Review: ‘Star Wars: Bounty Hunters’ #34 Marks the End of an Era
The good times in Ethan Sacks’ Star Wars: Bounty Hunters couldn’t last forever. After a string of incredible issues that made you wonder if this series was secretly the best Marvel series running, issue #34 arrives to bring this golden era of the run to a rudderless end.
Inferno Squad has our heroes on the ropes, all in the name of taking out the threat of Beilert Valance and the memories he holds in his databanks – specifically schematics for the second Death Star. Meanwhile, on Corellia, Vukorah’s time as ruler of the Unbroken Clan has come to an unceremonious end when she is greeted by usurpers and the one and only IG-88. Everything is about to change for all of our leading players. But as they say, the more things change, the more they sometimes stay the same.
Spoilers ahead…
The last issue left off with Iden Versio disguising herself as T’onga so she could get close to the Edgehawk while Gideon Hask and Del Meeko waited from afar. As the final fight between bounty hunters and Inferno Squad eventually began to play out, I knew deep in my bones that this confrontation with the Empire’s elite was too big for only three issues. This issue packs in so much and ultimately becomes what I am now calling a flip factory.
Most single issues of a comic can be read in about 10-15 minutes and are about 22-25 pages long. That means a writer must be very economical with every moment. With a series like Bounty Hunters and the amount of action it contains, it can quickly become a flip factory. Action scenes typically play over larger panels, meaning each page contains less work. Without meaning in those scenes, the next thing your mind processes is the comic already being sent off to live on your shelf because you flipped through half of it without a single thought. To wrap this trail of thought back around, a flip factory is when an issue is just being flipped through as if it’s being churned out of a brainless assembly line.
Bounty Hunters has excelled as of late because it has asked you to take a moment between the action and consider how each character is feeling during the worst day of their lives. Instead, this issue falls back into those trappings that plagued the weaker parts of the series.
On the B-plot side of things, Vukorah weasels her way out of danger by turning IG-88 against the usurpers. The assassin droid was there to bring in the leader of the Crimson Dawn, and since Vukorah conveniently already surrendered her post in the last issue, IG-88 spared her while he killed everyone else. Vukorah told IG-88 she did what she did to get a fresh start, but it feels weak.
The underworld aspects of this series are now all but toast, leaving the bounty hunters without anything tangible to fight for. Much like the sudden resolution with Inferno Squad, which we’ll get to in a bit, it screams of an author writing themselves into a corner and picking the easiest shortcut out. Every plot development here seemed so final, with no shred of nuance and a thought to a well-rounded story that respects what came before.
Inferno Squad doesn’t adhere completely to the flip factory mindset only because it’s Inferno Squad. However, their scenes felt very inauthentic. Some dialogue felt wooden, and their actions felt like we jumped to the second half of Battlefront II when they defected. Eventually, they get the better of Valance and the rest of the bounty hunters, but Iden Versio will not let Hask and Meeko kill anyone. It’s revealed they are on specific orders to spare them, and thus seals the feeling that Inferno Squad from the last issue stayed there.
The understanding I had going into this arc was Valance was such a menace after what happened on Bestine that the Empire needed to eliminate him once and for all. Heck, reminder that it was Darth Vader who ordered this Imperial mission after the human-cyborg defected and killed an entire squadron with his bare hands. The end goal of Valance’s death was heavily implied, and the methods Inferno Squad used to reach this point matched that understanding.
Therefore, my frustration was palpable when Inferno Squad just wiped Valance’s memory and called it a day. I went back, and while it’s true that it was never made explicit that they were sent to kill anyone, there are consequences. Chief among them is when I now look back on this Inferno Squad arc, I will know the stakes are cheapened because of a loophole in how Sacks worded things.
I should feel sadness for Valance getting his memory wiped, but resentment is all there is towards this direction. It renders the entire Bestine arc (Bounty Hunters #29–31) and what he battled pointless. Lieutenant Haydenn was the one who gave the order to spare Valance and the other hunters. This earns her some manner of redemption, but it all feels hollow. While we got a quick panel of Haydenn wallowing in her own regret, what happens now?
The bounty hunters start anew with no ties to anything of the past 34 issues. For some, Bounty Hunters will get a much-needed soft relaunch: Boba Fett, Durge, and more returning will surely be a hit. But for others like me who just got back on board, I am left hoping some vestige of the series I almost fell in love with remains as we head into the next chapter.
The big positive before we go is that artist Paolo Villanelli goes out on a high. Good luck, sir, on your next venture (Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest if anyone is curious). The smaller moments with Valance thinking about his family as their memory fades were chilling. I also may have critiqued the action as a flip factory, but it was still drawn engagingly. Only if you look past the fact that nothing in Bounty Hunters matters anymore. I hope to be proven wrong and this issue is just a blip as Marvel barrels into the next major event.
RATING: 4/10
Nate uses his love for Star Wars and movies in general as a way to cope with the pain of being a Minnesota sports fan. When he's not at the theater, you can usually find Nate reading a comic, listening to an audiobook, or playing a Mario video game for the 1,000th time.
