A no-nonsense, gun-toting hardass wearing a helmet he never takes off, stalking across a futuristic wasteland and demolishing anything in his path – Judge Dredd is… Boba Fett!
John Wagner is the perfect choice for a Boba Fett series given that he’s Judge Dredd’s co-creator and the iconic Mandalorian bounty hunter is essentially Dredd both in persona and appearance. So Wagner can basically write a Dredd story and just change a few names to set it in the Star Wars universe – which is exactly what he’s done with this trio of stories!
Boba Fett is hired by the Hutts to do the usual bounty hunter things – search and rescue/assassination – while the slugs have their own mini game of thrones with one Hutt marrying another in a gangster family powerplay. Along the way he makes enemies with a pair of pirate porpoises and racks up the kill count!
This book is a lot more comedic than the modern Marvel Star Wars comics – for the better! And it’s that mix of action and comedy that reminds me so much of Wagner’s Dredd which always featured a wacky supporting cast while Dredd did his thang (grimly kill people, basically).
The stories are fairly generic and predictable, while the third and final one is really a tired repeat of the second, so they’re not that gripping to read. It’s entertaining though to see Boba Fett taking down enemies and Wagner’s British panto-esque humour was a welcome addition.
I didn’t dislike Cam Kennedy’s art – the line work is skilful – but the faded visuals really date this as a ‘90s comic, particularly with the almost lazy way the colours are applied. For example, all the characters in a scene are one colour rather than Kennedy colouring them in individually, or the background is frequently a blank wall of one colour to save him drawing any background.
Still, if you’re in the mood for a decent Dredd-flavoured Star Wars comic you’ll definitely get something out of Boba Fett: Death, Lies, & Treachery.
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