WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Star Wars #16, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
Jabba the Hutt just might be the grossest creature in all of Star Wars. However, Jabba wasn’t always an oversized, mucus-covered slug. Before he appeared in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in 1983, the character had gone through a number of different versions, including a comics version where he looked like a humanoid with a walrus face, a topknot and a bright, yellow uniform. Now, in Star Wars #16 -- by Charles Soule, Ramon Rosanas, Rachelle Rosenberg and VC's Clayton Cowles -- one of the early iterations of Jabba makes a cameo appearance as his own independent criminal character.
When Star Wars: A New Hope released in 1977, Jabba the Hutt was no more than a name-drop by Han and Greedo. However, a deleted scene shows that originally, Jabba was supposed to confront Han Solo at his ship just after the smuggler killed Greedo. Back in 1977, though, the concept of Jabba as a giant slug hadn’t been developed, and Declan Mulholland played the role of a human Jabba wearing a large fur shawl. Of course, the scene was cut from the film, but it was remastered and released for a special edition of A New Hope in 1997 where a CGI slug overlapped Mulholland’s Jabba to match the version in Return of the Jedi.
In this comic, that Jabba returns as an unnamed character in a story that sees the reemergent Crimson Dawn is holding an auction for the carbonite-frozen body of Han Solo. Qi’ra, who is still in charge of Crimson Dawn, has invited just about every crime syndicate in the galaxy to be a part of the betting on Jekara. On top of criminals, Sly Moore, Imperial officers and Boba Fett are all there hoping to stake their claim on the famous smuggler turned Rebel captain. To make matters worse, Vader shows up to claim Solo as his own, and he has no interest in Crimson Dawn’s auction.
Luke Skywalker is also on his way to Jekara to help rescue Han Solo from all of the other bidders. Leia, Lando and Chewbacca are already there and can see what’s going on in the larger "War of the Bounty Hunters" crossover event. However, Luke doesn’t know just how many people are after Han Solo. When he arrives, he is cut off from the planet by Imperial Admiral Piett on the Executor. Then, the admiral dispatches a ton of TIE fighters to shoot him down.
Luke begins evasive maneuvers and tries to take the TIEs out one at a time. That’s when the Mulholland-esque figure makes his cameo in all of his fur shawl glory. Like all of the other criminals, on Jekara, he was there to bid on Han Solo. But when Vader showed up and started causing trouble, he apparently made a quick getaway to his ship, the Dark Syndicate. While this character's name is not revealed, there is a twisted bit of irony at play here, because he is part of the Son-Tuul Pride Crime Syndicate, one of Jabba’s major competitors. That means that the character who was originally supposed to be Jabba the Hutt cameoed as his competition.
Regardless of his standing with Jabba, his disdain for the Empire that makes his cameo a short one. As Luke is evading fire, some of the TIE fighter’s stray shots hit the side of ship, and he is all too eager to “End the blasted buckethead Imps.” Unfortunately for him, Admiral Piett has a short temper, and he orders his gunners to shoot down the Son-Tuul Pride ship as an example to all of the others present that the Empire only tolerates criminals if they behave themselves, bringing the canon career of this rejected Jabba to a fiery canonical close.