– Spoiler Review –
T’onga and team avoided falling into a black hole, but they can’t escape the forces of fate, as Bounty Hunters #29 finds them on a collision course with the Imperials… lead by Valance himself!
Teased at the end of the previous issue, Bounty Hunters #29 wastes no time in seeing T’onga and crew diving into their first mission for Crimson Dawn and Valance and his team providing the Imperial counter, unbeknownst to one another. I liked the way Ethan Sacks, Paolo Villanelli, Arif Prianto, and Travis Lanham structured the issue, the opening page of T’onga and her crew, then the second page is Valance and his, and the following one bleeds them together, doing everything not to be subtle on how these two will collide somehow, someway this issue. It also reads as a way to show how much T’onga has grown, the similarities between her and Valance’s handling of their missions showing they’ll be around even when they meet again. The weather even portends a dark meeting, the stormy, rainy Bestine making visibility low and adding some tension to the proceedings. This mixing goes away for most of the remaining issue, especially when it takes a detour with IG-88, but it returns at the right part, as T’onga and Valance realize they’re on opposite sides of this fight. It’s a tense ending to the issue, inevitable even without the art pointing towards it, and holds quite a lot of promise. How will these two react? Will T’onga help break the Imperial spell on Valance? Will they have to brawl it out before they make peace (this is Bounty Hunters, so you can bet there’ll be a fight)? And what will it mean for Valance and those who follow him and Vader? Consider me intrigued to find out!
Before the two leaders meet, the raid on the Imperial shipment of weapons (or food and supplies, depending on whose side you’re on) seems to be going rather well for T’onga’s team, avoiding Imperial patrols as they sneak around. But the stealth all breaks down when Tanka, Valance’s Trandoshan, attacks Tasu Leech and Bossk (the cover wasn’t subtle about the coming brawl). Tasu is left dangling off the side of the ship so it’s up to Bossk to go claw to claw with Tanka, aptly named for his hulking figure. It’s a fun fight to watch unfold, as this is Villanelli’s bread and butter after all, the blows and kicks full of weight and might thanks to open mouths or grinding teeth of either Trandoshan, Prianto’s colors painting the two combatants brightly against the stormy night around them, while Lanham’s lettering adds the extra oomph to the blows the two trade. My favorite panel for the fight is a brief respite in their battle, Bossk laid low by Tanka, who looms over him, lightning cracking behind him with Lanham’s SFX, Prianto’s colors painting him in a dark, frightening light, as if he might really win, that he’s the superior fighter like he’s taunting in the panel. While Bossk might be down, he’s not out, and what he lacks in size he has in brains, much to most beings’ surprise, using cords he’s wrapped up in to take Tanka out of the fight by throwing him overboard. Cooperation between the two teams, no matter what Valance and T’onga say, might be hard after this confrontation, but I have a pretty good suspicion this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Tanka.
While much of the issue is preoccupied with the coming collision, there’s a brief detour that feels largely random but ends with a connection which will leave many fans on edge (including this one). Bounty Hunters #29 breaks away from Bestine and visits the Son-Tuul Pride, a criminal organization that’s continuously drawn the short stick in canon, where we find they’ve drawn the shortest stick of them yet. While they’ve had some brief appearances in the comics since 2020, they factored a little heavier into those before that, first introduced in the Darth Vader (2015) comic where the Sith Lord paid them a less than friendly visit and later the Doctor Aphra (2016) series, where their leader, Yonak, found himself at the mercy of the muderbots Triple-Zero and Bee Tee, so like I said, the short stick. Here they are fleeing their fortress after the Empire put a bounty on them for assisting Crimson Dawn (something we didn’t see), only to find themselves at the mercy of another killer droid, assassin and bounty hunter IG-88, who gets quite the memorable introduction as he decimates the Son-Tuul members around him (teased in the recent Revelations one-shot, beyond other things related to this series*). There’s an awesome full page of IG-88 after he bursts through a heavy-duty door, fire crackling around him with Prianto’s colors, Villanelli giving us the perspective where IG-88 towers over us, making his entrance larger than life, while I loved the whirling destruction as he takes out all the targets around him, recalling IG-11’s similar move in The Mandalorian. After he’s done in 8 seconds or so—he’s counting, not me—he receives his next mark from the Empire: Vukorah! While this felt random to start, it makes a lot of sense now, serving as a deadly introduction to the might and destruction of IG-88 before he comes after one of the series’ principal cast. She just recently took back over the Unbroken Clan and her encounter with Losha, T’onga’s wife, and the pet Nexu has weighed heavily on her since. Vukorah’s head might not be in the mood for fighting when IG-88 comes knocking, so definitely something I’m worried about when the series returns in 2023.
Here’s a few other things:
- *The Revelations one-shot had a bit of a lengthy tease for the Bounty Hunter series, some stuff we’ve gotten teases of through advanced solicitations for next year’s issues, but for readers who aren’t clued into that, it might’ve been a surprise to check it out and see Valance already defected from the Empire and back with the T’onga and crew; sort of ruins the surprise of what’s to come on this series, which is just beginning to dive into Valance’s falling out with the Empire this issue, though your mileage will vary when it comes to spoilers (I don’t mind ‘em, for the most part). However, it does come with hints of a brand new, connected storyline regarding some type of ancient revolutionary droid, whose return to the galaxy might mess with Valance and his mostly droid body, while another part contain a potential hint at Valance’s Legends storyline…that ended with his death. Overall, it did seem weird to tease a full new storyline right when this one is beginning, almost taking the winds from the BH series’ sails, but it all remains to be seen what’s actually going to happen or not…let’s just hope Inferno Squad coming after the team in BH holds true (they were in Hidden Empire, so they very well could!).
- Another really fun IG-88 appearance happened in the Age of Rebellion special issue in 2019!
Bounty Hunters #29 collides storylines and characters for an enjoyable start to the next phase of the series’ story.
+ Inevitable collision and the way the team framed it
+ Trandoshan brawl
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.
BOUNTY HUNTERS REVIEWS
War of the Bounty Hunters: #12 | #13 | #14 | #15 | #16 | #17 — Crimson Reign: #18 | #19 | #20 | #21 | #22 — The Raid on the Vermillion: #23 | #24 | #25 | #26 | #27 | #28 — Bedlam on Bestine