Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #35 from Marvel Comics begins a new arc for our titular antiheroes, in which T’onga seeks out a new crew to go after her most dangerous quarry yet: fellow hunter Boba Fett.
This issue begins with T’onga entering the never-before-seen Bounty Hunters Guild social club on the planet D’assem, where she meets with Khel Tanna, the hunter introduced in last year’s Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca comic miniseries by Marc Guggenheim. In the bar, Khel helps T’onga round up some new recruits to expand her ever-dwindling crew: there’s a shapeshifting Clawdite named Catak, the hulking Gen’Dai Durge (originally from the Legends-timeline Star Wars: Clone Wars microseries), and the Dathomirian assassin Deathstick (from the Star Wars: Uprising mobile game). Together they join T’onga, Bossk, 4-LOM, Zuckuss, and Beilert Valance– the latter of whom had his memory wiped by the Empire at the end of the previous issue– in pursuit of Boba Fett, who it initially seems as though they intend to bring in to claim the bounty recently placed on his head by the Black Sun crime syndicate. However, after a knock-down, drag-out battle on the Rishi Moon (see Dave Filoni’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series for its first appearance) we discover that T’onga actually intends to hire Boba Fett for a mission, not capture or kill him as was implied. That twist didn’t quite work for me, as it felt like there was probably a better way to enlist Fett than to engage in battle with him (though I understand Boba’s defensive response to being surrounded by a team of competing bounty hunters).
Still it’s a fun issue, and it’s great to see writer Ethan Sacks shaking things up a bit by bringing new blood into the crew– especially considering how these characters are drawn from various disparate corners of the Star Wars universe. I also liked how hesitant T’onga was to interact with Boba Fett in the first place, a nice callback to her being gunned down in cold blood by the fearsome clone way back in Bounty Hunters #4. There’s a lot of interesting character stuff going on here as the newly introduced members of the crew are allowed to bounce off our more familiar regulars of this comic, but at the same time I’m kind of hoping that Sacks commits to Valance losing his memory (at least for a little while) instead of reclaiming it right away like it seems he might. The other notable thing happening in the world of Bounty Hunters is the debut of new artist Lan Medina (previously of Marvel’s Gold Goblin), whose work I’m going to have to get used to in the absence of Paolo Villainelli, whose unique, heavily stylized renderings had really grown on me over the past three years. Still, Medina shows a whole lot of promise in this issue, and I can easily see his personal take on these characters eventually feeling very natural. And now that Boba Fett has joined the team– however temporarily– we should be in for a pretty entertaining ride.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #35 is available now wherever comic books are sold.