Today saw the release of the third issue in Marvel Comics’ current Star Wars: Jango Fett miniseries, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
It’s no secret that the bounty hunters of the Star Wars galaxy are inspired by the 1960s Spaghetti Westerns that George Lucas loved so much. Boba Fett is basically The Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, Cad Bane is Angel Eyes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and so forth right up through The Mandalorian’s Din Djarin. So it makes perfect sense that Boba’s clone-daddy Jango Fett took his name directly from Sergio Corbucci’s seres of Django films, and now Marvel Comics writer Ethan Sacks has brought Fett right back to his Spaghetti-Western roots in Jango Fett #3. This issue begins with Jango still on the hunt for whoever stole the Hope of Glee Anselm, an invaluable statue that could ignite a war between two species via its absence. But also on the trail of the artifact are fellow bounty hunter Aurra Sing and her mysterious benefactor Judicial Huijari, who may not be everything he claims he is.
So Fett arrives on the mining planet of Roxuli on the hunt for a target he doesn’t have a description of, but he’s interrupted by a gang of thugs who believe he might be there to collect the bounty on them. Naturally Jango is able to make quick work of these miscreants thanks to the combination of his jetpack and the planet’s dusty surroundings. Then Sacks cuts to a Republic diplomatic cruiser, where an emissary negotiates between the two species who reside on the planet Glee Anselm: namely the Anselmi and the Nautolans. The arbitration breaks down, but in private we see that the Republic representative seems… happy about that? Meanwhile back on Roxuli, Fett ventures into a local saloon and uses a trick that I’m sure I’ve seen pop up in one of those Spaghetti Westerns (though I can’t immediately place which one) to weed out his target, who rather shockingly turns out to be Nakano Lash from Ethan Sacks’ recently concluded Star Wars: Bounty Hunters comic. What a cool and rewarding connection!
Anyway, there’s a showdown in the Roxuli streets between Lash, Fett, Sing, and Huijai, the latter of which ends up getting shot to death by Aurra when she figures out that he’s not really working for the Republic. Then Nakano reveals that the Hope statue she stole was actually a fake, and the three remaining characters are left scratching their heads while trying to figure out who set them up. Lastly we cut to Daiyu (remember that planet from the Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi live-action series?) where even more bounty hunters are roped into this scheme, and that’s our cliffhanger ending for this terrific issue that really had me itching to check out those Django movies– I bet Sacks and his artist Luke Ross did some Spaghetti-Western research before putting this one together. The atmosphere is fantastic, the setting feels right out of Star Wars and its many influences, and both the writing and art are on point for this series so far. I’m just sad there’s only one issue left to go.
Star Wars: Jango Fett #3 is available now wherever comic books are sold.