Comic Book / X-Wing Rogue Squadron

aka: X Wing Series

This is Wedge Antilles, pilot and Rebel hero. Behind him are several Incom T-65B X-wing starfighters. Together, they are the two constants for the series.

Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron is a comic book series within Star Wars Legends. It was published by Dark Horse Comics and ran for 35 issues, beginning in 1995, and ending abruptly in 1998. One of the writers was Michael Stackpole, who was simultaneously writing the X-Wing Series novels, but exactly how much influence he had appears to vary from issue to issue and arc to arc. (He is listed as plotter only in the first few arcs, then usually given credit for the scripts as well.)

This series is set not very long after the Battle of Endor. Initially the comics were supposed to run through three arcs, about twelve issues, but they ran for a good thirty-five issues, not counting the bonus short comic "Rogue Squadron One Half". There is also a prequel of sorts, Rogue Leader, a three-issue arc that came out in 2005, did not involve any input from Stackpole, and is generally considered inferior due to Off-Model art and rampant decompression.

The Rogue Squadron video games are heavily based on the comics.

Story arcs

• The Rebel Opposition
• The Phantom Affair
• Battleground: Tatooine
• The Warrior Princess
• Requiem for a Rogue
• In the Empire's Service
• Family Ties
• Masquerade
• Mandatory Retirement

A Rogue Squadron film set in the Star Wars canon has been announced, to be helmed by Patty Jenkins and released in 2023. Jenkins confirmed that its writing will be influenced by the games and books in which the squadron appears. As of 2023, the project appears to be on hold.

---

This series contains examples of:

• Ace Pilot:
  • Just about every pilot character in the series is or becomes an ace. Or dies. Or both. Since Rogue Squadron is made up consistently of the absolute best pilots in the galaxy, this is almost required before joining.
  • The first arc is the first story that establishes Winter as one. She was originally Princess Leia's aide, and later on became a spy/commando-type strong female character; here, The Rebel Opposition also establishes that she can fly an X-wing well.
• Action Girl: Plourr. Just look at her!◊ She is a princess and her backstory is loosely based on that of Anastasia, but she is also a competent mechanic and pilot, a bit of a Tsundere, and both strong and good at hand-to-hand combat.
• An Aesop: After the Clone Wars concluded Mrlsst had harbored a fugitive Jedi who gave himself up to the Empire so they wouldn't hurt the academy. They burned him on the spot and left a scorched patch, which became a monument "to warn people of the dangers of politics." Consequently Mrlsst was Team Switzerland until the Empire came down on them and made them Neutral No Longer. The head of the college, looking at the damaged campus, tells his assistant there's a lesson in this.
  Gyr Keela: We had that scorched patch of ground to remind us to stay — tsi! — out of the politics. Now, we know it's impossible! You can't stay out of politics. Tsi! You can only choose the path which feels right! ...And we have a new patch to remind us of that!
• Amazonian Beauty: Over the course of the series, Plourr Ilo is drawn as increasingly muscular and increasingly likely to bare her arms, an appearance which does better fit with her strong personality and her propensity towards violence than her original design. It's after this change that recurring agent Kapp Dendo mentions being attracted to her (from what we've seen, the bigger and more dangerous she looks the more she resembles a Devaronian female, so it makes sense).
• And the Adventure Continues: The finale of the Rogue Leader comic miniseries, released a decade after the beginning of the original comic series, has Wedge enter a briefing room full of candidates for the new Rogue Squadron, members from the earlier released series prominently featured.
• Arranged Marriage: Plourr was betrothed to her cousin, Count Rial Pernon, in childhood by her father. On assuming the throne of Eiattu, Plourr accepts this arrangement, partly as he's her strongest supporter.
• Artistic License – Physics: In "The Rebel Opposition", an arc plagued with bad editing, a Wookiee swings a wooden stick at a TIE fighter in flight and shreds the wing that he hit. He's not even knocked off balance and the stick is still intact and in his hand, but the TIE explodes. TIE fighters are a bit fragile for starfighters, but they're still space-capable fighters whose wings work as limited armor. And, in the books of the series, they're able to fly quickly through a forest snapping the branches of trees without taking on damage.
• Art Shift: Several different artists worked on this series, each with a very different style.
• Attempted Rape: This is the reason why Soontir Fel went to the Imperial Naval Academy and became an Ace Pilot. Back when he was a Farm Boy, he very violently stopped a management's kid from raping someone, and was subsequently blackmailed into going to the academy so that he would not be there to testify at the trial. Much later, the management's kid kidnapped Fel's nephew and was shot by Fel's brother.
• Badass Arm-Fold: Several characters do this, including Wedge while pondering The Chains of Commanding.
• Badass Back: In an early issue, agent Winter dodges a Stab the Scorpion moment and fires behind herself without looking to hit the creature sneaking up on her.
• Badass Normal: Other EU focuses on Jedi, or Han Solo, or clone commandos trained from birth by elite Mandalorian mercenaries. This series? Pilots. And, barring Luke Skywalker's rare cameos, none of them are Force-sensitive.
• Bamboo Technology: "Requiem for a Rogue" had TIE fighters and TIE Interceptors made largely of wood. Small spaceships, firing lasers. Made out of wood. Piloted by non-sentient beasts being controlled by evil Sith music.
• Bar Brawl: There are a few of these! On Tatooine Plourr starts one for fun. Later, Xarcce Huwla doesn't start one, but makes short work of some thugs.
• Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: When Winter is captured by an Imperial governor she pretends to be Leia. The governor, instead of putting her with his other captives, locks her in a nice suite with a fancy dress and "invites" her to dinner.
• Battle Cry: In "Battleground: Tattooine", some Imperial troopers abandoned into slavery on Ryloth are scooped up by the Rebels and allowed to go after the commander who abandoned them. They do so with great enthusiasm, howling his name in rage. "SEMMM-TIINNNN!"
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • Noted by the squadmates of Ibtisam and Nrin as the two argue on their introduction; they'll either get married or kill each other. As they warm to each other, a conversation is shown where they disagree and keep verbally backstepping as they're on the verge of arguing but want to remain civil.
  • Some of the squad claims to see this between Wedge and Elscol. They'd probably disagree.
• Berserker Tears: "The Phantom Affair" depiction of young Wedge Antilles, in the grip of Tranquil Fury, shooting down the people responsible for his parents' death.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Wedge himself. He's a good guy with a sense of duty that outweighs everything else, he's very accepting of Imperial defectors, he has survivor's guilt and doesn't lessen his opinion of someone when they dislike a friend of his. But he can be pressed too far.
