Star Wars: Endor’s Shadow #1

Posted on by phil.wrede
Under the title of the comic series - “Star Wars: Endor’s Shadow” - a peaceful blue planet spins quietly in space, with the outline of an Imperial stormtrooper’s helmet lightly superimposed over it. Our heroine, Tyria D’Lace, stands brightly lit in the front of the image, while behind her, slightly shadowed, stand Princess Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker. In the bottom left corner of the image, the words, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede,” are displayed.
Progressively closer-in views of the planet Thyferra, and its capital Zlaxuc City, with caption boxes indicating that this story takes place 3+ years after the Battle of Yavin (so, in between the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi). Two HK-87 droids stand guard in a dark hallway outside a secret Imperial facility somewhere in the city.
Inside of a mysterious room, a pair of stormtroopers watch as Grand Moff Trigit (“played” here by the head of an action figure of Alfred Molina’s Doctor Otto Octavius from Spider-Man 2) interrogates the prone Tyria D’Lace, looking out over the city through tall windows.
Tyria refuses to cooperate with Trigit, and so he calls in an interrogation droid. The two stormtroopers are not enthusiastic at the sight of this droid.
As Tyria stands, Trigit belittles her taking up the “hobby” of warfare. While the interrogation droid approaches, the two guard droids out in the hallway are struck by blaster fire from an unidentified source.
Trigit and Tyria demand the stormtroopers go into the hallway to investigate. One of them raises his rifle as the door opens, and is struck in the shoulder by a blaster bolt.
Through the doorway, the muzzle of her sporting blaster still smoking, stands Princess Leia Organa. The other stormtrooper is cute down by Luke Skywalker and his green lightsaber.
The interrogation droid fires a shot at Luke and Leia as they speak; Luke blocks the beam with his lightsaber. It cuts through the droid, and bounces onto the window near Tyria and Trigit.
As Luke and Leia advance on the Imperial officer, one of the HK-87 droids manages to crawl through the door and grab onto Leia’s ankle. Luke cuts its head open with his lightsaber before it can actually injure her.
Trigit and Leia exchange some verbal barbs, as she closes the distance between them.
Luke and Tyria introduce themselves to one another - Luke recognizes her last name, one of the wealthiest families on Thyferra - while Leia reveals her mission to Trigit: to abscond with bacta.
Tyria begins to explain that she’s being held prisoner by the Empire because she disagrees with the rest of her family over “the value of life,” but is interrupted when Luke turns his lightsaber back on. He hears something approaching in the hall.
Four stormtroopers march towards our heroes. Luke offers Tyria a blaster with which to defend herself.
As the stormtroopers get closer, Trigit uses the commotion to escape. Leia orders him to stop, but…
…Trigit escapes through a secret door, while Luke pushes out with the Force, to buy some more time for their own escape.
The stormtroopers fly back across the hall, and Luke closes the main door to the room immediately after.
As the stormtroopers begin to pick themselves up, Luke and Tyria agree that it’s time for them to stage a graceful exit.
Luke cuts the exterior window open, and he and Leia explain to Tyria that they’ll have to jump out, and meet their escape transport in midair.
As they fall through the open air, Luke welcomes Tyria D’Lace to the Rebel Alliance.
The credits for this comic, including the usernames of the Unsplash contributors whose photographs provided the background images, the use of stock visual effects made by Action VFX, the use of fonts by Blambot, the character photography/script/lettering by me (Phil Wrede), and recognition of the creation of Star Wars by George Lucas, as well as its current ownership by Disney. Finally, special thanks to authors of the classic Rogue and Wraith Squadron books, Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston, whose ideas I have definitely built upon in the creation of this story.

My toy comic journey began with a Star Wars comic, one that I started making because I absolutely couldn’t wait for more episodes of The Mandalorian, following the end of the first season. So, then, I hope it’s a little bit fitting for this next phase of storytelling on Pizzarat.net to begin with a new Star Wars toy comic! I was working on this idea throughout most of 2024, when Andor and How to Blow Up a Pipeline were bouncing around in my head so energetically that, sometimes, I couldn’t get my brain to calm down. I thought I’d bought all the Star Wars toys I was going to buy, at least for a while, but I had to fill in some gaps in the collection to tell this story the way I want to (At least 15% of the reason I set this story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was because I liked the likenesses of these Luke and Leia figures so much that I wanted to feature them in the beginning).

If, like me, you spent a lot of time in the mid-to-late ’90s reading and rereading (and rereading) old Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, a couple of the words thrown around in this comic might loudly ring some bells for you. The Rogue/Wraith Squadron series were my absolute favorite of those books; I was an obsessive X-Wing player, and actually burned out the Expansion Pack on my N64 from playing and replaying (and Re. Playing.) the first Rogue Squadron game. So, when I was looking for Star Wars inspiration, my brain naturally turned to the works of Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston! I don’t imagine they’ll ever encounter this little story of mine, but if they do, maybe they’ll feel I honored their legacy, at least a little.

The plan for my toy comics in 2025, in case you’re new to Pizzarat.net (or you haven’t committed every word I’ve ever typed here to memory), is to post one longer comic a month to the website. There’s no guarantee that February’s comic will be the second installment of Endor’s Shadow (in fact, I can promise you it won’t be – I can give you a little hint as to what it might be, though…); in an attempt to maintain a better work-hobby-life balance, I’m trying to let inspiration guide me to the stories I most want to tell. I like the idea of this story a lot, so even if I don’t post the second installment soon, I will get back to it, before too long.

I’m pretty sure 2025 is going to be a rough year (and that’s for the luckiest among us), so I hope the stories you read here give you a little break, or even a boost, before you have to return to the real world once again.

4 thoughts on “Star Wars: Endor’s Shadow #1”

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