Galaxy Guide 5 (1990) tackles Return of the Jedi, character by character, though, for my money, there aren’t enough folks from Jabba’s palace included. Which is fine, they’re in other books.

Anyway, same deal as Galaxy Guide 1 and 3. I particularly like the web of plots and imminent betrayals that develops when you read the character profiles from Jabba’s court, and how they all got messed up by Luke and his friends. Basically, all those criminals were just about ready to start killing each other on their own. It kind of feels like a Scorsese movie.

No Michael Manley behind the pen in this book. While I do miss his work, I also really love Al Williamson. He was a longtime comic strip artist who got his start in the late 40s and he had a wild career (among other things, he helped get Bernie Wrightson into the field). He was probably best know for his work on Flash Gordon and, well, lots of Star Wars comics, including a portion of the daily newspaper comic strips, something I often forget exist. Anyway, it is a real treat to see Williamson illustrate a whole sourcebook. Williamson would pop up occasionally in later WEG Star Wars books, and mainstay illustrator Allen Nunis obviously took a lot of stylistic inspiration from him.