  • As demonstrated in "The Phantom Affair":
    Wedge: They didn't wait for them at the station.
  • As demonstrated in "Mandatory Retirement":
    Wedge: [grabbing Pestage by his robe] Don't make me go Vader on you. Ibtisam was a pilot and a friend and she died to save your sorry hide.
• Bifauxnen and Lad-ette: Plourr Ilo is the gleeful, bloodthirsty Boisterous Bruiser who loves to tease her friends and tends to take charge; she's also secretly a princess. Xarcce Huwla is soft-spoken, cultured, possesses an understated sense of humor, and is restrained. They're both big and muscular and proud of their fighting skills, and Xarcce's species has little sexual dimorphism, and they both play The Big Guy at need. The two are shown having a friendly sparring match, with padding, and then go drinking together.
• The Big Guy: Groznik plays this role in the first story arc. Later in the series, Plourr and Xarcce are both presented this way at times, as the most physically powerful of the cast.
• Black Shirt: The AEA on Mrlsst, a neo-Imperial student group who have built up a Cult of Personality around the Emperor. They wear uniform-like black clothes, and while they are originally just a political discussion group, they quickly become Imperial collaborators when Hask and his crew turn up.
• Blinded by the Light: In "The Phantom Affair", a gang of pro-Imperial thugs attacks Rogue Squadron pilot Tycho Celchu. He beats most of them down by himself, but the last one gets the drop on him and is preparing to deliver the final (possibly fatal) blow, when he's slashed through the eyes by a phantom Jedi's lightsaber, causing instant blindness and much pained yelling. It turns out later that the "Jedi" is just a hologram, and given that holograms are actually just light (lasers, to be specific), this trope stands.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Plourr is a rare female example. She's a big, loud, brash, hard-partying woman who just loves a good fight (usually with her bare hands, but she's also happy to use a blaster rifle.... as a club).
• Brain in a Jar: A plot thread in "Battleground: Tatooine" features the brain-in-a-jar spider-droids from Jabba's palace, acting as a sequel to the story about them in Tales from Jabba's Palace. Specifically, Bib Fortuna's brain in a jar.]
• Brain Theft: Bib Fortuna as a brain-spider-droid was abused by Firith Olan but got his own back by dragging him to the monks when he was wounded and swapping into his skull, living Firith Olan in the droid.
• Burial in Space: Depicted in the "Family Ties" arc.
• The Captain: Luke Skywalker (in the very beginning), but Wedge Antilles for most of the series.
• The Chains of Commanding: "Mandatory Retirement" features this pretty clearly. Wedge, helping make plans for an operation to rescue a defecting Imperial, accepts that he and his people will be the ones who have to make sure any potential disaster stays potential. They have to fly cover, and if they can't adjust to any surprises... Later in the arc, after things go wrong, the Rebel Alliance Council look over the situation and decide that they can't allocate any more forces to helping their people out, to Leia's misery. She'd like to gather up Luke and Han and Lando and pull a Big Damn Heroes moment, but her sphere of responsibility is so much wider now, and she has to apply her efforts to other conflicts.
• Clothing Damage: Plourr and her love interest Rial get ambushed by commandos and have to fight them off unarmed. They make it out unscathed, but Rial's shirt is torn and he's showing a nipple.
• The Coats Are Off: In "Blood and Honor", Plourr removes her coat to hand to one of her squadmates before she fights a Weequay. Things go sour after she drops the goon, and the coat is never seen again.
• Combat by Champion: In "Battleground: Tatooine", the Rogues and some Imperials both want a smuggler, and the smuggler's relative has been well-bribed by both sides and can't decide who to hand the smuggler over to. The Rogues are smallish pilots, the Imperials are enormous seasoned troopers, so there's no truly fair form of combat. So two from each side are armed with a spear, allowed to inflict non-lethal injuries, and told to compete to reach a specific goal.
• Come to Gawk: The self-appointed new Emperor, Sate Pestage, fled the Empire to save his life. He'd been planning to strike a deal with the Rebel Alliance / New Republic, sparing his life and giving him about thirty planets in exchange for leaving the Imperial capital undefended, but he was found out and captured. He was held in a prison, and the Rebels broke him out but couldn't flee off-planet with him yet, so they set up camp. While he was there, ex-Imperial pilot Soontir Fel came to visit him.
  Pestage: Come to see if I was okay, or is your visit a harbinger of trouble?
  Fel: I just came to see how far the mighty had fallen. I had to remind myself you're a man like any other.
  Pestage: Is that it, or are you here to gloat over my misfortune?
• Conspiracy Theorist: The Ante-Endor Assocation on Mrlsst are an Imperialist group of these. In the months following the Battle of Endor, they begin claiming this never took place and is just Rebel propaganda. They insist the Empire is still at full strength, Palpatine's alive, no Jedi exist and in fact the Rebels had destroyed Alderaan while trying to make a superweapon like the Death Star.
• Crusading Widow: The Empire killed Elscol's husband, her mother, and her sister. While she does insist that the Moff who has some responsibility for this go to the courts rather than just being killed, she is driven and reckless to a sometimes counterproductive degree.
• Custom Uniform: Ysanne Isard wore a red version of the Imperial officer's uniform, with admiral's insignia, despite not actually being in the military. As Director of Imperial Intelligence and answering only to the Emperor, she could get away with that.
• Danger Room Cold Open: "Battleground: Tatooine" starts with Hobbie as Rogue Leader, other Rogues dying around him in an ambush. It's a simulator; Wedge and a few others are flying simulated TIEs, Hobbie and so on are flying as X-Wings.
• A Day in the Limelight: Wedge Antilles is always a significant character in the series, but his role as The Captain and The Hero tends to give him less personal plotlines than his fellow main characters. His day in the limelight is the arc "The Phantom Affair".
• Dead-Hand Shot: All that we see of Ibtisam's body is her blue hand under a sheet after the recovery crew find her.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Can be done with holograms. During The Phantom Affair a genius musician modifies his Ghost Jedi hologram to have a new face and voice. The apparently slow-witted Wookiee Grosnik, seeing the man he owes a life debt to again, promptly does everything the musician asks him to.
• Defector from Decadence: The thing that finally pushes Fel to defect from the Empire and join the Rebellion (although it's not the only thing influencing the decision) is being assigned to work under a corrupt and incompetent admiral who's more interested in orgies than getting any work done. He's appalled not just by the admiral's behavior, but also by the knowledge that the current leader of the Empire is encouraging it as part of a political maneuver, costing the lives of many of the men under the admiral's command.
