Think Leia meets Sailor Moon, Luke meets Astroboy. Imagine Chewie as a sort of super-size, big-eyed Pokemon. If you love Star Wars and you love manga--and who doesn't, really?--then this manga-ized version of A New Hope is a match made in fan-boy heaven. A cool idea executed with style, this multipart Dark Horse comic serializes nearly verbatim the action and dialogue of Star Wars's seminal installment. (With the caveat that, in converting to Western left-to-right format, scenes got flip-flopped--Luke and Leia, for example, swing on Luke's grappling hook from left to right, a mirror image of the movie.) From Luke and Leia's icky kiss ("for luck") on that open drawbridge right down to stormtrooper dialogue ("T-K-four-two-one, do you copy?"), the original is faithfully followed, but the familiar story is made all the better by manga stylings, like the clipped "zipzipzip" and "zatzatzat" of blaster fights and some dramatic spreads devoted to the Vader-Kenobi duel. --Paul Hughes