After his brief introduction in The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett quickly became a fan-favorite Star Wars character. As such, his unceremonious “death” in the sarlacc pit was not well received, and it didn’t take him long for his character to come back in Legends continuity, having found a way to survive his time in the Great Pit of Carkoon. However, that was not the first time the galaxy thought that Boba was dead.
In 2013, Dark Horse Comics published a four-issue series titled Star Wars: Blood Ties: Boba Fett is Dead by Tom Taylor, Chris Scalf, Chris Scalf and Randy Stradley. Bounty hunting has never been a safe line of work, and in the series, someone really wanted Boba dead. Knowing that a hit squad was coming after him, Boba faked his death to throw the squad off of his trail and did some undercover work to find out who ordered the hit. As it turns out, that was just the beginning.
The comic opened on a woman confirming Boba Fett was, indeed, dead and that the holocam footage from their hit squad would prove it. Of course, that was all just a clever space ruse. On the contrary, Boba had caught wind of someone wanting him dead and planned ahead. The famed bounty hunter was on the planet Sathiemon hunting a man named Bendak, who, according to Boba’s design, looked a lot like him. When the mercenaries attacked, Bendak had been hiding in a burrow, so Boba threw himself in, killed his quarry and switched clothes with him. Then, Boba activated his jetpack so that the killers would shoot Bendak’s armor-clad corpse and leave him unharmed. That's when Boba began the real work.
Fett's merry chase led to many a death, including one of the Captains who "killed" him and a couple of loose-lipped Stormtroopers. He did, however, prove his anti-hero status by actually saving someone's life. Sure, it was a contact of his by the name of Connor Freeman, who sold him stolen identity cards, but that has to count for something! He even bought the man a cybernetic arm before unveiling perhaps the series' biggest reveal: Sintas Vel, Boba Fett's wife... and their child, Ailyn! That's right, while it may all be non-canonical now, but for a moment there, Boba Fett was a loved-up married man, with a kid of his own.
With his family protected by his now-cybernetic friend, Boba continued along on his fact-finding / killing spree, traveling to the Imperial training facility on Blackfel to track down a Captain Ewevs, who he eventually took hostage before leaving the planet. But, in perhaps the craftiest and most impressive part of this journey, Boba Fett, while disguised to help him infiltrate the planet, managed to trick even the great Darth Vader, who had no idea who he really was.
With Ewevs in his possession, Boba learned that a spymaster named Teychenne had organized the hit on Boba on behalf of Governor Purton of Concord Dawn. The latter wanted Boba Fett dead and everything that he cared about destroyed because Boba had killed his son years before. This all led to a safe-house showdown that threatened the life of Fett's family, but ultimately led to the death of the man who dared to end Boba's life.
Through it all, Boba Fett fans learned even more why he was much more than a one-note character from the original trilogy. In this, we got to see some true stealth skills that not just tricked an entire universe of cut-throats and shifty underbelly dwellers, but perhaps the greatest Sith lordof all time. And perhaps Fett's death-defying act explains in-continuity why some people didn’t believe it when he “died” on Tatooine years later.
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