• Destructive Saviour: There's a comic created for and published exclusively in the Omnibus which has Wedge Antilles beating some bad guy or other by shooting proton torpedoes at a tall monument, making it fall in exactly the right way. The locals are furious at him for destroying their monument, and then another X-Wing pilot lands and, exasperated, lists off all of Wedge's achievements until the locals agree that yeah, they can just build another monument.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Anti-Endor Association, a pro-Imperial group at the Mrlsst Trade and Science Academy, say the Battle of Endor never took place, with the Death Star still around and the Emperor's alive. They also say the Rebels destroyed Alderaan and no Jedi exist. All of the (true) reports about it they ascribe to Rebel propaganda. Given the Empire's Fantastic Racism and Putting on the Reich they bear a resemblance to Neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. Additionally, several of the Rogues protesting that they shouldn't be able to spread nonsense echoes real reactions to this, along with the Academy's policy of permitting this on freedom of speech grounds.
• Downer Ending: Isard is, for the moment, ahead; the mission of the last arc, and the death that came with it, accomplished little. Isard's role continues in the book series, but most of the comics characters are never seen again.
• Dramatic Shattering: Plourr Ilo pours out her wineglass and then tosses it into the air to shatter when it falls, punctuating what she'd been saying about the tyranny of the nobles.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: In "Rogue Leader", it was shown that a week after the Battle of Endor, the sanctuary moon's skies are still crowded with ships and bodies (and pieces of both). Some pilots, including Wedge, signed up for salvage duty, because even Imperials deserved a proper funeral.
• The Dreaded: Baron Soontir Fel. The Rogues that trained under him have a low grade panic when they hear they are going up against him in their next mission. For the Rogues that didn't, even hearing about the basic facts of Fel's career like the number and length of his tours of duty have them protesting that nobody is that good. This is exploited by Isard, who intends to lose the battle of Borelias but sends Fel to convince everyone the Empire is trying to win. Such is Fel's reputation that it is generally assumed that he might win the day singlehandedly, when not even the best pilot in the galaxy could prevail against the odds he's facing.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Rogue Squadron's favorite drink is lum, which is a foamy, strong ale.
• Dye or Die: Plourr initially kept her head completely shaved before starting to grow out her hair when her royal heritage was revealed, though it remains on the short side. As a child she had very long hair.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The series focuses on Rogue Squadron, the best starfighter unit in the Rebel Alliance/New Republic.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Wedge Antilles' childhood nickname was Veggies. He doesn't seem to mind when his childhood friend Mirax calls him that, although she tells him not to use her childhood nickname, Myra.
• Ending Memorial Service: The comics end on a eulogy and a glance back at the many Rogues killed in action during and before the comics' run, enshrined in hologram.
• Enfant Terrible: In "The Warrior Princess", the young Prince Harrandatha Estillo is Royally Screwed Up.
  "All those years of dipping from the same genetic pool caused a wrinkle, a flaw in an otherwise normal family line. We set out to keep ourselves above the common man and found ourselves with a thing from the deepest pit of the Sith."
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: In "In the Empire's Service", Wes is unimpressed with the prison rations when he and Ibitsam are captured:
  Wes: Imperial MRRs. Meals Ready to Regurgitate.
  Ibitsam: At least the local rodents seem uninterested in them.
  Wes: Right. So we have no bait for fresh meat.
• Everyone Can See It: Ibtisam and Nrin Vakil. She was a Mon Calamari, he was a Quarren, their species traditionally didn't get along and they argued often when they first joined the squadron... but one of their wingmates predicted that if they didn't kill each other, they'd take union vows. Their wingmates even basically played matchmaker with them. And what do you know, they did hook up.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Sate Pestage not only believes Imperial ideology with regards to aliens being nothing but animals, but is convinced that Wedge and the other human Rebels must know it too and that any claims to the contrary are "merely propaganda." This eventually leads to one of the few moments in which Wedge loses his cool when Pestage refers to a dead Rogue Squadron pilot as "animal waste".
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Wookiees are explicitly sentient, but since they're hairy and unintelligible, unimaginative writers of books and comics alike love to make them as animalistic as possible. This is taken to a new height (or low) in "The Phantom Affair" — a woman who has a Wookiee hanging around due to a life-debt doesn't understand him, and he doesn't communicate with her at all, he's just a bodyguard — who starts growling and provoking "Groznik senses something!" before they get attacked.
• Faking the Dead: Tycho, crashing, broadcasts a message about going out with a bang before ramming into an Imperial fighter. Winter, devastated, is incredulous at Wedge's cavailer mention of sending someone to find Tycho before he clarifies that the message was a code to say he's ejecting out, used so Imps don't strafe downed pilots. She's not pleased he took so long to mention that.
• Fiery Redhead: Plourr, who is revealed to have red hair (she initially shaved her head), is quick-tempered and lashes out at people when angered.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • Soontir Fel reflects on this twice, the first time noting that he and Luke Skywalker have similar backgrounds and that if fate had been different he might have been the one to destroy the Death Star while Luke became the Empire's greatest pilot. The second time he notes that before the defection of his prize students to the Rebellion torpedoed his career he had the respect and admiration of Tarkin and was in line to be the Death Star's starfighter commander. He wonders if he might have been able to prevent the destruction of Alderaan by being a moderating influence on Tarkin and is told that's a fruitless line of speculation in any case.
  • Tycho, under the influence of the Sith music, has a dream in which he tells Tarkin about Bail and Leia's Rebel sympathies, resulting in Alderaan's destruction. This never happened and is impossible (he didn't know about the Organas being part of the Rebellion until after Alderaan was destroyed) but he still finds the reminder that he would have done it if he had known sobering.
• Forceful Kiss: In "The Making of Baron Fel", Director of Imperial Intelligence Ysanne Isard kisses the Ace Pilot Soontir Fel, testing his loyalty with a combination of seduction and We Can Rule Together. He rejects both offers.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Almost continually averted for female pilots; the outfits pilots and other characters wore sometimes hinted a little, but were seldom overt, and their pilot jumpsuits were all baggy and heavily pocketed. The most notable exception was the one time Winter got into a formal gown which clung tight enough to reveal her abs — and rather than being an Unusually Uninteresting Sight, the pilot she was dating saw it and said "Wow!"
