Henchman-4-Hire

Due to popular demand (from the one of you readers who actually comments on my Facebook posts), I’m going to take the time today to introduce you all to my original Star Wars character. I’m sure we all have one. We’re all creative and imaginative types here. Surely the depth and breadth of the Star Wars universe has opened all of us up to an original character idea or two. I know I’ve got a couple.

But there’s one that exists at the top of my creative ladder, who I will cling to in the desperate hopes that I get my hands on some creative Star Wars project someday.

And that character is Stormtrooper Bounty Hunter. I haven’t really given him a proper name yet. But I have created him via LEGO, sort of. The design isn’t final.

Standing atop the quite awesome LEGO Millennium Falcon

Stormtrooper Bounty Hunter is from the post-Return of the Jedi/pre-The Force Awakens time period, and is basically little more than a bounty hunter wearing Stormtrooper armor — an idea both he and I have stolen directly from Boba Fett.

Way back in the day, before Attack of the Clones gave him an origin story, and before The Clone Wars cartoon explored the Mandalorians, the prevailing theory about Boba Fett was that he was just a badass bounty hunter who used the armor of a long-lost warrior race to look really cool while doing his job. We didn’t know anything about Boba Fett or the Mandalorians, just that he’d repurposed their armor into his cool bounty hunter look.

So I thought to myself: what if somebody does that with an old set of Stormtrooper armor sometime in the future, after the Empire is gone?

You take the classic Stormtrooper set and then deck it out with cool accouterments, like wookiee pelts or a jet pack or guns or bandoliers. I dunno, whatever looks cool.  And there you’ve got another cool bounty hunter character to exist in the Star Wars universe.

Personality-wise, I picture him as a Deadpool-type. Not the crazy stuff or the Fourth Wall-breaking. Just the Merc with a Mouth stuff, where he’s smarmy, quippy and a charming jackass. Stormtrooper Bounty Hunter would be a risk-taking, devil-may-care asshole who is just funny enough to be likable.

Oddly enough, my character idea is very similar to Stormtrooper X.

My mind has come alive!

Stormtrooper X is a pirate who also wears old, re-purposed Stormtrooper armor, and is a bit of a universal badass. Stormtrooper X and Stormtrooper Bounty Hunter share many similarities, but I assure you, this is merely coincidence. Stormtrooper X has only ever appeared in a single article about interesting bounties from the sixth issue of Star Wars Gamer magazine, which came out in 2001.

I have never read Star Wars Gamer magazine. This is just a cosmic coincidence of two people thinking to re-purpose old Stormtrooper armor into something badass and cool down the line.

Hopefully someday, I can flesh out Stormtrooper Bounty Hunter some more and make him into a real character. My dream is to become a comic book writer for Marvel, who are currently publishing Star Wars comics. So in the world of my wildest dreams, this could happen. And what kind of world would it be if we couldn’t cling to our wildest dreams?

Also, if you fancy yourself a fan of teenage fan fiction, you’re welcome to read my Star Wars prequels fan fiction from when I was…oh jeez, looking at the date on this thing, I was a freshman in college when I wrote this. I was that old?! Jeez louise…

Anyway, here’s the link, if you have nothing better to do with your afternoon. It’s full of really bad fan characters.

And hey, feel free to share your own Star Wars OC in the comments below! We’re all Star Wars fans here.

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