Retro Fett Comic Review: “Frozen World of Ota”

Join Cujos’ jour­ney as he reviews all Boba-centric comics that dropped before “Star Wars Episode 2.” For­get the future because life is too short not to live in the past. Meet old-school Boba as no one has ever looked at him. Revel in my inane obser­va­tions. With­out fur­ther ado, I give you…

“Those who ignore his­tory are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana

“Clas­sic Star Wars” The Early Adven­tures #9

• Released: April 1995
• Pub­lisher: Dark Horse Comics (reprint)
• View the record for this in BFFC’s Bounty database

The grad­ing scale is as fol­lows 5 Dis­in­te­gra­tions = Awe­some­ness, 1 Dis­in­te­gra­tions = not so much.

Clas­sic Star Wars “The Early Adven­tures” is a reprint of the orig­i­nal Boba Fett comic appear­ance. The orig­i­nal was enti­tled “The Frozen World of Ota” Adven­tures of Luke Sky­walker. This was released as a syn­di­ca­tion in the Los Ange­les Times, August 10, 1980.

Tal­ent Role Call

“The Frozen World of Ota” was the last comic strip writ­ten by the leg­end Russ Man­ning who past away in 1981. When poor health forced Man­ning to aban­don the strip, his assis­tant, Rick Hoberg, and inker, Alfredo Alcala. As I read the comic you can see a sub­tle graft­ing of art styles together. The cover art­work for the comic re-release was done by none other than Kil­ian Plun­kett. Col­or­ing for the Strip was done by Ray Mur­taugh.
A Note about Russ Man­ning: This Comic leg­end now has an award named after him for “Most Promis­ing New Comer Award” given out at “San Diego Comic Con­ven­tion” annually.

Star Wars Timeline

This black and White News­pa­per strip, later col­ored for this comic book, was released after the noto­ri­ous “Hol­i­day Spe­cial”. This sec­ond appear­ance of Fett, was an attempt to cap­i­tal­ize on this awe­some new antag­o­nist for the alliance. By the time ESB came to the­aters many Star Wars fans already new who Boba Fett was. While There is much Star Wars sat­u­ra­tion these days back in the day this was all that the thirsty fan had.

Cover Art Dissection

Boba Fett on a comic cover equals awe­some­ness, and Kil­ian Plun­kett has long been a favorite of mine, his Star Wars cred­its include “Shad­ows of the Empire”. I like the pose of Fett on the cover, a sort of men­ac­ing pose of him get­ting ready to fire one of his wrist weapons “…if it weren’t for you pesky kids” like cover. I do have a few issues with the cover though, Bobas body mass seems too large, per­haps it is Den­gar inside his armor. Aside from some lib­er­ties taken with the armor and some of the col­ors are botched, the art done quite stylish.

Over­all Grade

3.5 Dis­in­te­gra­tions out of 5

Boba by the numbers

Fires a gun: 1
Calls some­one a “fool”: 4, 5 count­ing “fool hardy”

Uses kneepad weapons: 1
gives some­one a les­son on Snow­board­ing: 1
brags about his armor and/or weapons: 4

Comic Story Summary

The comic opens on Luke Trail­ing a a dam­aged Tie Fighter through a frozen canyon on the planet of…you guessed it “Ota”. It seems Sky­walker is reluc­tant to destroy the dam­aged fighter because he wants to scav­enge it for parts, yes i thought it odd as well. After some ques­tion­able pilot­ing both ships crash, Fett is intro­duced as the pilot of the Tie fighter, Guess the Slave1 was get­ting a new stereo installed. Fett is of course track­ing a bounty named only “the mole” a trai­tor of the empire. Fett and Sky­walker are both cap­tured by the plan­ets prim­i­tive inhab­i­tants “Snog­ars” who basi­cally ask them to fix their heater. Luke seems to be down with the cause but Fett can­not be incon­ve­nienced with altru­ism, with Boba its always about the cred­its. After Boba drops some expo­si­tion about how they can escape, the odd pair­ing make an escape with­out much resis­tance. Of Course where Luke is Han and gang are soon to fol­low, and Ota is no dif­fer­ent. Han and Chewie fall into traps of their own.

Bad A** alert!

C-3PO tells off a gang of Snog­ars, but wilts under pres­sure. Now it is up to the unlikely pair of Boba and Luke to lib­er­ate Han and crew from Snog­ars, Although Fett has other ideas. As one might assume a strug­gle Between the rebels on the scene and Fett ensue. After the dust clears our favorite bounty hunter has lost his query and is left at the mercy of the angry natives…Will he escape? Stay tuned.

Boba Fett insight

In this comic Boba is both arro­gant and wreck­less, and many fans have said him to be out of char­ac­ter. One of the devices of this comic is to cre­ate a his­tory between Fett and Solo. I find it inter­est­ing this is the sec­ond time includ­ing the “Hol­i­day Spe­cial” that Boba and Luke worked together, I’m curi­ous if this was a con­scious deci­sion by the writ­ers? Fetts Wrist Flame Thrower seems to be his go to weapon in this comic. He is a beast in hand to hand com­bat, at one point tak­ing on Luke, Han and Chewie all at once– and talk­ing trash while doing so.

Ran­dom Story 411

• Nei­ther the planet “Ota” and its inhab­i­tants “Snog­ars” are ever men­tioned again in Star Wars EU
• Luke Sky­walk­ers call­sign is L-5
• Luke never takes off his flight hel­met in the comic, per­haps bad hair day?
• “The Mole” looks like Rod­ney Dangerfield

Over­all Story Grade

2/5 Dis­in­te­gra­tions

Comic Art Assessment

This is a unique comic to cri­tique on account of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the three artists, and the all three artist approach draw­ing Fett in a slightly dif­fer­ent man­ner. Here are the three dif­fer­ent artists styles of draw­ing fett, notice the shad­ing styles:

Early in the comic Boba’s hel­met looks like a straight up bucket, while later it starts to have more men­ace and char­ac­ter to it. While the char­ac­ter art is sim­ple the resem­blance to the actors is tight. Action scenes in the comic are drawn pretty well, if not a lit­tle stiff. Im a big fan of older news­pa­per type comic strips, it seems to take my mind back to sim­pler times.

Over­all Art grade

4/5 Dis­in­te­gra­tions

Should you get this comic?

If you wanted this comic, you prob­a­bly already own it-because it has been out for a while, but if not– I would say that story aside and a really out of char­ac­ter Boba Fett, there is alot to admire with the Russ Man­ning art­work. But alas I can’t really rec­om­mend it.

Final Review score

2.5/5

Related Links

• BFFC Image Gallery for Frozen World of Ota
• Sources for info on this comic
• A very funny and insight­ful arti­cle about the orig­i­nal news­pa­per strip should be noted as well