• General Failure: Admiral Lon Isoto. His nickname was actually "Isoto the Indecisive". His utter incompetence was notorious. Ysanne Isard, the Imperial Intelligence Director, used his idiocy for her advantage. She recommended him as commander of the Imperial forces at Brentaal IV. Sate Pestage, acting Emperor, foolishly took her advice. Despite help from the Imperials' best starfighter group, the 181st led by Soontir Fel, he naturally managed to lose the planet handily against the New Republic. Isard then had him shot immediately, as he'd served his purpose in making Pestage look bad so she could take over.
• A Glass in the Hand: A Treacherous Advisor type does this after two Rogues refuse to turn on one of their own.
• Gory Discretion Shot: All that we see of Ibtisam's body is her blue hand under a sheet after the recovery crew find her. Considering her X-wing crashed and was shown burning, that's probably a mercy for both characters and readers.
• Gotta Get Your Head Together: In "Requiem for a Rogue", the first villain is confronted by a more powerful villain, who makes the first guy's head explode. There's a Gory Discretion Shot, and the first bad guy's silhouette is seen clutching its head before exploding.
• Guns Akimbo:
  • Typically characters will stick to one blaster at a time, though some will carry more than one around. Wedge is like this, but in "Requiem for a Rogue" he escapes and saves his rescue party while not only dual-wielding stolen pistols, but also crossing them.
  • The short "Family Ties" arc has Corran and Iella pull a Big Damn Heroes moment on three members of Rogue Squadron who were having some trouble with thugs. Corran, like Wedge, even crosses his arms while firing at two different targets. They're part of Corsec — think police — so this is probably all Rule of Cool. It's worth noting that just a page later Corran holsters one blaster to try and make a sniper shot with the other, and when making an attack on more thugs, where they aren't rescuing anyone being held down, no one dual-wields.
• Guy in Back: In one issue, the ex-Imperial Ace Pilot Baron Soontir Fel goes with the rest of Rogue Squadron on a mission involving Y-Wings and chooses to act as a gunner, letting his old student Tycho actually fly the thing. He's absurdly good at flying Fragile Speedster craft, but he doesn't have the Universal Driver's License — he's not flight-qualified on Y-Wings.
• Hand Behind Head: In "The Phantom Affair", Wedge Antilles does this at at least two points.
• Harmless Electrocution: In "The Phantom Affair", Wedge Antilles is shocked twice by some electrified bars. Both times, afterward he's obviously limp and in pain, but manages to drag himself to his feet in both cases, and then escape to fly combat.
• Hidden Eyes:
  • Wedge Antilles, when the man who killed his parents locks him up and starts taunting him, gets his eyes hidden in shadow for a moment.
  • General Carvin, who is part of the Imperial Tribune, which briefly ruled the Empire after ousting Sate Pestage, and served to command and obstruct Ysanne Isard until she dealt with them, was always shown with shadowed eyes... until Isard's plans culminated, the other two tribune members were killed, and he was brought before her, beaten and bloody.
  • Baron Soontir Fel was, after Vader's death, the best Imperial pilot. He's not evil, though, and the solid black eyes only show up in one panel, when his eyes are in shadow. But it's a panel where he looks very sinister.
• Hot Consort: During "The Warrior Princess", Rightfully Returning Princess Plourr meets her cousin/fiance for the first time in decades and finds that he's become a Fabio type—tall, muscular, long flowing hair. He's also utterly devoted to her, and despite sharing some of the royal blood has no desire to be regarded as Prince, let alone Emperor.
• Humans Are White: As usual in Star Wars, this is mostly played straight. The only exceptions were Sixtus Quin and Reina Faleur (Faleur was never seen again; Quin reappears briefly in the books). In fact, Quin's very existence is owed to the artist, who made him black; Michael Stackpole hadn't planned him that way.
• Ignore the Fanservice: Soontir Fel, the best Imperial pilot alive, is assigned to a corrupt admiral who pushes a scantily-clad woman at him, telling him to "enjoy her" rather than keep going over the defenses of the world. Fel says his wife would not approve, the admiral says that neither would his wife, but no-one would know. But Fel would know, and he's much more interested in plans for defending the planet from Rebels.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: Rogue Squadron is made up of some of the best pilots in the galaxy.
• Informed Flaw: The Rogues are supposed to die all the time, with newcomer Xarcce immediately requesting a transfer out to avoid the high lethality rate of their missions. Before that happens, very few pilots had been killed in action, something that readers had noticed and called attention to. After this there are some deaths. Fey'lya sarcastically agrees to a dangerous mission for them because it will kill off what's left of the squadron. After those first several comics, the Rogues suffer casualties about what you'd expect from a recurring cast in a military setting, a few Red Shirts and the occasional Sacrificial Lion.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Ibtisam and Nrin, neither of them human; Mon Cal and Quarren respectively (the romance wasn't outright stated, but the implication could hardly be more obvious and it was confirmed in The Essential Guide to Alien Species).
  • One arc that's poorly regarded for different reasons has very strong hints of more temporary human/Bothan encounters.
• In the Back: A man is assassinated from behind, and Isard orders the assassin to make it look like suicide... somehow.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: In "The Warrior Princess", Plourr is driven into a berserker rage and takes out a rather sizeable team of armored commandos barehanded, largely through punching. After this she's shown rubbing her bloody fists and bandaging her knuckles, and doesn't throw another punch for the rest of the arc.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Happens twice in one arc. First, the Sullustan pilot tells the student that it's no use threatening anyone with an empty blaster — see the diode flashing? Later, the Sullustan pilot and the students are on the same side and pull the trick on someone else. Perfectly legitimate in the first case, not so much in the second. Gade may not have been a soldier or anything, but he was a bit more familiar with weapons.
• King Incognito: "The Warrior Princess" starts with the news that one of the Rogues is actually the lost heir of Eiattu IV, most of the rest of her family having been murdered in a revolution. Who is it? Plourr Illo, the butch, tempestuous mechanic-turned-pilot and last person in the galaxy any of the characters expected. Plourr hid herself when the rest of the royal family were murdered by the Priamsta, then made herself into what she wanted to be, far from the self-serving decadence of the court, but is convinced to return and take her rightful place as Eiattu's crown princess.
• Kingpin in His Gym: Ysanne Isard is once shown training against Mrlssti laser phantoms while she works on her plots to control the Empire. Notably, Isard never actually fights people herself, preferring schemes and Manchurian Agents. Apparently she believes the old adage about healthy body, healthy mind.
