We all know the story behind the Bigfoot o Sasquatch. A kind of bipedal hairy hominid, colossal in size and fleeing through the forests of North America. More linked to the world of cryptozoology than to the empirical facts that concern biology, the truth is that his supposed sightings have always fascinated the world.
However, the lack of credibility of the evidence, its lack of consistency, and the sheer fact that a large population of these creatures would have to exist to sustain them over time completely dismisses any possibility that Bigfoot is real. That didn’t stop the artists at Dark Horse Comics from claiming the license to uncover the mystery once and for all.
The unwritten legend?
Star Wars Tales was a series of publications made by the publishing house that hosted Hellboy between 1999 and 2005, being part of the old Legends canon. However, the peculiarity of these stories is that they are very short stories that could not be taken too seriously even at the time of their publication, but as fantasies of their authors with the characters created by George Lucas.
The case that concerns us takes us to Star Wars Tales 19, published in May 2004, and which shows us the events after the unforgettable battle of Endor in episode VI. Into the Great Unknown is the name of the story that introduces us to Han Solo and Chewbacca traveling in the Millennium Falcon, but a group of imperial ships go out to meet them to annihilate them.
In such a situation, they have no choice but to use the speed of light to escape the imperial destroyerbut they must do it blindly since the navigation system does not work well since they were in Hovan 99. They press the button, jump into hyperspace and end up in… the Solar System.
Indeed, the galaxy far, far away seems to have been relatively close to the closest stars to us, although the problems for the duo are accentuated. The junk heap is losing power and of all the planets around them they only detect life on one very blue and green. Thus, in the descent to Earth they fail to land in the best way, so they crash in the middle of a forest.
Han Solo’s End
After recovering from the blow and trying to investigate the area to find a camp, they have barely left the ship to run into the Native Americans who do not hesitate to attack strangers. Solo’s bad feeling comes true and is Chewbacca the one who is in charge of liquidating the aggressors, although the victory is ephemeral. The smuggler has been wounded all over his body with arrows, his wounds are severe and he asks his faithful Wookiee to take him back to the Millennium Falcon.
There Solo confesses that he thought his end would be different and that he will be the first to go “into the unknown”, dying in Chewbacca’s arms. The rest of the natives begin to refer to the hairy giant as Sasquatch and it will live there for many decades, as we remember that the Wookiee species has a life expectancy of about 400 years.
Arrival of Indiana Jones
126 years later, Indiana Jones and Tapón find themselves in the same area being accompanied by a native who assures them that a terrible creature haunts the place. They even find traces of it to finally running into the Millennium Falcon, now completely surrounded by greenery. The archaeologist enters inside him and assures that he had never seen such a place, not even in Atlantis.
He finds Han Solo’s skeleton and points out that it looks familiar in some way, to which Plug responds if they should continue looking for the monster. Jones gives up the search to indicate that it is best that we “leave it as part of the great unknown.” That sentence is written in the last panel with Chewbacca watching in the background from the branch of a tree.
A funny story
W. Haden Blackman was the screenwriter for Into the Great Unknown and Sean Murphy drew the lines to represent the argument. Blackman explained that he based himself on anecdotes about the filming of Return of the Jedi to conceive the idea of him, since Peter Mayhew had a difficult time playing Chewbacca. While shooting in the Californian woods, several crew members in reflective vests surrounded the actor to avoid being shot when mistaken for Bigfoot.
Starting from that base, Into the Great Unknown was born, which contains some winks and interesting details. For example, the arrival of Indiana Jones and his reference to Atlantis means that we are talking about events after the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis video game, which puts us in 1939, at least. However, Blackman went a little further and specified that we are actually talking about 1942 or 1943, seven or eight years later than what we saw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Doing the corresponding calculations, we can conclude that the plot of Star Wars takes place in 1816 or 1817 of our era. On the other hand, the phrase that Han Solo says just before dying is a reference to what Wu Han says to Indiana Jones after being shot by Chen at the Obi Wan Club at the beginning of the adventurer’s second movie.
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