#Valance the Hunter

[fandom-menace]

Star Wars Weekly covers with floating heads!

[cantsayidont]

Some more highlights of the Archie Goodwin/Carmine Infantino STAR WARS comics from the period between the first two movies.

Issue #28. Han can't resist being snotty even to someone who's been actively trying to kill him for days:

Issue #29. The bounty hunter Valance finds that Darth Vader is no easy opponent:

Issue #30. Leia on her own, infiltrating an Imperial installation:

Issue #33. Baron Orman Tagge (elder brother of the officer who complains to Vader in the movie about the dangers of the Rebels having the plans to the Death Star) has been practicing for years with the lightsaber in hopes of avenging himself on Vader. Luke demonstrates that it won't be quite so easy:

Issue #34. Even months before THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Leia does clearly like scoundrels at least a little:

Issue #35. Dark Horse later dragged out Vader's efforts to discover the identity of the pilot who destroyed the Death Star in a disappointing and mediocre four-issue miniseries (VADER'S QUEST). Goodwin and Infantino handle it in a splash page:

Issue #36. Han Solo offers some important life advice:

Vader corrupts Orman Tagge's sister Domina, whom Orman has unsuccessfully attempted to keep out of the family's political intrigues by making her a priestess of a monastic order. (Domina Tagge has recently reappeared in the DOCTOR APHRA series, where she has the same outfit, but not the same background or motivations — she's now just a SW version of Lena Luthor from SUPERGIRL.)

Han can't ever leave well enough alone:

Issue #37. Orman Tagge belatedly realizes how out of his depth he's always been in his rivalry with Darth Vader:

[dinosaurgiantpenny]

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

Star Wars #29 by Carmine Infantino

[legends-expo]

Panel Announcement: Make Mine Marvel Writers Abel Peña, Jason Fry and Michael Kogge take a look back at the original Star Wars Marvel comics! This panel will be on Sunday.

Get your tickets now, and join us on September 9th & 10th in Burbank, CA! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/legends-consortium-2023-tickets-541786186067

[chocmarss]

Reading War of the Bounty Hunters and I’m thrilled with how they introduced Valance here. A total wreck of a human being who feels he’s indebted to Han that Dengar got so fed up with him. “—to get Fett and your precious Solo first.” PLEASE Valance really was yearning for Han.

[comicwaren]

“I am not going to end up as some mindless droid!” -- Beilert Valance

Cover art for Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #037, “The Path of the Righteous, Part 1”

Art by Marco Checchetto and Marcio Menyz

[reddslym]

it might just be the fact that Beilert Valance was like, Cable before Cable, but Bounty Hunters feels like if Star Wars got an edgy 90s comic? like the composition of panels is very early 90s, reminds me specifically of like, X-Force and Jim Lee's X-Men stuff. You have Boba Fett being a right bastard (jarring after BoBF lol).

Its like edgy 90s vibes with modern sensibilities.

[purringysalamiri]

[texasthrillbilly]

[thebibliomancer]

Is there a more iconic Star Wars duo than Zuckuss and 4LOM?

[suitdistracted]

Baltimore Dining Room Example of a large classic medium tone wood floor and brown floor kitchen/dining room combo design

[cantsayidont]

October 1978. The first appearance of the bounty hunter Valance, who has recently made a comeback in the modern STAR WARS comics. Created by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, Valance is a cyborg, a former Stormtrooper officer who had been grievously wounded by a Rebel air raid and who now expresses his self-loathing through a pathological hatred of Droids and automata. (His secretiveness seems merited in these stories, which indicate that cyborgs experience a high level of mistrust and social stigma. I assume this is something Goodwin extrapolated from the "We don't serve their kind" stuff in the first movie, although the degree of prejudice and outright loathing Valance faces when people know he's a cyborg isn't really borne out by later SW media.)

The next issue box is a bit misleading; THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK wasn't released until a year or so after this issue appeared. Also, the story to which the box refers (which is indeed called "The Empire Strikes!") didn't actually appear until issue #18. The issue following this one ended up being a fill-in story about Luke and Biggs prior to the events of the first movie, with art by Herb Trimpe and Al Milgrom rather than regular penciller Carmine Infantino. The delay probably had something to do with the juggling act required to produce the U.S. and UK versions of the comic — the stories that ran in the U.S. monthly color series were published more or less contemporaneously in eight-page B&W installments in the British STAR WARS WEEKLY, a logistical nightmare that necessitated the use of two distinctly different inkers and a number of fill-ins to make the math work.

[dinosaurgiantpenny]

Eat shit, Lord Vader

[enfysandember]

For Valancenation

[justinrodgers]

Kitchen Dining - Dining Room An illustration of a sizable traditional kitchen/dining room combination with dark wood floors and orange walls