• Kissing Cousins: Plourr Illo was engaged to her cousin since childhood. In the arc where she returns to her homeworld, she's shown resisting the idea of marrying him, but since he shows a number of her traits—lots of courage, love of fighting and freedom, disdain for tradition for tradition's sake and even being a fighter pilot like her—she warms up to him. It's never shown whether they actually get married at some point. And their being cousins never seemed to bother Plourr, it was only the "arranged marriage to an aristocrat she hadn't seen in 20 years" part that was a problem.
• Knotty Tentacles: A teenaged Wedge Antilles was restrained by Booster's tentacled copilot while going berserk as his parents were dying. Somehow, off panel Wedge slipped out and got to a window, and the copilot was seen looking startled with its tentacles knotted.
• The Lad-ette: Plourr Ilo is chaste but otherwise this to the hilt, a hard-drinking big woman with short hair and a muscular build who's more masculine than many male characters, loving a good fight. Even so she can be soft-spoken, nice, and diplomatic — she just generally doesn't see the need. She also turns out to be a princess, and manages to balance what she was raised to be with what she made herself into pretty well.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: For some reason, the first volume of the Omnibus already includes the Handbook for the series, spoiling the stories in later volumes.
• Long Bus Trip: Elscol, a guerrilla leader who joined Rogue Squadron in the first arc of the comics, quit at the end of the arc following that. She knew that what she was doing was making a difference, but she knew any other good pilot could do as well, and she chafed under orders. She left without malice towards the squadron, hinting that she would try and talk Sixtus Quinn into joining the Rebel Alliance. But although plenty of other allies showed up again during the series, including a commando leader from that same issue, Elscol and Sixtus didn't.^note They return in the books, where they work together to liberate another world.
• Made of Plasticine / Made of Explodium: In the first arc TIE fighters are portrayed as tissue-fragile and apt to explode at the slightest impact. These ships are cheaply made and lack shields or much armoring, but not to the point where being hit with a stick destroys them, and X-wings aren't so sturdy that they can just ram through TIEs and take no damage.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: After a man is shot In the Back, Isard orders the assassin to make it look like suicide... how is not addressed.
• Medal of Dishonor: Baron Fel, best Imperial pilot since Vader's death, put under the command of an incompetent Admiral with terribly lax morals and no sense of strategy. He gives Fel and Fel's pilots medals, which Fel refuses because he thinks they didn't do anything worth accolades. They flew against Rebel pilots and, close to victory, were suddenly recalled by the admiral when the man saw reports of X-Wings too close for comfort and wanted the protection of his entire force. Fel's pilots accept at the ceremony, and we see that the "starburst" medals were designed by the admiral and are really ugly.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Semtin left his loyal troopers to be sold into slavery. But the Rebels were there, and the troopers respected them...
• Modest Royalty: Plourr dresses formally yet simply after taking up her role as the next Empress of Eiattu, wearing fairly masculine clothing to go with her boyish short hair.
• More Hero than Thou: In "The Phantom Affair", Zena and Jagged Antilles have to detach a burning section of their refueling station before the fire can spread, which means their deaths. Jagged tries to get Zena to follow the others who were evacuated from this section, but she tells him someone needs to fight the flames while he activates the lancing charge.
  Jagged: Don't be foolish, Zena! Once we detach, they can't save us!
  Zena: I know that, Jagged. You didn't marry a stupid woman!
• Mr. Fanservice: Two kinds in this◊ from the comics: half-naked attractive male pilots, and referencing a large usenet group's "Vote Wedge/Tycho For President" meme.
• Ms. Fanservice: The comics tended to avert the large breasts and the skintight clothing and ridiculous poses which generally come with it, though there are some attractive images of female pilots or other women in tight/scant clothing and bathing suits nonetheless, and the artist who first drew Plourr as an Amazonian Beauty really got into it.
• Multinational Team: Rogue Squadron had members from a whole slew of planets.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Starting in Family Ties, Plourr is drawn as being massive with heavy arms and shoulders. The only member of the squadron with more bulk and developed muscles is Xarcce the Tunroth, who jokes that when her people and Wookies fight, the Wookies let Tunroth win. They're the two most physically powerful members of the squadron.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Plourr was just as strong when drawn as thin. The third most physically powerful member of the squadron is the comparatively wiry Nrin.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Wedge goes to some of his pilots and tells them that they're going to go and save Fel's wife, the actress Wynssa Starflare, who is also Wedge's sister; he seems okay with her being Happily Married to Baron-Colonel Fel, but this trope comes up anyway.
  Hobbie: Why didn't you let us know you had a babe for a sister?
  Plourr: [smacks him] Idiot, you don't ask that kind of question.
• Neck Lift: In "Mandatory Retirement", Wedge Antilles does a version of this to Sate Pestage, grabbing him with both hands by the front of his robes and slamming him against a wall. Pestage has referred to a nonhuman Rogue's body as "animal filth". Wedge snapped.
  Wedge: Don't make me go Vader on you. Ibitsam was a pilot and a friend and she died to save your sorry hide.
• Neck Snap: In "The Warrior Princess", there is a resistance movement fighting an Imperial presence, one of the members is captured, strapped into a chair, and tortured. His ordeal ends with one of his captors standing behind the chair and breaking his neck.
• Nepotism: Subverted when Councilmember Beruss refuses to send aid to Rogue Squadron, despite her nephew Avan being a member. Avan thinks the trope is being inverted and Beruss is refusing to send help regardless of the tactical situation to avoid being thought of as taking advantage of her position to aid a family member.
• Never Suicide: After Isard has an agent shoot Admiral Lon Isoto in the back, she tells the agent to make it look like a suicide. Exactly how you do this with a blaster wound in the back is unclear.
• No Ending: The comics end with the "Mandatory Retirement" arc. Great arc end. Bewildering series end. Apparently it was canceled. Stackpole and Zahn wrote a story arc bridging the end of the comics and the beginning of the Rogue Squadron novels, but it's never been published.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Plourr is told that if she fights a hulking Weequay warrior she'll get what she wants. She takes him down in a hurry, saying as she does that during her training as a warrior they never sparred with Weequays — they're slow, they wear long hair that's easily taken advantage of, they're stupid, and they're just too fragile. Did she mention they also cheat?
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Imperial Ace Pilot Baron Soontir Fel defected to the New Republic and joined Rogue Squadron. He wore their dress uniforms instead of his Imperial one (well, sometimes) but instead of adopting the New Republic orange flightsuit he kept his old Imperial flightsuit, adding a Corellian bloodstripe — admittedly he sometimes had that before — and removing the Imperial symbol.
• Nostalgic Music Box: Well, a 'music ball'. Shake it and it plays a tune. Elscol's husband gave it to her on their third anniversary.
