Review – ‘Star Wars: Bounty Hunters’ #36 Sets the Stage For ‘Dark Droids’
The next big Star Wars comics crossover, Dark Droids, is a mere few weeks away, but unless you’re staying up to date with solicitations and other previews, you’d have nary an idea from reading Marvel’s current offerings. That changes this week with Marvel’s Bounty Hunters #36.
Last month, a “new” era of the series started when T’onga and Beilert Valance welcomed a handful of fresh recruits to hunt down Boba Fett for a mission. The plight proved successful, but now Fett has a job for our ragtag bunch if he is to help Valance retain what’s left of his fading humanity.
This issue is your standard one-off side quest, only forwarding the larger story ever so slightly in favor of a single enjoyable set piece before diving full steam ahead. Throughout this tangent, there is impending dread accentuated by the final pages that offer a lot to dig into.
Spoilers ahead…
Truth be told, there isn’t a whole lot to break down with Boba Fett’s task. T’onga and her crew are to turn Boba, who has a hefty bounty on his head, in to a splinter group of the Black Sun, led by a potential usurper. Then it would be on Fett, who was secretly hired by the current ruler of the Black Sun, to turn the tables and take them out. So typical underworld, double-cross stuff.
Hidden within this bare-bones plot is a page where Fett and Valance share another interaction about what Valance remembers. All the cyborg knows is that they teamed up to save a mutual party (Lan Medina’s art of the memory of Han Solo fading away is stellar). Thankfully for Fett, Valance doesn’t recall the betrayal during War of the Bounty Hunters, a choice that ironically ended up being the catalyst that got us here. Naturally, Boba isn’t keen on sharing that with the class. Time will tell if that becomes significant. Maybe Fett feels guilt, which is why he’s helping, but that will likely never be said out loud.
Another not-forgotten-about detail is that of Losha. The last time we saw her, T’onga had left her behind after Inferno Squad. Now in the fighting pits, Losha seems to be forging a new path. With this reintroduction, Sacks now has three characters (Losha, Vukorah, and Cadeliah) at his disposal that, if and when they find themselves folded back into the main narrative, have the potential to add a lot of flavor to the later stages of the series.
Before we get to the finale, the fight against the Black Sun itself was a lot of fun. Medina’s softer art style lends itself to taking a page in and acknowledging the weight of what’s being put before you. Arif Prianto’s colors also felt sharper, as bullets flew everywhere in contrast to the blood red of the junk moon where this battle occurred. They are most distinct when Valance casually incinerates a few individuals. He may be losing his memory, but you can’t unlearn the utility of a hand blaster. Boba Fett quite often jumped off the page too.
The highlight of the fight was Durge. The Gen’dai comes across as the cranky man who just wants a little peace and quiet as he sits on his rocker, but then hears kids playing outside. He’s not a character that needs a lot of urgency, but it’s cool to have him around. His tactics are unlike everyone else, which makes him a valuable asset for a storyteller trying to add a bit of levity.
Complain as T’onga might about the firefight, Boba Fett is a man of his word. After the dust settles, Fett gives her coordinates to a cyborg fixer named Tarr Kligson, a supposed old friend of his father. Boba may leave them behind, but now T’onga’s team has some hope in their plight to save one of their own.
Before we wrap up, if the name Tarr Kligson rings any bells, you know this might be quite bad. Not because the man himself is evil but because of where he’s probably located. In the Revelations one-shot, where Darth Vader saw visions of the future, Kligson’s Moon was revealed to be one of the first places the dangerous Ajax Sigma first re-emerges. Ajax was created on the moon for the unaware, and he went on to lead a murderous droid revolution during the High Republic era. The Jedi Order shut him down, but his core survived. It would eventually end up in the possession of Han Solo and Chewbacca, who buried it at the end of Han Solo & Chewbacca.
How Ajax figures into Dark Droids remains to be seen, but if Kligson’s Moon is where our bounty hunters are headed to track down Tarr, they could be in for any number of surprises. In Legends, Tarr (known only as Kligson) secluded himself on the moon, dubbed “droid world,” where his story mostly ended. We will know a lot more by the time the next issue rolls around late next month.
Bounty Hunters #36 may not push the overall narrative leaps and bounds ahead, but it is a nice excursion that needs to happen from time to time. As Dark Droids nears, these lead-in issues would never give a ton of answers, but after how heavy things got for Beilert Valance and the rest of the series’ main players, a nice mini-arc like this was needed.
RATING: 7/10
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.
