Lightsaber
Lightsaber
[Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are talking. Vader holds the handle of a powered-off lightsaber.] Vader: I see you have constructed a new lightsaber. [Vader turns it on. The beam of the lightsaber continues upward out of the frame.] Lightsaber: Snap-Hisss [Vader looks up toward where the beam is pointing.] [Vader looks back at Luke.] Vader: Where does it end? Luke: Doesn't. Intercom (out of view): Hull breach all along sector five!!

This comic references a scene from the third theatrically-released Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi , wherein Darth Vader confronts his son, Luke Skywalker , who had recently surrendered to Imperial soldiers. In the movie, Vader notes that Luke has constructed a new lightsaber following the loss of his original during their duel on Cloud City (Luke Skywalker's original lightsaber actually having been Anakin Skywalker's second).
Lightsabers are often jokingly referred to as "laser swords" by fans (note that the official French-language translation of Star Wars actually calls them "laser sabers"), and this comic points out that a real laser would not have any way of stopping and would therefore continue forever, making this particular interpretation silly. (The Star Wars writers cleverly fail to state what exactly a lightsaber's blade is made out of, although this point makes it unlikely to be a laser.) Once Darth Vader turns on the light saber, it goes offscreen and presumably continues in that direction forever, causing much mayhem as it blazes through the stars. Hull breaches are a popular trope in science-fiction, despite curiously being almost entirely absent from the Star Wars films.
The title text refers to GRB 080319B , an unusual gamma ray burst in 2008, the afterglow of which was briefly visible to the human eye. It implies that the source of this burst was a light saber in the Star Wars story, which took place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" according to the Star Wars opening crawl .
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader have had a similar conversation before in 1397: Luke . In that version Luke wishes for Vader not to turn it on, as stated in the title text. He should probably have said this here in this comic!
[Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are talking. Vader holds the handle of a powered-off lightsaber.] Vader: I see you have constructed a new lightsaber. [Vader turns it on. The beam of the lightsaber continues upward out of the frame.] Lightsaber: Snap-Hisss [Vader looks up toward where the beam is pointing.] [Vader looks back at Luke.] Vader: Where does it end? Luke: Doesn't. Intercom (out of view): Hull breach all along sector five!!