• Number Two: Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, Wes Janson.
• Only Serves for Life: In "Mandatory Retirement", when Isard tries to recruit Admiral Krennel to her side, he says that he's pledged his support for General Carvin, and that his allegiance is for life. Isard responds that "for life" doesn't necessarily mean a long time. Not long afterward, she has Carvin assassinated.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: In "The Phantom Affair", a superweapon known as the gravitic polarizing device made the enemy ships and a portion of the asteroid belt ringing a planet simply disappear, with one of the startled pilots saying that it looked like a wormhole had opened up.
• Perma-Stubble: Representations of Soontir Fel seem to veer around this interestingly. As a youth pre-conscription, he was clean-shaven. After gaining some renown as a fighter pilot and starting to teach more pilots he grew a very neat goatee. But as various things happened and he lost faith in the Empire, he started getting more and more stubbly. He tended to have stubble after defecting, too. Not all the time, but, for example, there's a point when all of the Rogues are cut off from civilization for long enough that all of the human males grow stubble. A few scenes later, everyone but Fel has found time to shave. Yet he never has an actual beard.
• Planet of Hats: Explored and subverted. Alderaan was always labeled as the planet of pacifists. Tycho liked to respond to hearing that by swinging a punch at whoever had spoken.
  Tycho: One of the problems we all have is that we try to think of ourselves in general terms, and that smooths over some of the inconsistencies that make us who we are. We see all Imperials as rancors and they see all of us as nerfs. The very fact that we see them as a united front is ridiculous, just the same as we're not all united.
• Politically-Active Princess: After retaking the throne of her homeworld, Plourr Illo is considered Empress Heir-Apparent and basically the ruler of her world, though she takes time off now and then to fly missions with her old fighter squadron. She is shown here and there handling the difficult nobility.
• The Precious, Precious Car: In the "Battleground: Tatooine" arc, Winter and Tycho have to borrow Huff Darklighter's shiny, expensive speeder to chase after some people who shot up a party. While driving, Tycho takes it a bit slow, telling Winter that they promised to bring it back without a scratch. Winter then shoots the front of the airspeeder and says "Now it's scratched. Go!" A few pages later, the speeder is totally destroyed.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Plourr Illo, a princess who embodies the textbook pop culture image...of a space marine.^note Which she is close to literally being, given that Starfighter Command is a branch of the New Republic Navy that uses army-style ranks and the Rogues do an unusual amount of special operations-type work for fighter pilots...
• Princesses Rule: Plourr Illo is revealed to be the last, lost princess of her homeworld, the rest of her family being dead. At the end of the "Warrior Princess" arc she is acclaimed as Empress Apparent-Heir, but in later comics she's called Princess or Princess of the Realm.
• Print Bonus: There is a new extra comic included in one of the Omnibus collections, about Wedge being a Destructive Saviour and Luke defending him from angry townspeople.
• Psychotic Smirk: Ysanne Isard likes to wear this expression while contemplating her evil plans.
• Purple Is Powerful: Tomboy Princess Plourr Ilo always wears an element of purple while at court. The longer she's there and the more power she wields the more purple her outfit is, starting with a white gown and a purple sash in "The Warrior Princess" and ending with wholly purple ensembles by "Masquerade".
• Put on a Bus: Two female human pilots left Rogue Squadron. Elscol, a guerrilla leader before Wedge recruited her, left because of command issues and because she believed she could do better working on the ground. Plourr, a Boisterous Bruiser who turned out to be a princess, left because revolutions had torn up her homeworld and she needed to rule and bring it back under control. Oddly, it's Plourr who was written back in, and very quickly. A drop-in commando character recurred, but Elscol did not.
• Race Lift: A kidnapped child is shown in one issue as brown skinned with black hair. The next issue has another artist, who presents the child as pale and blonde. And disturbingly having adult-like body proportions. It's worth noting that both the mother and the father of the child in question have pale skin and black hair, so it's entirely possible that neither depiction was correct.
• Rags to Royalty: Plourr Illo went into hiding and later became a pilot for the Rebellion after revolutionaries killed her noble family. She wasn't in rags, exactly, but she lived as well as any of the other pilots and kept her heritage a secret.
• Ramming Always Works: In one issue, an A-Wing rams into the unshielded bridge of a larger vessel and blows it out. Unlike the famous example from the movies, this is a New Republic ship, and it survives.
• Reassignment Backfire: Soontir Fel is banished to the 181st Fighter Group — bad enough to be nicknamed the One-Eighty-Worst — and quickly transforms it into one of the Empire's most elite units.
• Rebel Leader: Elscol leads the Cilpar resistance. She's far from a Plucky Girl and is much too driven and hurt to smile or trust easily.
• Rebel Prince: Eiattu IV went through an Anastasia-like purging of its royalty. Young princess Plourr and her little brother Harran survived and went off the radar. Years later, Harran resurfaces, leading the People's Liberation Movement against the nobility and Imperial occupiers alike, clearly uninterested in retaking the throne. As she's the elder and Eiattu doesn't have the Heir Club for Men, it's Plourr's anyway, but he resurfaced long before her and never made an attempt. He turns out to be a brainwashed Imperial imposter.
• Rebellious Princess: Plourr initially rejected her inheritance as heir apparent of Eiattu's monarchy after the rest of her family was murdered, running off to join the Rebel Alliance and becoming a pilot with Rogue Squadron. She's called back by her people later and eventually accepts the role, but on her terms. Plourr makes it clear there will be changes on Eiattu.
• Rebel Relaxation: Plourr Ilo lounges in a more spread-legged casual way than her teammates. While they're all Rebels, she's the one with the most confidence.
• Red-plica Baron: Baron Soontir Fel was based on the Red Baron himself, Manfred von Richthofen.
• Red Right Hand:
  • Loka Hask, the pirate-turned-Imperial officer who caused the deaths of Wedge Antilles' parents, had a Corellian limpet,◊ basically a sort of eyeless octopus, latch on to his face when Wedge blew up his ship. He never has it removed, and it just sits there covering one eye and ear, appendages going into his nose and mouth. Even if it had devoured a good amount of his face, you'd think he'd just have it cybernetically rebuilt, but no. No one ever mentions it. It's just there as a visual aid.
  • Delak Krennel had a literal prosthetic right hand that glowed red. Card-Carrying Villain to the core.
  • Captain Semtin has obvious, creepy prosthetic eyeballs and mechanical thingies in his ears. He abandons some of his soldiers on Ryloth, which has local rules that offworlders with no influence or transportation get sold into slavery. The soldiers promptly switch sides.
