Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #16 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This issue feels a lot more like a Bounty Hunters book than it usually does. By that I mean that the focus isn’t so much on Valance, and Boba Fett, Zuckuss and Dengar also feature prominently. As such it’s a far more enjoyable read. It helps that it closely ties into the events of War of the Bounty Hunters, although you really do need to be reading the main book to get the full story here. Valance also works much better when played off Fett than he does with Dengar. Or maybe, you know, Fett’s just cooler.

Villanelli also does a great job on the art here, with Prianto’s colours doing a lot to aid the storytelling.

All in all this is a big improvement for this series and I’m hoping it continues.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #14 (Star Wars: Bounty Hunters by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There’s a new bounty hunter in town, and you can tell that she’s really cool and badass because her dialogue gets its own unique font…and Boba Fett doesn’t even get that!

Look, I’ve been hard on Valance in the past, but an ongoing series about a Star Wars character who originated in the comics can work. Doctor Aphra proved that. It’s just that this one is bad. The dialogue is incredibly stilted. Almost everyone talks like Data from Star Trek, weirdly never using contractions.

The art is superficially good, but it causes easily avoidable lettering issues. And, being a letterer myself, it always bugs me when an artist clearly hasn’t given thought to where the lettering needs to go.

The War of the Bounty Hunters event is clearly bringing new readers to this title, but they’re not seeing anything that’s likely to make them stick around after the event is over.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #13 (Star Wars: Bounty Hunters by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, this is a definite improvement over the previous issue, mostly because it was actually possible to follow what’s going on. Still, not anywhere up to the standard of the rest of this crossover event…

…and what crossover event is that? that would be The War of the Bounty Hunters, which continues in the pages of this comic. Valance and Dengar are on Nar Shaddaa, the Smuggler’s Moon, hot on the trail of Boba Fett. They’ve missed him, but Dengar knows a guy who might know where he went, but it’ll take tact and diplomacy to get the intel. So, of course, Valance just punches him right in the face, because valance is an idiot now apparently.

After a fight, Valance dangles the guy over a large drop and he spills the beans, Fett doesn’t have Han Solo, Crimson Dawn do. But Valance doesn’t believe that Crimson Dawn are back, because he hasn’t read the previous instalment in this crossover. Silly man.

The issue ends with the reveal of a new, badass, female bounty hunter, who’ll ne doubt be even cooler and more badass than Valance…

So, yeah, better than the last issue, but Sacks’ writing is still frustratingly pedestrian and the characterisation of Valance is still wildly inconsistent. Is he hot headed and reckless or is he a grizzled veteran? Who knows!

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #12 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve really enjoyed the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover event so far, but now it hits the pages of Bounty Hunters and the complete mess of nonsense that this book is.

Let’s talk time frames, people. So, Boba Fett has stopped off on the way to deliver Han Solo to Jabba, to get the carbonite block that’s degrading fixed. And the carbonite block, with Han Solo in it, has been stolen from him. And, we learn in this issue, Jabba has placed a bounty on Fett.

Okay, right, so…how long after that scene on the Executor bridge with all the bounty hunters are we…because Dengar, Zuckuss and 4-Lom are all here, and have been for a while…so an awful lot seems to have happened before them all taking the job to find Han Solo from Darth Vader and where we’re at now. Mind you, if you factor in the time it must have taken the Falcon to get to Bespin at sub-light speeds then… Oh, heck, it’s Star Wars, none of it makes sense (but, arguably, it should so obviously make no sense as this does).

So, what actually happens in this issue? Not a lot, we time hop back and forward in time from the present day to the last time Valance encountered Han Solo, and those time hops are often jarring. Just the simple inclusion of “Now” and “Then” at the start of each time change would solve that…but, nope, narrative clarity is not something that anyone involved in this book seems to care about.

Look, I know my issues here is that I simply don’t care about Valance and probably never will, so this book is always going to be fighting a losing battle with me…but Sacks could, at least, try to make me care about him.

