Court Is In Session — Reviewing ‘Star Wars’ #45

Few go into a Star Wars story looking for tense legal drama. When a story is titled The Trial of Lando Calrissian and is written by Charles Soule, an actual lawyer, however, there’s an expectation that somewhere along the way there’ll be at least a few of the tropes and tricks common to those kinds of stories. After the previous issue spent most of its pages setting up the eponymous trial — and then quickly throwing a winkle into it by having one of the judges, Mon Mothma, get kidnapped — Star Wars #45 is able to dive into the trial and give us some of the fun legal maneuvering the story demands. 

Following a confab with Rebel leadership — General Madine, Admiral Ackbar, and Princess Leia — to establish the stakes of Mon Mothma’s kidnapping (nothing less than the continued survival of the Alliance), Soule gets down to legal business. Salli Georgio left an impression in her debut, and in Star Wars #45 she gets to show off her stuff. First she tried to get Lando’s case thrown out on a technicality, and later tried turning Leia’s testimony for the prosecution to Lando’s advantage via cross examination. These are exactly the kind of thing common to this kind of story. The tension that made her an intriguing character — of someone who comes across flighty and superficial but which is clearly talented at her job — gets cranked up here, as she remains superficially shallow as she struts her legal stuff, using her gregariousness to stun the judges with her intricate knowledge of the law. 

Soule is also particularly careful to walk the line he established previously, of presenting Lando’s judges and accusers in a sympathetic light. They are adversarial (with Madine in particular consistently portrayed as the “bad cop” of the bunch), but at the end of the day, these are all characters readers are intuitively primed to root for. The tension between them and Lando hits just the right balance.

Artist Madibek Musabekov helps here as well. His depictions of Leia throughout her testimony make it clear via body language and facial expressions that she’s getting no pleasure from the trial . The one misstep in this sequence comes from Leia’s testimony taking the form of a multi-page flashback to the events of The Empire Strikes Back, sequences already overly-familiar. It’s hard to not wonder if the space could have been better used. 

At the center of it all remains Lando himself, the mopey eye of the legal storm. Once again, he appears to have given up, showing little emotion, refusing to share any insight with Salli that might help her cross-examination of Leia. Yet by the end of Star Wars #45, Soule reveals a twist in Lando’s demeanor, one which underscores his inherent goodness. It’s an important moment, for both the story, in the way it continues to lay the groundwork for the acquittal we all know is coming, and for reminding readers that Lando is ultimately the protagonist of this story, and we should be rooting for him. Lando is destined for generalship; this story isn’t about his guilt or innocence so much as it is about retroactively establishing how he came to be so accepted into the Rebel hierarchy. Events in this issue make further strides in that direction. 

Along the way, Soule also brings Kes Dameron and his Pathfinders back into the series. Once bona fide recurring characters in earlier issues, it’s been awhile since Poe’s dad has featured in the series. Bringing him back to serve as the primary agent responsible for finding Mon Mothma is a smart use of the series’ past continuity; it makes the story feel like the larger part of a whole that it is. 

All in all, Star Wars #45 represents a well-executed escalation of the Trial of Lando Calrissian story, amping up the legal drama without losing sight of the characterization at its core. Salli remains a delight, Lando remains the right level of contrite, and the tension on both sides of the trial is smartly balanced.