• Red Shirt:
  • There were complaints after the first several arcs that, while people quit or transferred out, no-one ever died. Promptly someone who'd been there since the beginning and one who'd been around for an arc got killed in "Requiem for a Rogue". In the arc after, that four new pilots were introduced. One instantly immersed himself in a subplot, another took equally little time to establish her status as part of a rather pragmatic Proud Warrior Race. The other two failed to do anything but sort of hang around in the background, and by the end of the book those two had been shot down and killed within two pages of each other.
  • There were two pilots who signed on at the start of the arc and died one after the other by the end, whose only characterization was that they participated in a Bar Brawl with Plourr.
  • Standro Jcir; he doesn't do or say very much between the time he's introduced and the time he gets blown up.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Wedge is the only living pilot to have participated in both Death Star runs, and one of his seconds was also part of the group that destroyed the second Death Star. Comparing their current situation, as in "At least there isn't another Death Star" or "Actually, I'd prefer the Death Star to this", is a running joke among the Rogue Squadron pilots.
• The Remnant: Discussed in the first arc.
  Tycho: Wait, slow down. A week ago, Wedge vaporized the Emperor and half the Imperial High Command — I know that Imperials tried to stab us in the back after The Truce at Bakura, but isn't the war basically over? Why won't the Imperials just surrender?
  Luke: Would you stop fighting if Wedge was killed? Or me? Or Senator Organa? The Battle of Endor will always be a turning point in this war, but there are millions of Imperials scattered across the galaxy, and we can only assume that they will fight to the end. And they probably have orders to do just that.
• La Résistance: The Rebellion has become The Alliance by this point, but there are still smaller-scale, more desperate resistance movements in places like Cilpar.
• Rightful King Returns: Eiattu IV went through an Anastasia-esque revolution in which the monarchs and all their children were killed, save a prince and princess who escaped. Plourr takes the throne of Eiattu when she's revealed as the crown princess, after exposing a man claiming that he's her little brother as a fake and driving out the Empire. Her retaking the throne happens quickly enough, her arc from there shows that her time away made her more sensitive and sympathetic to the people, and unimpressed by noble pressure and scheming.
• Rock Beats Laser: The first arc has a TIE fighter, a small spacecraft not known for sturdiness, dramatically destroyed when a Wookie hits its wing with a stick. The same Wookie in a flashback destroyed a larger shuttle by chucking a rock at it. They're sturdier in the rest of the series.
• Royal Blood: Plourr was revealed to be the last of the Eiattu royal line, her parents and sisters having been killed by other nobles in a revolution. A noble who she initially believes to have been in on that gets her to head back to her homeworld, Rogue Squadron in tow, to try and take over. Most of the nobility is happy enough with that, especially since there's another revolution going on, this one led by someone who claims to be another survivor. Her brother.
• Royal Inbreeding: The royal bloodline of Eiattu has in-bred and been tampered with to keep it "pure", which sometimes has disastrous results, like the Royally Screwed Up Prince Harran.
• Royally Screwed Up: Plourr's little brother Prince Harran was a sociopath since the beginning, torturing animals and otherwise loving cruelty or violence. He even tried to get her killed along with the rest of their family, but she beat him to death instead.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Plourr Ilo it turns out is crown princess of Eiattu. Upon becoming empress, she only does the "pomp and ceremony" as strictly required, striving to improve her planet (as opposed to the Priampsta).
• Royalty Superpower: Brought up with Plourr. Her line was genetically tampered with, and she is very strong, able to fight a Tunroth to a draw — a Tunroth who jokes that Wookiees let Tunroth win.
• Ruling Family Massacre: Eiattu IV went through an Anastasia-esque revolution in which the monarchs and all their children were killed, save a prince and princess who escaped.
• Screw the War, We're Partying: Shortly before his defection, Baron Soontir Fel and his command had been assigned to the utterly incompetent Admiral Lon Isoto. Isoto tried to make Fel cheat on his wife with a servant girl, had no grasp of tactics and no sense of what a victory was, and basically just threw orgies around. Fel knew that his command had been assigned there for the express purpose of being killed by the Rebels as part of one of Isard's schemes. With that in mind, he let his pilots attend and enjoy themselves, since it would be inhuman to deny them a last pleasure.
• Secret Public Identity: In the first-published issue, Tycho Celchu goes to an Imperial-held planet, puts on a captain's uniform, and reports for duty at pilot barracks in one of the cities, all in order to get intel and be in place to betray them. He does this, however, under his real name and homeplanet. Tycho Celchu, of Alderaan, who defected to the Rebellion after his planet was destroyed, helped keep TIEs off Wedge during the run on the second Death Star, and became part of the core of Rogue Squadron. What's worse is that it works completely.
• Self-Made Orphan: Loka Hask, the Imperial Psycho for Hire who murdered Wedge's parents, comments that Wedge should thank him for it. He then remarks that he wishes someone had done the same for him when he was that age, but no, he had to do it himself.
• Sex Signals Death: Ibtisam dies in the same issue that she and Nrin finally officially become a couple. Feylis and Avan, on the other hand, make a no-dying pact, and they both live.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Plourr Illo, past a certain point, is usually shown sleeveless. Even during a briefing when the other Rogues are in their dress uniforms, Plourr gets to go without the jacket. May be excused as this was after the arc in which she left the squadron to rule Eiattu VI; she came back, but it was clear that she didn't have to stay with the same rules.
• Smarter Than You Look: Plourr is generally presented as a Boisterous Bruiser, but shows herself to be pretty intelligent at times. In the one story where they meet, she gives Corran Horn (an actual police investigator) a good match as a detective.
• Spit Take: The arc "In the Empire's Service" has Wes Janson do one of these when he hears that they're flying against the 181st Imperial Fighter Group, led by Ace Pilot Baron Soontir Fel.
• The Squadette: Brash, tomboyish Plourr is the only woman in the squadron at first. Five others join, leaving or dying over the course of the comics. They're all quite distinct and non-stereotyped, but are outnumbered nearly two to one by men in the squadron.
• Stab the Scorpion: Subverted in an early issue. Two New Republic pilots holed up in a cave have been found rather suddenly by a New Republic agent, Winter, who holds a blaster on them as they work through suspicions. A pilot tells Winter that there's a predator creeping up behind her; she asks if he really thinks she'll fall for that. The pilot tells his friend to reach for his gun, so one of the two has a chance to wing it, if Winter doesn't fry them. The next page has Winter firing behind herself without looking, hitting the predator, and telling the pilot she believes him.
