The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy will be remembered for introducing fans to new characters like Rey, Finn, and Poe Dameron, but for older fans like me, it was an excuse to see my old favorites Luke, Leia, and Han one last time. They were older and wiser than the last time we saw them for sure, but like another famous Harrison Ford character once said: “it’s not the age, it’s the mileage”. As entertaining as two out of those three movies were, we frustratingly got little information on what went down between our three original leads between the trilogies. Luckily for us, Marvel is stepping in to fill in some of the gaps with Star Wars: Han Solo – Hunt for the Falcon, a new miniseries from Rodney Barnes and Ramon Rosanas that details an older Han’s search for his prized ship.
Taking place at in indeterminate time between the Original Trilogy and Sequel Trilogy (but close enough to Force Awakens that Han has significantly whiter hair), Hunt for the Falcon is pretty straightforward: it’s about the search for the Millennium Falcon. Han, now the somewhat proud owner of a stock hover-car racing team, has been feeling aimless and adrift. Longing for his days as a smuggler, he tracks down Chewbacca and convinces him to take a break from family life (yes Star Wars Holiday Special fans, Lumpy is here!) and the two make their way across the galaxy attempting to find their fabled vessel to kick start their lives again. This leads them on a tour through the seedier sides of the galaxy as they attempt to locate Ducain, the scoundrel who stole the Falcon and sold it to Unkar Plutt (the blob fish looking guy that Rey interacts with in Force Awakens).
Marvel
One of the things that modern Star Wars comics struggle with is working within the confines of the established canon of the films. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the few series that take place in the Sequel Trilogy era. While there’s some titles and creatives that can work well within the framework (Charles Soule’s Kylo Ren starring Shadow of Vader comes to mind), many times the end result is lacking some stronger narrative pulls, almost like Lucasfilm is intentionally holding pieces of information back just in case they want to mine the IP for another streaming show. Hunt for the Falcon isn’t immune to this, as Rodney Barnes’ script has to work around a lot of narrative fences to tell his story, the biggest one being that we not only know Han can’t get the Falcon in this story, but that we know what will happen to him soon after he does get it in The Force Awakens.
While we get the reveal that Han knows where the Falcon is (and therefore was probably floating around Jakuu when Rey left with it), the story has to have Han leave the Falcon behind when he discovers its location because……well, if he didn’t it would cause a continuity problem with the movies. Barnes tries to circumvent these issues with flashbacks to happier times where Han was both a smuggler and a new father with Leia and Ben, but those latter moments are barely given any real time to linger with us. Instead, they’re frustratingly tantalizing bits of character work that makes the reader more annoyed that they weren’t given any of this information in the sequel trilogy.
That being said, there is an interesting bit of character work being done with Solo in this book. Barnes’ take on the elder Han looking back on his life and feeling restless fits exactly with the type of scoundrel we fell in love with in the original trilogy, and while we do feel for Han, we’re also allowed to judge him a bit throughout the series too. The tension between Han and Chewbacca feels palpable and real, especially when we see how happy Chewie is to be living on Kashyyyk with his family before his old pal shows up for “one last job”. There’s not as much reverence for the past as with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but there’s enough here to feel for Han enough to allow him this quest for his former glory (plus we don’t have to pretend that an 80 year old is trying these stunts).
Marvel
The art from Ramon Rosanas is the most impressive aspect of Hunt for The Falcon. The Star Wars line of books from Marvel definitely has a “house style” in effect, but Rosanas is able to match that style while also making his character models feel both apt for comic book action and shockingly close to the actors in these films. Both the modern day and flashback sequences are stunningly rendered, with some looking like Harrison Ford was scanned into the book itself. Rosanas also has a strong gift for the tech and creatures of the Star Wars universe, something that a lot of artists can either do one or the other of, not both.
While it’s nice to get another Han Solo adventure, it’s hard not to feel a little frustrated by Hunt for The Falcon. The fact that we are still kept at arm’s length for a lot of the story due to outside factors is frustrating, yet Barnes’ attempt to still craft a compelling character story for one of the most famous heroes in the galaxy is admirable. Hunt For The Falcon, while a fun toss-away adventure, never goes beyond just that. There’s room in the Star Wars comics for some really moving and touching character pieces, yet someone either at Lucasfilm, Marvel, or Disney is apparently against doing just that. At five issues there’s room for this adventure and not much else, but I wish we could get a series set in this era of the Star Wars canon that could provide more context for the films we saw. After all, having the heroes of the Star Wars universe feeling the same regrets we do makes them even more compelling and sympathetic.
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