Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #19
FLIGHT OF THE DARK SQUADRON
Valance, after being left for dead by Boba Fett, finds himself
reconstructed, deconstructed and reconstructed again under
the care of Sith Lord Darth Vader. Now he once again finds
himself a pawn of the Empire. His first mission: Kill an Imperial
officer he idolized as a child.Thinking Valance dead, T’Onga and the rest of the bounty
hunters must find another way to locate Cadeliah, the heir to
two crime syndicates. The young girl is a potential key to ending
a long and vicous war in the underworld that has been further
excaberbated by the chaos caused by Crimson Dawn’s return….
Writer: Ethan Sacks
Artist: Ramon Bachs
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Colorist: Bryan Valenza
Cover artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli, Edgar Delgado
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: December 29 2021
We open in the past as a harried younger Valance and a typically laconic Han Solo rush down a corridor, Beilert keen to see a speech by his childhood hero Captain Tarl Sokoli and Solo…not. Embarrassment lies just around the corner as Valance literally crashes into Sokoli, who notices Valance’s missing eye and reminding him that he’ll never fly a TIE Fighter again. Stepping into the present, Valance is flying a TIE Defender towards the destroyer commanded by Sokoli, who has already deduced that they are not there for afternoon tea and scrambles a wing of TIE Fighters to see what they are made of.
The TIE Defender Dark Squadron acquit themselves well, taking out many of the TIE’s and the hyperdrive of the Destroyer. Sokoli orders calm on his bridge as the cannons to start fire, and to success as Dark Three is destroyed, followed by Dark Four, but that bridge is soon breached as Valance aims for the heart of the vessel.
We swing to Ord Mantell as a skirmish between Unbroken Clan and Black Sun employees sees the Unbroken Clan come out on top and T’onga inform her people – including Bossk, recuperating as his legs grow back – that they need to find Cadeliah before Crimson Dawn do. 4-LOM informs the team that he is an excellent slicer, and his tracking signal is still on, giving them chance to locate him after he was last seen at the end of War of the Bounty Hunters. Giving them the chance to back out on this dangerous mission, T’onga is surprised when all arrive to join her on the hunt.
Back on the destroyer we learn Valance has jury-rigged the cockpit of the TIE to help get it through the bridge window, and face to face with his childhood hero, now suspected to be a Crimson Dawn mole, he guns him down as ordered. We end on the Executor as Vader receives the news of Sokoli’s death, confirming that he never had any Crimson Dawn connections, only a growing public dissatisfaction with the Empire that Vader wanted snuffed out.
Once again a kinetic, engrossing issue from Ethan Sacks and Ramon Bachs that pushes the story further and layers in – as this series has done so successfully – more and more character on Valance. The mixing of the present and past works in this series better than any other Star Wars comic series as in a ‘My Name Is Earl’ way we look at his past and reconcile it with the present. Sometimes that’s for good, sometimes for bad, but always the reader is the winner. Excellent work.
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