Star Wars Bounty Hunters #22: Somebody’s Gonna Hurt Someone Before the Night is Through

Man, this book is so enjoyable. It’s everything a great Star Wars movie is, just in comic form. It’s actually more than that, because of the longer storylines and the time spent with each character. This issue, the gang is still up against Crimson Reign, and it’d down to the figurative wire. Author Ethan Sacks opens the flood gates on the action and we hardly get a second to rest from front cover to back. He’s able to include SO many characters that we’re all familiar with into this issue, and it’s all done naturally, nothing ever seems forced in the least, and all the elements that he’s mixed in make perfect sense, as well as having a great flow to it. This is the benefit of long-form storytelling as opposed to what goes into a shorter story, be it a movie or a tv series. Sacks takes every advantage of multiple issues, and multiple pages, and just uses time to his advantage. The payoff is a better-told story, with richer elements and a better overall sense of continuity as well as the feeling that this is a story taking place in a universe full of stories that all have a small drop of familiarity in them.  

Artist Paolo Villanelli continues to use his talents for good, not for evil and that works out best for the audience. He’s really made for the Star Wars universe, with his frantically kinetic art and his big-budget sense of style. His storytelling is on par with any visual storyteller, in or out of the comics medium. His narrative is told through a very wide array of choices and decisions that he makes while drawing. He makes this issue as much fun to look at as it is to read.