Dark Horse has built itself a nice reputation as a creator of art books. While Star Wars: Panel to Panel is a very different beast than the deluxe Art of Sin City and Art of Hellboy, it's a pretty nifty treat for the Star Wars fan and a reminder that Dark Horse has put out some pretty good Star Wars tales in their time. Without the singular vision represented by a Mike Mignola or a Frank Miller, the quality of the art here varies a lot more, and there aren't as many breathtaking pages, but there are definitely some beautiful pieces of work, and editor Randy Stradley has done a pretty good job of encompassing enough different styles that everyone will find a favorite somewhere in the pages. This is a bit light on the information side, being more or less a slide show with scant text, and I actually was wishing for a little more of a historical look at what Dark Horse has brought to the Star Wars universe with their comics, but as a visual tour of that history, it's pretty good.
Star Wars: Panel to Panel is divided into five main sections, with some divisions within those sections. Quite honestly, I have more than a few quibbles with the way these things are divided. Han Solo being lumped in with "other characters" instead of being just as important as Luke and Leia and no section to highlight the numerous characters created within the comics who have gone on to play bigger roles within the license are two of them, and my gut just tells me that there should be a lot more than five sections for something as expansive as the Star Wars universe. However, these are, in the end, just quibbles, and Stradley makes a pretty good argument in the beginning about the whys and wherefores of the layout that was chosen.
Certainly the main point of the thing isn't as an informational resource for what all Dark Horse has produced, but as a sampling of the artwork that has been produced over all these years. Panel to Panel is pretty comprehensive, including out-of-print pieces from Droids or Tales of the Jedi, but the focus is definitely on the more popular Empire and Republic eras. This is a good thing, to my eyes, as it allows for multiple interpretations of favorite characters, and so you get cool little pieces like Art Adams and Adam Hughes doing covers for the classic trilogy, a beautiful interpretation of the Wampa by Cary Nord or Duncan Fegredo's gorgeous cover for Splinter of the Mind's Eye. There might not be a sense of this as a "complete" look at Dark Horse's Star Wars, it is very much a small snapshot, but the decisions on where to focus are pretty much spot on.
Given his long-term involvement with Dark Horse's Star Wars books, it's no surprise that Dave Dorman's work is well represented in these pages. While Drew Struzan, known for creating the classic posters, is also represented here thanks to his work on Darth Maul, it is Dave Dorman's style that many fans think of when they imagine painted Star Wars art, particularly in the comics. There's a lovely selection of Dorman's art throughout, including painted pieces from the illustrated novellas of Dark Forces and the covers of the Dark Empire series. Actually, while there is certainly a pretty good variety of artists here, some names do keep popping up time and again: Kilian Plunkett, Mathieu Lauffray and Hugh Fleming all stand out as guys who, at one time or another, did a lot of work on the Star Wars universe, and it's clear from their contributions here why they were the go-to guys.
While there are occasional interior pages, Stradley wisely keeps the focus on the non-sequential pieces, the covers or pinups that visually defined memorable moments in the Star Wars comics. Certainly these covers and pinups call to mind moments of the series more than Stradley's brief text notes or any flip through of the stories themselves, and it should be noted that Dark Horse Star Wars comics have always had striking covers that invite readers to speculate on the stories, in the manner of pulp novels, which is of course one of the main sources of inspiration for Star Wars in the first place.
Where Star Wars: Panel to Panel really shines is when the text goes away altogether and the art takes center stage. The two-page splash by Tsuneo Sanda that opens the book, the full-page pictures that divide each chapter, I found myself wishing that the white space borders and header/footer information had been cut out for the most part, so that the artwork could bleed all the way to the edge of the page. Certainly while Stradley's notes are decent enough, they don't provide such crucial information that they couldn't have been cut to enlarge the artwork a little bit, although I do like that the origins of the artwork are so carefully noted on each page, so that the reader doesn't have to flip back and forth between an index and whatever page they're on to find out who did the piece they're looking at.
In short, Star Wars: Panel to Panel is a treat for the eye of any Star Wars fan, and a nice visual commemoration of the work that Dark Horse has put into the license for well over 10 years. It would make an ideal gift for the Star Wars fan on your Christmas list who hasn't followed the comics, and it's also a good investment for fans of the Star Wars comics who don't already own all of the Dark Horse catalog or who would just like to have a "highlights" book of some of the best art from the various series. 8/10
