In Pursuit of Boba Fett

My brother was a fan of Boba Fett. I'm pretty sure he'd seen one of the Star Wars original trilogy movies in the theatre when he was very young and if my facts are correct it was most likely The Empire Strikes Back. He collected the toys for a while and had this really amazing 1 foot tall Boba Fett action figure that somehow ended up in my grandmother's toy drawer at her house. Boba Fett is a shadier character. While he's certainly dangerous, he lives by a particular honor code as many 'gray' characters do. I think it's possible it reveals something about my brother I don't believe I knew when he was alive, as I only interacted with him until I was eleven years old, before he died.

Why is this important? I'm not sure if it is to anyone else, but me. But for me it's another thread that leads me back to him. If you've read my writing or my blogs for any amount of time, much of my life comes back to him. He was a fan of Star Wars. He collected toys, he watched the films until he got into Horror and he even played the first Star Wars tabletop RPG.

He also read comic books. In fact I found his suicide note in his dresser drawer on top of a stack of his collection of comics. Mostly superhero stuff. He might have had a #1 X-Men if I'm not mistaken and he was a huge fan of Spider-Man.

I've never been the biggest nerd for comics, but I enjoy them. Most superhero comics annoy the hell out of me. The heroes come in and save the day per the nature of such fantastic narratives built upon heroic odysseys born thousands of years ago, but they always end destroying something or fucking up someone else's day and we're simply left to hope that everybody made it out okay as the building came crashing down around them. It's like seeing a small animal get hit by a car as it darts across a busy road. There's not a lot you can do for the poor thing, but you can't help but feel like shit anyway. And this guy was simply doing his job--probably accounting--when our superhero and the villain fought epically destroying the building to pursue justice or something. But I'm getting off track.

My brother liked Star Wars and he liked comics. And I can't help, but wonder what he'd say to me today. You see I work at Dark Horse Comics. A comics publisher. I've been here almost five years. I've worked as the Asst. to the President of the company, I've worked in marketing and soon I will be an Assistant Editor (No I won't actually really edit comics in the narrative or artistic sense until I've been editing for a long time. Mostly it's just admin paperwork, but it's a start). I work at a company that publishes Star Wars Comics. Yeah. You see where I'm going.

Without actually trying to I work to make comic books a reality and I do so in a place that publishes one of my brother's favorite franchises while he was alive and I'll do it under the leadership of an Editor in chief named Scott. Coincidence doesn't get much stranger than this. Okay so it does, but you catch my drift. This is an honor for me to be a part of Dark Horse Comics and something I take great pride in. Perhaps more so than the work itself.

I'm projecting, but Boba Fett seemed like a conflicted character doing what he could with the lot he was given. He seemed a bit lonely and isolated, but skilled at what he put himself to. My brother was so much more than that, but it's the tiniest little details that bring me closer to a memory and to a ghost I've created. I've been piecing him together for a long time. I won't find the real him. He doesn't exist. But that won't stop me from building an idea of him in my head. It's the insatiable lack. Much of me seems defined by his absence.

More than once I've wished I could sit down with my brother Scott and have a beer. I would love to have played tabletop RPGs with him, shoot the shit about comics and Star Wars, share Hellboy and BPRD comics, which I know he would have loved. More than once I've wondered what we'd talk about. And I imagine--somehow--Boba Fett would end up in our conversation.