“The Path of the Righteous, Part 1”
Creative Staff:
Story: Ethan Sacks
Art: Davide Tinto
Colors: Arif Prianto
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
What They Say:
THE HAUNTING SECRET MISSION OF JANGO FETT! A DARK DROIDS TIE-IN! The BOUNTY HUNTERS must contend with the looming shadow of the sins of BOBA FETT’S father! What is the secret that lurks on the mysterious droid outpost, THE HAVEN? Who is TARR KLIGSON and what is his connection to Jango Fett?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we get closer to the end of the series, I still feel mostly justified in my hesitance at the start of this series at the time of its original release. Something about it more often than not just doesn’t click. Certain elements work, especially when focused on Valance, but the variety of the cast and the bounty hunters themselves aren’t as compelling as you’d hope. That said, I’m enjoying taking it at my own pace a fair bit later and knowing that there’s a lot ahead of me as well. The book comes from writer Ethan Sacks and it has a pretty solid feeling overall as we get to see the slow growth and exploration of this fairly complex character and his history. With this issue, Davide Tinto steps in when it comes to the artwork and handles it solidly while Arif Prianto handles the color work once again, both names within this franchise for the comics and it looks and feels quite good with the variety of characters and some of the seedier aspects of the concept.
The structure of the storyline is one that works but frustrates me a bit as the past and present line up in order to show how things have changed but I keep wishing stuff like this was done in a more linear form. In the present, we get T’onga and her group racing to the coordinates that they got from Fett to find a man named Kligson who can help Valance. What we get is an interesting out of the way place where there doesn’t seem to be anything but dead worlds but there’s actually a space station hidden through a few technological tricks. This place has been around for some time to be sure as it’s a holy site for droids that are waiting for the return of Ajax in order to bring about a better future for them. The Ajax stuff has been covered in other books and it was pretty weak as time went on but we’re in the midst of the Dark Droids storyline now so it’s not a surprise to lean into it a bit. And it makes senes for this to be a place where someone like Valance could find help.
Slightly more interesting is the past part of it which focuses on how the location is something Fett got from his father. This piece shows us how Jango Fett ended up here with Kligson after a job went bad and Kligson was hurt badly and dying. Their arrival on the station was not met well but they ended up claiming Kligson and over time he became the one to run the place and has a kind of twisted approach from the limited time we see of him in the present. Exploring the world of droids within Star Wars is always dicey and this storyline just made it more complicated and worse in a lot of ways. This subplot looks like it might stay out of the main storyline a bit so that’s a plus and it’s certainly one way to try and salvage what remains of Valance as it is pretty much some solid body horror to watch him lose his memories as we see here slowly but surely.
In Summary:
Coming into this series so much later means it’s definitely weird when you hit the crossover storyline and realize what’s going on since you read most of it elsewhere already. The Star Wars books get repetitive in covering events so I’m not exactly thrilled to be at this point but Dark Droids had some solid stuff happening off at the edges and Bounty Hunters may be playing there. We do get some decent stuff with T’onga and the crew as they deal with being on this strange station and the minor horror house in space elements are certainly fun even if they just feel like too much when you get down to it.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 9+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: August 30th, 2023
MSRP: $3.99
