It was a throwaway line in the third Star Wars film. C-3PO was being cleared to serve Jabba the Hutt when he was told that the last protocol droid that served Jabba had been disintegrated. 40 years later, the line is explained in a one-shot story featured in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - Jabba’s Palace. Writer Marc Guggenheim delivers a little more detail on the background of the giant slug gangster with the aid of artist Alessandro Miracolo and colorist Dee Cunniffe. The story is quaint enough, but it lacks a great deal of insight into Jabba or his background, which really SHOULD be more of a focus in this sort of one-shot story.

Meet Eightyem. He’s a simple droid. Looks kinda like the 2-1B surgical droid from the end of The Empire Strikes Back. He is, of course, doomed. He’s been given a job as Jabba the Hutt’s protocol droid. He doesn’t like the work. It’s scarcely very challenging for him. It’s rudimentary translation for a big, ugly slug on a desert planet out in the middle of nowhere. Things are, of course, about to get a hell of a lot worse for him. He is, after all, serving Jabba the Hutt not long from his death at the hands of a Jedi and a few of his colleagues in a horrible affair involving a smuggler who has been encased in carbonite. 

The story of a doomed droid and the immediate events leading up to his disintegration are...not exactly all that interesting. Nor do they shed any light on the nature of Jabba the Hutt or his life and crimes. There is some intrigue involving political ambitions and one of Bib Fortuna’s race. It would take a tremendous amount of work to craft a very deft and concise story about that one throwaway line that could engage much beyond a scene or two. The story Guggenheim tells could easily have been placed in any world, though. The characters he’s weaving into the story don’t have a whole lot to do with Jabba or his palace, so it feels a bit extraneous. 

Miracolo and Cunniffe do an impressive job of bringing the specifics of Jabba’s palace to the page. 40-year-old production design for the third installment of the series seems as fresh as it ever did in the hands of an art team that faithfully renders a whole new story in the setting. There’s a deep understanding of anatomy and personality of a variety of different races in the Star Wars universe at play in the visuals, including one of the better renderings of one of Hammerhead’s Ithorian race. Back in ’77, they were just trying to populate an alien cantina with weird-looking aliens. Decades later, Miracolo and Cunniffe actually make the Ithorian look like it could have logically evolved to look like a weird lump of clay that’s been abused into a tongue shape...and what’s more...it’s expressive. Very cool. 

The celebration of the 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi continues later on in April in a one-shot involving the Ewoks. It’s been quite a long time since Marvel’s last Ewoks comic book. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with for a fresh take on the furry little guys from the forest moon of Endor.

Grade: C+