First Printed: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back #156 (Marvel Comics UK 1982).
Reprinted: Classic Star Wars: Devilworlds #2 (1996, Dark Horse Comics).
Synopsis: R2-D2 and C-3PO arrive on the junk planet of Ronyards to make contact and enlist the aid of the derelict droids who live there. The "native" automata have established a strange mechanical theocracy that wants no business with the Galactic Civil War. Threepio warns the droids that Imperials will soon come to strip the world of its metal resources. Sure enough, the Empire arrives in its typically draconian fashion, but Ronyards is capable of defending itself. Five pages.
Choice Excerpt: "It is estimated that there are more than fifty billion droids currently at work throughout the known systems. Let us consider them. Let us consider the benefits of hard metal over soft and yielding flesh. Let us consider the droids, and how they have freed us from our labors. For human muscles will strain and grow weak. But droids have no muscles. Human hearts will grow weary of toil and indignity, but droids have no hearts. No bones to bend beneath the load that is too heavy. No souls to rail against the indignity that is unbearable. Humans, when they grow old and feeble, must be cared for, must be clothed and fed. For they are humans and that is their right.
But droids have no rights. And so they end up here, where twisted spires of scrap loom against an ochre sky. Here, in this place of vast corroded canyons. Here on Ronyards, where rust never sleeps."
