Review: Star Wars – Blood Ties – Boba Fett Is Dead / Author: Tom Taylor / Artist: Chris Scalf / Publisher: Dark Horse Comics / Release Date: February 5th
Ah, Boba Fett! He wasn’t exactly lavished with screen time or dialogue in the original Star Wars trilogy, yet for some reason he seems to be much beloved by the fans. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s a bounty hunter (which is almost as cool as a ninja or a pirate), or maybe it’s due to children of the ’80s being easily impressed by jet packs. Whatever, the prequel movies gave him a nifty backstory and the unexpected (and highly useful) superpower of having a face that is identical to millions of other people in the galaxy, and now it’s all but impossible to avoid him.
Despite what you might suppose (or hope), Star Wars: Blood Ties – Boba Fett Is Dead is not a book that gives it all away in the title. Instead, what we get is a short adventure that furnishes a rather two-dimensional character with an interesting supporting milieu and a neat exploration into the consequences of being the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter. Understandably, the secondary characters do all the heavy lifting here – after all, the titular protagonist is meant to be brown bread. By a lucky coincidence, they also also happen to be far more interesting than him, but if you’re familiar with the franchise, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Unlike some Star Wars comic books, Boba Fett Is Dead delivers on the promise of sci-fi action adventure – there is plenty of blaster fire here, some interesting twists and cheesy but entertaining dialogue. It evokes the pulp feel of the source material nicely and actually feels like it’s part of the franchise. Writer Tom Taylor has a very cinematic style of storytelling, and the art carries the story forward nicely. We get the feeling artist Tom Scalf would rather be painting set pieces rather than action sequences, but he knows how to draw things blowing up and that’s pretty much all you need for a book like this. Don’t expect any big revelations or changes to the franchise here, but do expect to have fun.
Star Wars fans will enjoy the book for what is – action-packed adventures in a galaxy far, far away – and there’s plenty here to entertain the regular comic book reader as well.
