Star Wars announces new ongoing series, Bounty Hunters

Ethan Sacks and Paolo Villanelli are bringing fans scum and villainy.

December 11, 2019

Thanks to The Mandalorian bounty hunters are once again the talk of the Star Wars fandom. Well, and Baby Yoda. Point is, these days fans are all about the dark dirty corners of a galaxy far, far away and the scum and villainy that inhabit them. Looks like those corners just got a little more crowded.

Wednesday afternoon StarWars.com announced a new ongoing Marvel series, Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, from writer Ethan Sack and artist Paolo Villanelli.

“While the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire raged in the stars, the darker corners of the Star Wars universe belonged to the bounty hunters,” said Sacks in statement to StarWars.com. “And that’s always been a facet of the saga that’s fascinated me ever since I first witnessed that glorious murderers’ row take a bounty from Darth Vader aboard the Executor in a theater as a seven-year-old in 1980. I’m channeling that wonder from The Empire Strikes Back and beyond in Bounty Hunters, which will be a high-octane action romp through the Star Wars underworld of Hutts and Fetts.”

“We’ll get to see this world through the cybernetic eye of Valance, a bounty hunter with a rich history of his own at Marvel, and one of the few that can go toe to toe with the likes of Bossk,” Sacks says. “And rest assured that he’s going to have to be doing a lot of fighting as his jobs take him to some pretty dark places in both the Outer Rim and in his inner heart.”

Bounty Hunters #1, cover by Lee Bermejo.

The series follows the relentless cyborg bounty hunter Beilert Valance on his mission to exact revenge upon his mentor-turned-betrayer Nakano Lash. Valance first appeared in Star Wars comics back in the ’70s and has a long history with Darth Vader. The two most recently squared off in Robbie Thompson and Marc Laming’s Target Vader series, that debuted in July 2019. Valance will find that his hands quickly filled when he runs into Boba Fett and Bossk on his revenge tour.