I don’t think I’ve given Star Wars: Bounty Hunters writer Ethan Sacks enough credit for just how funny his writing can be. There are a number of moments in today’s new issue of the Marvel comic book that had me chuckling out loud to myself, which doesn’t often happen while I’m reading.
Bounty Hunters #28 opens with Tasu Leech having lost his cool and killed the Pyke client that the titular bounty hunters had been hired to protect. Alarms blare and they find themselves in deadly combat with just about everyone on the Accretion Disco, a party-spot space station that orbits a black hole.
Then, in an effort to help his friends, the droid bounty hunter 4-LOM sabotages the only safeguard that prevents the station from crashing into said black hole, which forces T’onga, Losha, Tasu Leech, Bossk, and Zuckuss to scramble for safety. Some of the interactions between Zuckuss and 4-LOM are intentionally hilarious, and I’m digging the interplay between all these characters. Meanwhile aboard Darth Vader’s star destroyer Executor, the hesitant Imperial collaborator Beilert Valance is set to be commended by the Dark Lord for his recent work rooting out Crimson Dawn traitors among the Imperial ranks. There’s another funny, completely out-of-left-field moment where Vader uses the Force to fix Valance’s errant collar (we’re meant to think he’s going to choke him for his insolence) to bring it up to Imperial standards, and I can’t help but imagine that Sacks is having quite a bit of fun writing this comic these days. Plus the deposed General Vukorah returns to Corellia to reclaim her title as the leader of the Unbroken Clan, though she seems to have some regrets about her recent actions in getting back– or that’s how I interpreted it, anyway.
Regardless, Valance and his team get assigned a new task: prevent Crimson Dawn’s planned interception of supplies headed to Bestine, while in their haste to make up for their failed mission, the bounty hunters take a job working for Crimson Dawn intercepting those very same supplies. These two groups are certainly on a collision course toward conflict (if not wackiness) as Beilert and his old colleagues work on opposite sides of the same task. This was a fun, energetic issue and I like seeing that Sacks is playing a little faster and looser with what a Bounty Hunters comic can be. Fortunately Cadeliah– the star-crossed heir to both the Unbroken Clan and Mourner’s Wail syndicates– gets only a brief mention here as a reason why Vukurah shouldn’t simply reclaim her throne. But all the action is fun, the dialogue is crisp and funny like I mentioned above, and artist Paolo Villanelli is doing a consistently good job of rendering these characters in tonally appropriate ways. Based on the cover of next month’s issue, it looks like my favorite bounty hunter Bossk is about to go up against his fellow Trandoshan warrior Tanka (first introduced in the pages of Star Wars: Darth Vader), so that should be exciting, to say the least.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #28 is available now wherever comic books are sold.