Just this week we had this year’s Star Wars Celebration and the sheer number of announcements of new series, movies, books and of course merchandise makes my head spin. Because of that it seems certain that the LEGO Star Wars magazine is here to stay for many more years and given the amount of content they could even produce a second line perhaps more aimed at adults and with more serious extras. Anyway, for now the existing series will have to do, so let’s see what the June issue provides.
Let me start by saying that I really, really love the primary comic this time. Sure, the story is ridiculous again, but look at how colorful it is! There’s literally a new color scheme on every page ranging from yellow/ gold to blue to purple to pink to green. It’s fantastic! Perhaps a bit too much for some people, but totally up my alley.
The second comic of course is referencing the extra – like a lot – which is the Razor Crest or The Mandalorian’s Starship as it was called for a while when Lucasfilm/ Disney forgot to register the trademark and someone else had snatched up the name. *lol* It’s more conventional and not nearly as flamboyant, but it serves its purpose.
The Razor Crest also makes an appearance on a coloring page, but unfortunately it’s really just the upper third and rather tiny. The reasoning behind this eludes me. For me it’s simply too small and I find the already filled in background distracting or else I might actually have spent an evening or two coloring and shading it if it was a full page or double spread with just the lines. On the other hand the smallness is an issue for kids who may not be able to stay within the lines, even more so since this is a rather detailed drawing with many studs and bits and not e.g. a smooth Naboo Starfighter.
The posters are rather *meh* in the sense that they feel like you’ve seen it a million times, though at least they appear okay from a technical point of view. At least there’s no obvious Photoshop hackery or skewed colors.
As mentioned before, the extra is the Mandalorian‘s original vessel from season one. Well, at least it’s supposed to be because just like LEGO have yet to produce a bigger version that even comes close to resembling the genuine article, this one also barely bears any actual similarities. All the problems that plague the other model renditions are also present here – not enough separation (or exactly none at all in this case) of the engine pods, the fuselage not being tall enough and lacking the typical forward inclination and a few other things. I won’t complain about a freebie, naturally, but I’m sure even in such a limited format it would be possible to construct something that comes closer to the one in the series.
This is not a bad issue by any means, but I find myself again regretting Blue Ocean not going the full mile on some things and squandering the potential. Will we ever see a near perfect issue in this series? I’m not too sure about that…
Mylenium's Brick Corner 