Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #3

Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #3

Marvel Comics 2021

Written by Charles Soule

Illustrated by Luke Ross & David Messina

Coloured by Neeraj Menon & Guru-eFX

Lettered by VC’s Travis Lanham

WINNER TAKES ALL!

Terrifying, implacable Dark Lord of the Sith DARTH VADER has laid claim to HAN SOLO, who is frozen in carbonite. But the great, exalted JABBA THE HUTT also believes that Solo is his property. It’s the galaxy’s baddest gangster versus the Empire’s most powerful enforcer, and neither is backing down. BOBA FETT is caught between a Sith and a Hutt...and it’s WINNER TAKE ALL

I have been enjoying the heck out of this series! For someone who’s not the biggest Star Wars fan this while a franchise wide story is readable as just as easily read as this single arc on its own. It is a great introduction to the line of characters, it is my first exposure to Doctor Aphra outside of knowing she has a book, as well as encompassing the range of well established characters so that it has this familiar feel to even the casual fan. Charles does this sensational job in creating a story that takes a situation we’re familiar with and turns it into something epic, exciting, fresh and new.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does an utterly marvelous job in establishing their personalities as well as reinforcing what we know about some of them. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story there’s this electrical charge to the story that grabs you and keeps you grounded to the pages.

I greatly appreciate the way that this is being structured and how we see the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. What I really like about what we see in the layers is how the story advances, the characterisation and the plot twists & turns all of which add such great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably achieved.

The interiors here are absolutely brilliant to see. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create the detail work we see throughout the entire issue is so incredibly well rendered. I do wish we’d see more backgrounds being utilised to enhance the moments more. Still how we see the composition within the panels bringing out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope of the story is amazingly well rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a very talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a sensational eye for how colour works.

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When Darth Vader showed up last issue the entire party and Han frozen in Carbonite suddenly took a decidedly drastic turn. You’d think that once Vader showed up that things would go smoothly for him but it seems there are those in the universe who are decidedly unafraid of the Dark Sith Lord. This makes for some decidedly great reading too as a very frustrated Vader leaves us with a great cliffhanger ending. With some absolutely stunning writing and dynamic characterisation wrapped up in these gorgeous interiors the battle for Han Solo has begun in earnest.