With a young heir at stake, Agent Jahan Cross has to outsmart and outfight his opponents – but can he best Boba Fett? GONK reviews the conclusion of Agent of the Empire: Hard Targets, out this week.
While officially recalled for botching the mission to help push the Empire’s agenda in Serenno’s leadership succession, Jahan Cross won’t stop his plans to protect the young Count Bron Dooku from the machinations of the would-be regent Lord Borgin. But after rescuing the boy from Borgin’s underwater lair with the help of Candra Tymon, Cross has run straight into Boba Fett, whose target is Bron alive, and everyone else, not important. D’oh! It’s going to take a quick draw and even quicker wits to survive the galaxy’s most dangerous bounty hunter. In issue #5 (DarkHorse.com profile) John Ostrander brings in the fireworks to wrap up the ‘Hard Targets’ storyline for Star Wars: Agent of the Empire.
Summary: The confrontation betweeen Boba Fett and Cross and Tymon turns aside when Borgin’s soldiers, led by Jorrick, arrive at the warehouse, hoping to take Bron back to Lord Borgin directly. As Fett starts shooting, Cross bids Tymon farewell as she flees with Bron to the spaceport. Meanwhile, Agent Cross shoots Jorrick in the gut, and tells him to stay down, then helps Fett gun down the rest of Borgin’s men, then tries to stall Fett. At the spaceport, Tymon’s shuttle is cleared for takeoff when Fett arrives on a speeder bike. Cross shows up in time to prevent the shuttle from being shot down, and engages the bounty hunter in a melee. Fett looses a rocket at the shuttle, and it explodes, but Fett knows that his missle was only an ion weapon meant to disable the ship — someone has set up Fett for the assassination of his target. Jorrick returns to Lord Borgin to report that the Count Bron Dooku is dead, bumping up the leadership crisis from merely selecting a regent and caretaker to the underage count to naming a new ruler for the planet. Cross slips in and reveals his full plan for Serenno’s future… and you’ll just have to read the rest to know the ending.
Review: This was a great ending to a very fun and exciting adventure. John Ostrander’s story continued with several of the superspy James Bond tropes (agent given leeway to ‘go rogue’, the guy outside the action who has whirlwind encounters with everyone as they run out of the warehouse, one final kiss with Candra before she heads off to the shuttle with the young count, Borgin getting one more villain moment with the dying Jorrick), but turned a few on their head: at the end, it is Bond who reveals his whole plot to the villain. The real strength of Cross’ character is that he isn’t the best fighter, but he is a master at knowing his opponents and predicting their actions. He’s playing a very dangerous game (especially with Boba Fett), and ends up building a solution that works in the best interests for both his own morals and for the Empire. It would be interesting to see what consequences there might be for his interfering in the original plans of the Empire, but I’m sure the next arc will just bring us a new thrill ride.
There’s a lot of great detail with the artwork, such as when Cross deliberately holds his gun in such a way that he can’t fire it, when confronting Fett after the firefight in the warehouse. We also get to see Boba Fett without his helmet while in a fight, which is rare, (I think we first saw him unhelmeted in comics back with the Infinities version of The Empire Strikes Back). Plenty of fighting, and the explosion of the shuttle gets a nice two-page spread, where the value of Fett sans-helmet is seen in his reaction to destruction that he knows he didn’t cause.
Davidé Fabbri, who did all the pencilling and shared the inks with Christian Dalla Vecchia (and colors by Wes Dzioba), clearly enjoys drawing Boba Fett, as there is a lot of great detail on the iconic armor. Still this story is about agent Cross, and there’s some great panels of him in his big reveal to Borgin (Cross is in his white formal ISB uniform, in comparison to Lord Borgin in black). Fabbri also does a great job capturing the look of the vehicles and ships of the galaxy far, far away.
Overall, a big thumbs-up for both this issue and this whole storyline. Jahan Cross is a tough fighter, but it is his masterminding abilities that make the story great.