NeverarGreat said:

I just picked this up today, the first comic I've ever actually bought.

There's a lot of political discussion and a lot of characters and names all at once, but the underlying story is clear and has heart at this point.

One small thing that threw me: The lightsabers look like the ones from the film. I would have expected the artists to use the prototype lightsabers, the ones with flashbulb reflectors as hilts, that they were going to use on the film before the hilts were nixed. Would have been a neat throwback.

While that is undoubtedly a cool idea, I don't know if Lucas actually intended lightsaber hilts to be so cumbersome--I would imagine that was more likely an artistic decision coming from tech limitations (i.e., having the lightsaber effects produced in-camera), as well as Ralph McQuarrie's art (from the second draft onward). Whereas the first draft was very very blue-sky in its approach (and had all-red sabers vs. the all-white ones used in filming ANH--another indicator that the visual design changed repeatedly).