here; even though the character Mogray does show up.

The art for Ewoks is surprising detailed for a kids book. The backgrounds build an interesting world, and there is a judicious use of characters breaking the panels in an interesting way. The stories are rather generic and often rely on some magic spell to solve problems, but they’re fun and harmless, and usually have a little humor thrown in as well. I think why I appreicate the Ewoks more is because it has been separated from he rest of the Star Wars universe and can live as its own entity.

The Droids issues however seem to lack the same charm. They are still easy and fun reads, but the central tenant of R2D2 and C3PO trying to find a new “master” felt off-putting. I know they are meant to be machines, but they are sentient machines, and so searching for an owner felt akin to a person searching to be enslaved. I’m sure that was not the intention, but again, it came off that way to me. I did enjoy seeing John Romita Sr. doing a different project than his previous work, even if he didn’t stay on the book for too long.


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