REVIEW: Meet Your Heroes in Bounty Hunters #19
In Bounty Hunters #19 by Ethan Sacks, Ramón F. Bachs, Bryan Valenza, and Travis Lanham, with a main cover by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Edgar Delgado, Valance gets the chance to meet one of his heroes for the third time… and this turn around the wheel, only one of them will be walking away from the encounter alive!
Bounty Hunters #19
Meet your heroes in Bounty Hunters #19. Photo: Marvel Comics.
Bounty Hunters #19 is subtitled “Flight of the Dark Squadron,” but it might as well be called “don’t meet your heroes.” This impeccably structured issue opens on a flashback to Valance’s Academy days (including a Solo cameo), the second time he met (then Captain) Tarl Sokoli. The first time was when Valance was a child, and Sokoli had liberated Chorin. As Valance tells Sokoli in this first scene, Sokoli inspired Valance to join the Navy… but Sokoli is callous, especially regarding the injuries Valance has sustained in the line of duty.
Photo: Marvel Comics.
From there, we head into a sequence that includes a TIE on TIE dog fight (spotlighted in an awesome two-page splash) and cuts out on a mini-cliffhanger at the midpoint of the issue.
Next, we cut back to the best team in the galaxy. Suffice to say that, given that this sequence not only gives us more on the status of one-time BFFs 4-LOM & Zuckuss, it implies there will be more coming, we really can’t complain.
Photo: Marvel Comics.
Now we return to the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer, where Valance has survived piloting his TIE through the main viewscreen and is now menacing Sokoli. Valance ultimately executes Sokoli, and although he says he has no choice due to the fact that Darth Vader has ordered him to do so… you kind of have to wonder if Sokoli wasn’t a little bit right about Valance having some selfish motives in carrying out the task.
…maybe just not where Sokoli thought.
Sokoli will regret this. Photo: Marvel Comics.
And finally, we get a one-page scene that shows Vader learning that Valance has completed his mission… and preparing to use our hero as a tool to complete more of his malignant machinations! We all know Vader loves working with bounty hunters, but this could be a new low. We’ll have to see how this turns out in Bounty Hunters #20, which has the enticing subtitle, “Forlorn for 4-LOM”!
Meet Your Heroes (In a TIE)
Photo: Marvel Comics.
This is another excellent issue in my favorite Star Wars Marvel Comics title on the shelves. Have you had a chance to read it yet, Marvel Blog True Believers? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section.
