Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #12 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS: BOUNTY HUNTERS No. 12, July 2021

Proudly proclaimed by “Marvel Worldwide” as featuring “the prelude story Target Solo, which leads into the Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters crossover event”, this particular twenty-page periodical certainly must have pleased the majority of its audience in May 2021 with its intriguing mix of a current-day space-battle and an historic gun-fight involving a certain out-of-favour Corellian smuggler. True, Beilert Valance’s flight through the Y’Toub System is a rather one-sided affair as the cyborg’s defenceless vessel simply attempts a series of hair-brained manoeuvres through an asteroid field so as to unsuccessfully escape Zuckuss’ deadly Mist Hunter. Yet even this headlong dash is imbued with plenty of tension by Ethan Sacks, as it’s never clear as to whether the former Chorin mineworker’s unhappy passenger, Dengar, will decide to kill him just to make peace with the tenacious Gand findsman pursuing them.

Indeed, arguably one of the highlights of this comic is the fractious relationship between a preoccupied Valance “and his reluctant partner”, as the pair are repeatedly thrown across their rapidly failing spacecraft’s cockpit. The American author’s ability to depict Dengar’s increasing horror at the insane chances his facially-disfigured “poodoo” pilot will take so as to avoid capture proves particularly enjoyable, with the increasingly battered bounty hunter’s persistent protestations about Beilert’s seemingly suicidal flying providing the plot with both an element of humour and suspense; “Just surrender and give them what they want… Your obsession with Solo makes you reckless. Why is that damn scoundrel so important to you anyway?”

Just as entertaining though, albeit for its pulse-pounding pace and artist Paolo Villanelli’s phenomenally dynamic, laser-packed shoot-out, is Sacks’ elaborate series of flashbacks to Abregado-Rae Spaceport, where a penniless Valance desperately agrees to join “the mysterious Caviness Thorn” and his men in killing the assassination crew’s latest target. Doubtless few of this book’s bibliophiles were even slightly surprised at the revelation that the target is the Millennium Falcon’s captain, Han Solo. But that doesn’t make the subsequent firefight any less dramatic, especially when having warned Chewbacca’s partner of the deadly ambush, Beilert goes toe-to-toe with his irate employer atop the space port’s walkway, and the Corellian's Wookie-in-crime is disconcertingly blasted in the shoulder at close range.

The regular cover art for "STAR WARS: BOUNTY HUNTERS" #12 by Mattia De Iulis