There’s a short txt piece at the end of this issue explaining what the hell is going on to anyone who might be a bit lost. I’ve been reading since issue one and I still found it helpful…which is probably not a good thing.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #9 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Valance has as much depth as one of the space pirates from a packet of 1980s Space Raiders.

That might a be a little harsh, but still… The most interesting part of this issue was a flash back to scenes we’ve seen before in the Han Solo: Imperial Cadet series, which reintroduced Valance into the canon.

The rest of the story is just…frustrating. What’s the point of the Ohnaka gang without Hondo? Why is Dengar here when he literally does absolutely nothing? And, the “twist” in the tale makes no sense. Valance was turning the tide against the pirates, and then he seemingly speeds off into hyperspace, abandoning the people he was rescuing. But, wait, no, he somehow ejected from his X-Wing before it made the jump to lightspeed and is making his way back into the ship the pirates are now boarding, presumably so next issue he can take them out Die Hard style. Why? What does he possibly gain from doing this other than feeling like he’s Bruce Willis?

That’s who should play Valance in a movie: Bruce Willis. He too used to be cool back in the day but is a complete irrelevance now.

When it started I thought this book was going to be a limited series, I really wish it had been.

That said, there’s definitely room for a Bounty Hunters series, just not one that has Valance as the main character. Of all the Legends characters to bring back, why him?

I’d drop this book if I wasn’t a compulsive Star Wars completist…and an eternal optimist.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #8 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, this is a definite improvement over last month’s offering, although I still find Valance boring and I’m still irritated by Sacks’ insistence of writing 4-LOM as For-Elloem.

We do get a fun bar fight with a young Tasu Leech, who we last saw in The Force Awakens as a much older man and leader of Kanji Club. This is him as a much younger man and I can also assume that time wasn’t kind to him in the years between this and the events of The Force Awakens, because he not only looks like a completely different person but looks like he’s a different race.

Following that, Valance gets ambushed by what remains of the Ohnaka Gang, now no longer under Hondo’s leadership, and Dengar, who’s always a win. I mean…I like the bounty hunters in Star Wars, a lot…just not Valance.

But, yeah, this wasn’t awful.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #7 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is just…not good.

Well, the cover’s lovely. Lee Bermejo’s done a fantastic job, and the cover prominently features 4-Lom and Zuckuss, who I like. Unfortunately the comic within continues to prominently feature Beilert Valance and his incredibly derivative story. It turns out that the woman he left behind is now married to another man, which gives Valance yet another reason to angst. You see…no woman could ever love a man as hideous as he… Cos, you know, women always find it romantic when you assume that they’re shallow.

Also, 4-Lom and Zuckuss succeed in capturing Vlance and the young girl he’s protecting, but he offers them a shiny gem stone in return for letting him escape. But there was nothing stopping them from not letting him go and still keeping the gem…other than that they’re just stupid, I guess.

I completely understand that a Bounty Hunters series makes sense, but what doesn’t make any sense to me is focusing that series on an obscure character from the original Marvel Star Wars run.

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Star Wars: Bounty Hunters (2020-) #6 by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A definite improvement over the last issue, but then the only way was up after that.

I still don’t care about Valance, though. He’s a deeply uninteresting character who doesn’t really feel like he belongs in Star Wars. He looks like a character for a 1970s comic that was kinda inspired by Star Wars, before it had really been established what Star Wars really IS. Because, well, that’s exactly what he is. We’re given some more backstory for him here, in which we discover that he left a girl behind when he left his home world to join the Empire…and, crikey, this is derivative. But, then, so’s Valance.

There’s some good stuff in here though, because Zuckuss and 4-LOM are in it, and they’re cool. Although it did bother me that Zuckuss call’s 4-Lom, “For-Elloem” becuase I’ve always pronounced it “Four-Lom”…but maybe I’ve been wrong all these years. It wouldn’t be the first time.

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