Though fans are waiting for Disney+'s original flagship series The Mandalorian to return for its upcoming third season, Lucasfilm is continuing their Star Wars "redemption arc" with The Book of Boba Fett. The show finally brings the beloved legacy character to the forefront, reviving intrigue in the franchise's grimy, gritty criminal underworld-inspired stories.
While the former show was the catalyst for such stories being front and center in live-action, The Book of Boba Fett offers a somewhat different angle than the western/ronin-inspired approach of The Mandalorian. Thanks to the IP's massive global appeal in pop culture, its expanse into comic books gives fans more options for similar (and Boba Fett-specific) Star Wars tales. However, there are some other franchises in the comics medium that give off similarly enticing atmospheres and settings that are more than worth looking into.
Star Wars: War Of The Bounty Hunters (Marvel Comics)
Marvel gained the license to publish canon stories after Disney bought the IP and have published some of the best Star Wars comic book arcs in the process. More recently, Boba Fett has featured as the main character in Charles Soule's War of the Bounty Hunters crossover story arc. This story arc takes place in between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, following Boba Fett's arduous journey of bringing a carbonite-frozen Han Solo back to Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine.
This arc was a thrilling culmination of Marvel's various ongoing Star Wars comic book series, including the mainline book, Doctor Aphra, Bounty Hunters, and even Darth Vader. An exciting development in this story also involved the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn, which was introduced in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story live-action movie. While in-between stories in this franchise can feel tired out at times, War of the Bounty Hunters is a great adventure showing off Boba Fett in an era that didn't give him much to do on-screen.
Star Wars: Dark Empire II (Dark Horse Comics)
Before Disney came to overhaul the Star Wars franchise, Dark Horse Comics was also known for publishing some fan-favorite comics. Though now more strictly labeled as Legends continuity, the Dark Empire trilogy by Tom Veitch, Cam Kennedy, and Jim Baikie was one of the IP's most memorable comic books.
The premise of this trilogy was the return of Emperor Palpatine by having transferred his essence into a series of clones -- something that was loosely (and unfortunately) adapted in The Rise of Skywalker. It eventually featured one of Boba Fett's most iconic Star Wars comic book appearances in Dark Empire II, with the bounty hunter being once again hired by the Hutts to reclaim the price on Solo's head, as well as get revenge on Leia Organa for killing Jabba in Return of the Jedi. Fans will finally get to see a showdown between Fett's Slave I and Solo's Millennium Falcon.
Sin City (Dark Horse Comics)
Should fans of Star Wars and The Book of Boba Fett want to get into grittier, more modern worlds, then Frank Miller's Sin City is a good place to start. Miller is primarily known for his iconic works with Batman and Daredevil, but his original endeavor with Dark Horse easily became a timeless classic for the comic book medium.
Sin City is a crime-thriller taking place in an authoritarian-run neo-noir town in the United States. It has all the trappings of a story dealing with a world stuck in the vice-grip of organized crime and its main character, Marv, is suitably morally gray. The setting and characters are certainly bleaker, but it makes for a gripping story in the same vein as the old pulpy serialized crime-noir stories of the early 20th century.
The Witcher (Dark Horse Comics)
Though in a completely different world, The Witcher is a fascinating and rich dark-fantasy franchise that gives off similar smaller-scale and gritty tones to that of Star Wars' criminal underbelly. Thanks to CD Projekt Red's games, and namely The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt being one of the most acclaimed modern fantasy RPGs, author Andrej Sapkowski's IP has exploded in global popularity over the years. As such, Dark Horse also gained the license to expand on his work -- and more specifically CD Projekt Red's gaming canon -- with a comic book series spanning multiple writers and artists.
The world of The Continent may be vast, but its dense lore and political intrigue are more so tasteful backdrops for character-focused storytelling. Fans of both The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian should feel at home with Geralt of Rivia as a contract hunter, its dark and grounded scope, as well as the other mediums the latter has found himself adapted on.
Preacher (Vertigo/DC Comics)
DC's old Vertigo imprint spawned some excellent original works for a refreshing change of pace. Vertigo's Preacher series by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon is among those originals, and it starts with a more rural approach to noir storytelling. Like with the aforementioned Sin City, Preacher is a dark and more mature series, and it tackles religious themes blended with the supernatural.
A cynical preacher in Texas named Jesse Custer becomes possessed by a being known as Genesis -- a being of both pure good and evil -- and goes on a countryside quest to confront God on why he abandoned heaven and Earth. Along the way, Jesse even gets hunted down by a supernatural bounty hunter by the name of Saint of Killers; a jaded man named William with a tragic past who's compelled to return to his life of bounty hunting.
All-Star Western: Guns And Gotham (DC Comics)
Over at DC Comics, the publisher's most comparable antihero to Boba Fett is arguably Jonah Hex. The western-influenced outlaw brings in a new flavor to comic book giant's typically superhero-filled multiverse. Jonah Hex is also one of DC's heroes that are darker than their villains, with the bounty hunter having one of the grimmest lives and origin stories in comics.
He suffered at the hands of his abusive and alcoholic father, got sold into slavery, and was eventually betrayed brutally by his surrogate brother. All-Star Western: Guns and Gotham is the first volume in DC's The New 52 brand-wide reboot, detailing Hex's adventures working for Amadeus Arkham in a "wild-west" version of the crime-ridden Gotham City. It's a refreshing way to see a Gotham of old before Batman arrived, and like Boba Fett, Jonah Hex can come off as cold and cynical but has a moral compass to follow.