Why Star Wars' Worst TIE Fighter Debuted in Marvel Years Before the Movies
Marvel’s original Star Wars comics saw the debut of an Imperial vessel two years before it appeared on film in The Empire Strikes Back. The Imperial TIE Bomber, a heavily-armed variant of the standard TIE Fighter, first appeared onscreen in The Empire Strikes Back and briefly showed up again in Return of the Jedi, but a similar-looking vessel was slated to appear in the original 1977 film. Marvel’s Star Wars comics were one of the first examples of reviving a then-unused film concept, which occurred frequently as the Star Wars franchise grew.
TIE Bombers are, as their name suggests, deadly Imperial bombers based on the standard TIE Fighter model. Like their standard counterparts, they lack shielding and their heavy payloads make them significantly slower and less maneuverable than TIE Fighters. TIE Bombers make up for this with their sheer capacity for explosive ordnance, carrying a plethora of proton bombs, concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, and thermal detonators, among other weapons.
What would eventually become the TIE Bomber was originally envisioned as an Imperial boarding craft, which nearly appeared in A New Hope. While the ship didn’t appear in the final film, its design was used by Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino in issue 12 of Star Wars, where it was deployed by a heavily-damaged Imperial Star Destroyer against Crimson Jack and his pirate crew. In addition to debuting the TIE Bomber two years before The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars comic also used the vessel in a sequence that tied into the original story of how the Death Star plans were stolen.
In Star Wars #12, a TIE Bomber is deployed by one of the Imperial Star Destroyers stationed at Toprawa. Rebel space forces routed the Imperials during the Battle of Toprawa, allowing ground forces to steal the Death Star plans (in a doomed mission similar to modern canon’s Battle of Scarif in many ways), but one Imperial warship fled, heavily damaged. Crimson Jack’s pirates boarded the vessel far away from Toprawa and killed its remaining crew, granting the pirate captain a new flagship as well as the Star Destroyer’s complement of TIE Fighters and TIE Bombers, as shown in Star Wars #15.
Each Star Wars film usually has designs for creatures, characters, or starships that aren’t used in their final cuts, but these ideas typically end up somewhere else in the franchise sooner or later. Darth Vader’s original breathing sound effect sounded far feebler in A New Hope, so the sound effect was reused in Return of the Jedi as the redeemed Sith Lord was dying. Early designs for the Neimoidian species were later repurposed for the Geonosians in the prequel trilogy, while the Eye of Webbish Bog was cut from Rise of Skywalker only to show up in the comics. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that concepts like the TIE Bomber were already being put to use in other properties so early in the Star Wars franchise’s history.
But while it may not be unusual, it's incredibly cool that Marvel Comics fans were the first to see this Star Wars ship design in action, and a fun bit of trivia that while the design went on to be movie canon, it actually premiered in a totally different medium first. With Marvel and Star Wars once again intertwined, here's hoping similar Easter Eggs are waiting for fans in the future.