WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters Alpha by Charles Soule, Steve McNiven, Laura Martin, and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters Alpha focuses on Boba Fett's journey after The Empire Strikes Back as he transports a frozen Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine. He encounters some serious problems, though, as the carbonite fusion is unstable, causing Han's health to decline, resulting in Boba stopping on Nar Shaddaa, the Smuggler's Moon, to get his cargo checked out.
There, Boba gets an offer of help from a shifty doctor, who asks him to pull off a hit in return. And in this debut issue, it's a pretty difficult one as the franchise introduces its bloodthirsty spider woman, Wyrmen Lictor, a violent behemoth who Boba wasn't prepared for at all.
Doc Ragon tells Boba he has to pay now for the help, but Boba doesn't have the money upfront from Jabba. He reluctantly agrees to enter a gladiator's arena where death-matches are occurring since Ragon wants the mysterious champion, Wyrmen Lictor, dead. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Boba needs Han alive to collect the magnificent bounty Jabba has up.
Ragon pays Boba's entrance fee in exchange for fixing the frozen matrix, and the bounty hunter enters, killing off top fighters in a black suit as the "Beskar Brawler." Everyone's impressed, placing bets on him as he's officially fighting as Jango, homaging his dad's sacrifice from Attack of the Clones.
He finally cuts his way to the top to fight Lictor, but is totally shocked to see her as this giant spider-woman. Unlike Marvel's venom-shooting Jessica Drew or the all-knowing, mystical Madame Web; she's way more monstrous and thirsty for blood. To make it worse, the arena's designed like a web to give her home-field advantage, which she exploits.
She uses the webs she produces to shoot at Fett, webbing him up despite his flamethrowers and blades. Lictor's surprisingly fast and very smart in battle, overpowering him at every turn to suck him dry. She's got too many hands and is too powerful, evoking images of when Spider-Man mutated across the comics and cartoons. However, Boba gets lucky as he's able to use his jetpack and blow the foundation they're on up. The rubble collapses and squashes Lictor at the bottom, leaving Boba victorious in the arena.
Between this and the Eye of the Webbish Bog, Star Wars is quickly building its own Spider-Verse of arachnid aliens in various corners of the galaxy. And as this fight shows, they're as vicious as can be, which is why Boba's happy to squash this bug, permanently.