Why Han Solo Never Got Around To Paying Jabba The Hutt

 

 

 

 

Marvel Comics -- the house of Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the Avengers among others -- had the original license to write and publish new Star Wars stories based off the original 1977 film (what's now called "Episode IV: A New Hope" or simply "A New Hope" -- but hey, this is the first movie I even recall seeing, and in a drive-thru theater, the one where Ben Kenobi's slain by Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker fires the torpedo that blows up the Death Star) and I remember quite a few growing up, despite the gaps in my collection. And I got to catch up on both those I'd read and those I hadn't with Volume One of the Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago. . . . that covers Marvel's first twenty-seven issues (ISBN 9781595824868) with several awesome storylines that explain today's title.

After the end of the events of the film (in issues one through six) Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon get the reward they were paid for rescuing Princess Leia stolen by space pirates, then he and his much-more-vicious-looking-Wookiee first mate Chewbacca lead a band of spacers on a backwater planet against some airborne marauders and find themselves meeting Luke, Leia, and the droids again after that courtesy of the same pirate crew and then, one step ahead of a bounty hunting cyborg, seek temporary refuge on the intergalactic gambling hub The Wheel. Han and Chewie again WIN BIG, but in order to get some Imperial stormtroopers off their backs Chewie shoves the hoversled with those winnings into them. Hard, like Wookiees tend to do.

Wonder if that's got something to do with why Han appears in the next Star Wars film The Force Awakens due out next year and Chewbacca, as far as I've heard, doesn't. (Oh wait, J.J. Abrams who's behind the "sequel saga" says that the Expanded Universe has nothing to do with what we'll see on screen next year ... right?) But I digress. Anyway, it was just a lot of fun reading some things that I hadn't read since I was a kid and some that I hadn't that connected a good deal of what I had read and thought I'd remembered. So when you hear in The Empire Strikes Back Han telling the Rebel general "If I don't pay Jabba the Hutt I'm a dead man" it's not because he didn't try to. He had the money to do it, and he lost it twice! And the person who rang me up -- I was her first customer on her first day, and Ana did great!

But on to other things, yesterday was my birthday (and THANK YOU to the hundreds of people I got birthday greetings from for blowing out my forty-three candles) and after getting off work my family and I went to Badlands here in Minot for dinner. It was really filling; I had their sirloin and a loaded baked potato and steamed broccoli and I still have some here for lunch today! That morning I'd gotten a sweater from Martha, a Christmas tie -- my first one ever, I believe -- from Sarah, and a cap from Jeffrey! I wore those nearly all day yesterday, I was so proud, and this morning I had my medical checkup and found myself wishing we could have doctors rescheduling their appointments with us if they're late ...

Eh, at least most doctors aren't Hutts.

David