Crossovers usually fail on motive. Why would these particular characters be in the same room? War of the Bounty Hunters solves that before it starts. Han Solo, frozen in carbonite, is simultaneously a trophy, a debt, a hostage and a corpse depending on who is holding him. Boba Fett loses him. Everyone else wants him. That is the whole premise and it is enough.
The shape of it
Charles Soule opens with an Alpha one-shot drawn by Steve McNiven that is essentially a heist gone wrong, then runs five issues with Luke Ross while Star Wars, Darth Vader, Doctor Aphra and Bounty Hunters each contribute six tie-in issues, plus four character one-shots for Jabba the Hutt, 4-LOM and Zuckuss, Boushh and IG-88. Read monthly it was thirty-plus issues over six months, which is a lot of money. Read in the omnibus it is one story told from ten angles and it works.
Qi’ra
The event's real business is smuggling a character out of Solo: A Star Wars Story — a film whose commercial failure had frozen its cast out of the canon — and installing her as the era's chief schemer. Qi'ra running Crimson Dawn from behind a mask is a better idea than anything the film did with her, and it sets up the two miniseries that follow.
The reservations
The one-shots are uneven; the Jabba issue is much better than the IG-88 issue. And the ending has to put Han Solo back exactly where Return of the Jedi needs him, which drains some tension from the last two issues. Neither is fatal. This is the model the next four years of Marvel Star Wars would follow, and it is the best-executed of the four.
