Writer: Ethan Sacks / Penciller: Luke Ross / Colour Artist: Nolan Woodward / Letterer: VC's Caramagna / Designer: Carlos Lao / Editors: Mikey J. Basso, Danny Khazem, Mark Paniccia / Collects: Star Wars: Jango Fett The Trail Of Lost Hope #1-#4 and material from the Star Wars: Revelations One-Shot / TP / Marvel Comics
Review by Paul Dunne
14th February 2025 (Released: 29th January 2025)
The Pitch: Jango Fett, father of Boba Fett and legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter, has a bounty to find! A mystery to solve! And a treaty at risk! But can even the galaxy's most formidable bounty hunter achieve all of his goals with the dangerous and deadly Aurra Sing in the mix?!
Star Wars has always been a space opera that embraces criminality and frontier justice as part of its milieu. One of its earliest heroes was a smuggler after all. Still, you'd be hard-pushed to find equivalents in the prequel stories, since they seemed to lean more into high fantasy. The post-ROTJ has The Mandalorian. The sequels had... Well, DJ from The Last Jedi and Zorii Bliss in ROS. Of course, now we have The Mandalorian and to a lesser extent, Andor, flying the black flag of criminality in space. But up until the recent Skeleton Crew, you'd have to go all the way back to Attack of The Clones to find a decent example of the frontier crime and punishment that the original trilogy suggested was part and parcel of everyday life in Star Wars, and that came courtesy of Jango Fett. Although he has scant screen time in the prequels, Fett Sr. was always going to be memorable, if only to his retroactive connection to Boba Fett, who still maintained an air of mystery.
So here we are with Jango front and centre. Sacks keeps the story simple but still within the confines of the modern Star Wars galaxies. We start with Fett collecting a bounty, and then a robbery occurs, potentially initiating an incident between two races with long-standing grudges and this, even before the rise of the empire, could mean intergalactic war. Fett is just one of many Bounty Hunters engaged to find a priceless relic stolen by the thieves. See? That set-up is about as simple as it gets. And it stays pretty much that simple. There are double-crosses of course. Where would we be without those? But the story is kept on course and with even keel throughout all four issues (and the short aside from Revelations). And before you start crying about you want Andor-esque moral complexity from you your Star Wars adventures, there is a thing or two to note.
First up, stories that are just good fun stories, simply told are becoming rarer. I blame Christopher Nolan, personally. Since Inception was released, with it's faux-complexity, everyone wants to be a bit clever. And frankly, it's freakin' annoying. I don't want to feel like I need a master's degree in order to watch someone shoot something. And goddamn it, that goes for comics at times too! Look, this isn't to say Sacks isn't a good writer who knows how to spin a good yarn and has things to say, because that wouldn't be accurate. It ain't easy telling something this straight up and down, and making it fun, AND making it fit the larger Star Wars universe and everything editorially that must demand. Sacks and Ross have performed an excellent balancing act in making this. Secondly, if you are a fan of all that lore, all that plotting... Well, there's some of that here to keep you amused and fancying all over the place. Aurra Sing pops up throughout. And we get to see where Jango's need for a child came from, as well as cameos from Chancellor Valorum and a few others that will have you clicking your fingers whilst you try to remember characters names!
Sack's plotting is deft, never revealing too much, too soon. He conveys Jango's taciturn, icy demeanour well, keeping his dialogue to a minimum and letting other characters do the talking and get themselves into trouble. And when Jango does speak, it's usually a warning to back off - or pay the price! He's not unlike his Earthbound, Western (almost) namesake Django (he of the Franco Nero Spaghetti Western fame). Sacks runs with it and makes what would have been a Western programmer in the fifties or sixties, something you'd find yourself watching on TV one afternoon. And that is exactly what it should be! He recreates the feel of a bounty hunter moving state to state (or in this case, planet to planet) to find his quarry. With the quarry being an artifact here, there's even a little splash of Heist movies and Indiana Jones, which just cements the Saturday matinee feels of the whole thing.
Luke Ross' art does wonders. He creates textured, lived-in images that reminds me somewhat of the great British artists who used to work in newsprint comics back in the day. I'm old, kids, so my day was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (Wandsworth). His faces and environments are nicely textured and breathless with life and the flotsam and jetsam of galaxies. He seems to stick to wide -medium-close-up framing and cutting of the Original Trilogy which makes you feel like you're watching old school Star Wars and should keep the rabid fanbase happy. If indeed, such a thing is possible. Nolan Woodard's colours are excellent, keeping the lush, visually dense worlds separate and distinguishable so you always know where you are . Everything has a nice, sundown glow on it, which brings to mind the look of Episodes IV - VI. Joe Caramagna once more provides solid, clean lettering, enforcing the simple, reader-friendly style the book espouses. A solid Star Wars story about a simple man, just trying to make his way in the universe. And sometimes, if you need more than that, you may be wanting too much!
Star Wars: Jango Fett - Trailer of lost Hope TP is available at your local comic book shop now.