• Stout Strength: A bonus comic featured Jek Porkins, the first pilot to die fighting the Death Star. He was somewhat overweight (and claimed to be from a high-gravity planet), and accounted for himself pretty well in a ground fight.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Plourr's standard outfit is a tank top when out of uniform, while also being a consummate action girl, a boisterous bruiser, Lad-ette and tomboy. After assuming her throne, she dresses more formally, but still in a pretty masculine way.
• Tentacle Rope: Booster's tentacled copilot tried to restrain a young Wedge Antilles this way.
• There Is No Try:}
  Baron Fel: You must shoot better, Cadet Klivan. If you go down, the Emperor expects you to survive and return to his service.
  Cadet: I understand, sir. I'll try to do better.
  Baron Fel: Just do better. Dead men fail trying, not doing.
• Token Minority: Reina Faleur and Sixtus Quin appear to be the only Humans of color. The cast will also always be majority Human, with a few people of other species as well.
• Tomboy Princess: Plourr. She's The Lad-ette, with a love for fighting (whether in battle or simply friendly sparring), looks distinctly butch and doesn't apologize for a bit of it, even when encountering her beloved old nanny droid who mourns that she no longer has long hair.
• Training Dummy: In one scene, Ysanne Isard takes a break from sparring with a padded boxer droid to see to a defeated enemy.
• Twofer Token Minority: "Rogue Squadron 1/2", a short comic taking place just before the run on the Death Star, has four pilots from Red Squadron on a mission. These pilots are Wedge Antilles, Biggs Darklighter, Jek "Piggy" Porkins, and Cesi "Doc" Eirriss. Doc is a Twi'lek woman, though unusually stocky and androgynous compared to how Twi'lek women are usually drawn. Everyone else is a human male. Everyone in Red Squadron, as seen in A New Hope, is human and male. Wedge's Gamble later tried to justify this, saying that the Rebellion, in the beginning, was almost entirely a human endeavor, with only a few nonhumans in until the movement started to get off the ground. Of course the Darklighter comic drew Doc as slinky, slender, and clinging to her human male WingMates, once again highlighting that one of these things is not like the others. Wedge also briefly dated a woman named Reina Faleur, who had dark skin (who soon vanished due to an aborted arc).
• Universal Driver's License:
  • In the first arc, the agent Winter gets in an ally's X-Wing, and it takes off because its owner told its R2 unit to be somewhere to cause a distraction. She then takes control and shoots down an entire squadron of TIE fighters solo, including the one with the owner in it, and yet at the end of the arc she's told that she's not flight-qualified on an X-Wing and will have to ride in a shuttle. Stackpole was reportedly quite unhappy with this arc. Winter did have Photographic Memory, and admittedly knowing how to do something and having the necessary paperwork to prove you can are two different things, but that's still a hell of a Plot Hole.
  • Averted in a different story, where the former Imperial Ace Pilot Baron Soontir Fel chooses to take the gunner's seat of a Y-Wing while someone else does the flying, because he's only good (or even qualified) at Fragile Speedster-type craft, of which the Y-Wing is not an example.
• V-Formation Team Shot: A party of three is sent on a covert mission. Its leader, driving force, and most effective member if you don't count snarky comments is shown at the head of the little V they make on the way to a confrontation.
• "Wanted!" Poster: The "Mandatory Retirement" arc has Wedge being teased about getting marriage proposals in the mail. His friend says it's because he looks handsome on the wanted posters, and Wedge says they just want the reward.
• Warrior Prince: Plourr. She not only serves in Rogue Squadron, the Rebel Alliance and then New Republic's best starfighter squadron, but is also quite formidable bare-handed. The arc in the comic centered on Plourr is even titled "The Warrior Princess", appropriately enough.
• We Can Rule Together: In "The Making of Baron Fel", Ysanne Isard first gives Ace Pilot Soontir Fel a Forceful Kiss, then says she could raise him up, make him take Tarkin's place, become bigger than Vader. When he adamantly rejects both, she wipes her mouth and says that this was a Secret Test of Character.
• We Have Reserves: In the arc "Battleground: Tatooine", the Imperial captain Semtin heads to Ryloth after a criminal he wants, eventually securing him using a subterfuge that involves abandoning fourteen seasoned troopers on Ryloth, where they face being sold into slavery.
  Semtin: I told you the mission would involve sacrifices! You should be willing to give up your very life for your Emperor!
  Sixtus: For the Empire, yes! For the personal gain of its officials... never!
• Workout Fanservice:
  • Wedge and Wes are working out in issue #32, with both being fit, muscular young men. Later on, Reina, an attractive young women, is introduced wearing a swimsuit; Wedge and Wes spend some time looking at her admiringly. Wedge ends up dating her briefly.
  • Plourr, a tall, muscular woman who's also quite beautiful, wears a tanktop along with shorts at length in some later issues while she spars and fights enemies barehanded. She's the bustiest among the female characters and also the most skilled at martial arts.
• Worthy Opponent: Baron Soontir Fel, the Empire's best pilot since Vader died. He's death on a pair of twin ionizing engines, but unlike nearly every other Imperial in the series, he doesn't wallow in evilness. Far from it: he knows what he is in the dark and is moral, devoted to his wife, and just generally isn't hateful. When the Rogues shoot him down, he asks to speak in private to Wedge Antilles — the best New Republic pilot since Skywalker left to go Jedi-ing — and compares himself to Skywalker. Defeat Means Friendship, and Fel's wife is Wedge's sister and only surviving relative, and the Empire that Fel was so loyal to is dead...
• Yank the Dog's Chain: An official on Ryloth offers up a criminal to either the Imperials or Rogues based on who wins a contest. Due to Wedge insisting on protecting Winter and the Imperials being willing to sacrifice each other for victory, they claim the trophy. Afterwards, the official says that perhaps the real trophy was loyalty and concern for one's allies and briefly lets the Rogues think they really won, before clarifying that the trophy is the trophy and the Imperials won. And then it's revealed the criminal is already gone and no one wins anything.
• You Killed My Father: The big reason why Wedge Antilles hates Loka Hask is because Wedge's parents sacrificed themselves to save the refueling station after Hask took off without unhooking, letting his thrusters ignite the fuel, in order to stall the police.
• Your Head A-Splode: In "Requiem for a Rogue", the bad guy, failing to kill the Rogues, is interrupted by a new bad guy with a stronger connection to the Force. The new bad guy finishes him off by making his head explode.

---