The War breaks into smaller, more personal fronts in Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #4, written by Charles Soule, drawn by Luke Ross and David Messina, colored by Neeraj Menon with Guru-eFX and lettered by Travis Lanham.
Charles Soule and company take a surprisingly intimate approach to this event’s penultimate issue in the fourth installment of Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters.
Darth Vader has issued his challenge to Luke Skywalker in the holds of the Crimson Dawn’s flagship. Face him or he will cut down Han Solo, encased in his iconic carbonite prison. But as father and son barrel toward another conflict, a great number of smaller, more personal battles are unfolding throughout the wings of this crossover event.
The result is a weirdly personal, largely talkative issue. Each faction “needs” Solo in their own ways, and this issue focuses on the why of that, and how that has reverberated out into their lives. Now, does this issue have the same kind of slam-bang energy of the previous installments? No, it doesn’t. In fact, it doesn’t really have that much action at all. Aside from a momentary 2-on-1 tag match between new gruesome twosome Valance and Dengar and the still undefeated in this event Boba Fett, and a quick jolt of dogfighting between Vader and Luke, WotBH #4 does a lot of jawing.
A lot could be it’s positioning as “preamble” for the Crimson Dawn series that will finish out the year. But I think it’s more on Charles Soule wishing to reorient the more personal stakes of Han’s kidnapping. Which is where we started in the first place. Think about it; Lady Qui’ra’s theft of Solo from Boba Fett kicked off this whole event. Fett has kept his goal pretty clear and overt from that kick off. From there, other factions, both good and bad, have glommed onto this event’s wake and tried to angle themselves into power positions hinged on their Galactic moral alignment and missions.
These agendas are further hinged on where each member of the cast is around this issue in the overall crossover. Vader’s challenge and attempted cornering of Luke is something his solo title has been machinating. Valance and Dengar have finally answered the Crimson Dawn’s invite from the Bounty Hunters title. Aphra and Sana Starros are still in the flagship’s brig alongside Just Lucky from Doctor Aphra (and a little bit Bounty Hunters too). Our main cast of heroes are bridging the gap between this event and the main title, which seems to be serving as the crossover’s direct “sister title”.
Now, again, do we need a bunch of characters merely talking about what’s happening? No, we don’t. But this amount of clear storytelling and concise character tracking is something that should be celebrated in big IP driven crossovers like this, simply because it so rarely happens. It’s fun to smash toys together on the page every once in a while, but having this event so clearly mapped out and accessibly laid across so many titles is really refreshing after so much bad event storytelling. This all seems to really matter for the creative team, both in terms of presentation and drive, and that’s very much appreciated from a reader and critical standpoint.
All this said, however, I wish artists Luke Ross and David Messina had a bit more to do this issue. Their screen-accurate likenesses and the rich colors of Neeja Menon and Guru-eFX give the issue a nice pop for sure. The colors especially are wonderful in the Dengar/Valance/Fett fight as the panels switch back and forth between Boba’s “targeting computer” and real time, giving the sequence a wonderful graininess that I really took to. But when you have someone as good as Luke Ross, it seems like a slight waste to allow them just conversations amid a few swatches of action.
But even with this quibble, Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #4 brings a welcome realness and grounded feeling to franchise crossover storytelling, a sub-genre all too often devoid of anything even resembling a real emotion. Just because they are tie-in comics doesn’t mean they don’t have to feel like they “matter.” Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #4 shows that even popcorn reading can be filling when it needs to be (sometimes at the cost of sizzle and spark).
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
