Back at the end of the first issue of Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca from Marvel Comics, readers were introduced to a character claiming to be Han’s long-lost father.
Now, four issues later in the miniseries, we get the reveal– as easy as it was to predict– that (SPOILER ALERT) this man is actually the criminal known as Corbus Tyra.
Han Solo & Chewbacca #5 begins where the previous issue left off: with Han and Chewie stranded on the Mollo Tanka Planetoid after Tyra (still posing as Han’s dad Ovan) took off with the Millennium Falcon. Cornered by bounty hunter Black Krrsantan, the title duo find their only means of escape via a rival gang of mercenaries (first seen in issue #1) flying a similar-looking Corellian freighter. Also aboard the ship is Greedo, who Han previously left stranded on Corellia. This crew has also been hired by Jabba the Hutt to retrieve the urn containing the remains of his arch-rival, and our heroes are surprised to find they weren’t the only ones assigned to that particular task. Meanwhile, Marshal Buck Vancto tracks Corbus to Iakar and takes him into custody back to Paqualis III, where the Marshal Service is headquartered. One jailbreak later (thanks to the tracker Han had placed on his “father,” since he didn’t really trust him all that much to begin with) and Vancto finds his quarry reclaimed by the mercs. There’s one minor snag to the outcome of this operation, however– in the scramble to escape, Chewbacca gets captured by the Marshals and taken to prison.
This is a particularly exciting installment of Han Solo & Chewbacca, largely due to the variety of locations visited throughout and the wide array of interesting characters at play here. Writer Marc Guggenheim is doing a good job of keeping things moving (I’m really glad that the mystery of Ovan’s true identity was resolved before the end of this comic’s first arc) and artist David Messina has a crisp, eye-catching style accentuated by the work of colorist Alex Sinclair. The addition of Khel Tanna’s crew– which evidently includes Star Wars: Bounty Hunters character T’onga at this point in the timeline– into the mix has opened up some fun possibilities, but the most intriguing new persona in this series is definitely Buck Vancto, who I could almost see getting a spinoff Star Wars title of his own. There’s also an amusingly unexpected cameo appearance by another franchise regular in the final panel of this issue, and I have a feeling that’s going to lead to some entertaining escapades when we follow up on Chewbacca’s imprisonment next month. Until then, I’d say that after five issues– out of ten total, making this the halfway point– this miniseries has thus far proven itself a worthy representation of Han and Chewie’s outlaw lifestyle during the period before A New Hope.
Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca #5 is available now wherever comic books are sold.