Han Solo & Chewbacca #8
DEAD OR ALIVE, PART III
HAN SOLO lives!
After being shot and left for dead by the scoundrel Greedo, the smuggler has been reunited with his partner, CHEWBACCA, who has allied himself with a mysterious but resourceful girl known as PHAEDRA.
Together, they have tracked Greedo to the remote planet of Tatooine with the aim of delivering some much-needed payback.…
Writer: Marc Guggenheim
Artist: David Messina
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Cover artist: Phil Noto
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: December 28, 2022
There’s something very 1977 and welcoming when you open an issue with Han and Chewie shoving a hapless Greedo around while looking for the Millennium Falcon, and as their strongarm tactics prove effective we learn not only where the legendary ship is and how Greedo cheated a sabacc hand to win it, but also that the urn was taken in an Imperial sweep and is now in the hands of a prominent Imperial Moff on Coruscant. With Greedo knocked out by a richly deserved right hand and the Falcon back in his hands, they leave Tatooine as Phaedra lays out her plan to infiltrate the Imperial capital and get the urn back. They’re to pose as waste disposal personel, wading through sewage and up into the Moffs office while Phaedra causes a distration that will steer the Moff away from their office.
We hop briefly to Liskan on the Outer Rim where Han Solo’s ‘Dad’ Corbus Tyra is being arrested by a marshal, only to offer up his ‘son’ Han for his own freedom before we swing back to the sewers of Coruscant where Han and Chewie are waste deep in brown water as a droid approaches the Death Trooper detatchment protecting none other than Grand Moff Tarkin. The droid tells Tarkin the Emperor requires his presense immediately, and as he leaves, leaving the droid with the remaining Death Troopers Han and Chewie arrive from the restroom, taking down the troopers and learning that the droid was Phaedra in disguise. Han retrieves the urn, only for more Imperial Stormtroopers to arrive and Phaedra to blow out the window so they could leap to their apparent deaths and land on a psassing train – all part of her plan.
What wasn’t part of the plan was for a lone Stormtrooper to have joined them, or for the trooper to opedn fire and clip Chewie, sending him spiralling off the train and down, down, down to his doom….
There’s a wonderful craziness about this series that is both refreshing and exhilirating. As kids, many of us grew up believing adventures such as this were daily occurances for Han and Chewie, blasting across the galaxy from job to job, getting into scrapes and trouble while enhancing their already legendary reputations. As we grew older, we realised that much of that ‘reputation‘ came from the storytelling of Solo himself, so to see those madcap adventures played out here in all their glory is an absolute blast. The art from David Messina is crisp and clean, the story and script by Marc Guggenheim has a classic, early Marvel vibe about it and the total package – with just two more issues to go – screams for another series somewhere down the line.
Like it’s stablemate Bounty Hunters it’s unabashedly action-packed and fast-paced, and in an era where stories like Andor can take its time to make us pause and consider the state of the galaxy pre-A New Hope, tales like this (which couldn’t be more different) are most welcome.
