Star Wars has produced a great many stories about the Empire and almost none from inside it. Agent of the Empire is the exception: Jahan Cross works for Imperial Intelligence, believes in the job, and the book does not spend five issues arranging his redemption.
The pastiche
John Ostrander is not hiding the influence. There is a gadget droid instead of Q, a briefing scene, a casino, a villain with an industrial empire and a personal grudge, and a plot that turns on an arms deal. Stéphane Roux draws it with a clean European-album line that suits the register exactly — this is a comic that wants to look expensive rather than gritty, and it does.
Han Solo is a guest
Solo and Chewbacca turn up, and the smart thing the book does is treat them as a complication rather than a selling point. From Cross’s side of the table a Corellian smuggler with a Wookiee is a security problem, and the scenes play that way.
Where it stops
Two five-issue series and then nothing. Hard Targets begins to complicate Cross’s loyalty in the way the premise demands, and the licence ran out before that had anywhere to go. What exists is tight, self-contained and unusually adult for the line.
