Into the Great Unknown

"Into the Great Unknown" is a ten-page non-canon comic story that was written by W. Haden Blackman. Within its pages, Han Solo and Chewbacca pilot their starship, the Millennium Falcon, blindly into hyperspace and end up crashing into the planet Earth's Pacific Northwest. Solo is attacked and killed by a group of Native Americans, and, 126 years later, his skeleton is discovered by the archaeologist Indiana Jones, who is searching the area for the fabled Sasquatch (in fact Chewbacca).
"Into the Great Unknown" was included in the comic book Star Wars Tales 19, which was released on May 14, 2004. The story is notable for being the first officially-licensed work to include both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, two characters portrayed on film by Harrison Ford in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea to write a story featuring the two was floated by staff at Dark Horse Comics, who then asked Blackman to pen it. While writing, he inserted references to both film franchises into the story, hoping to appeal to a wide range of fans.
==Plot summary==
Sometime after the Battle of Endor, Han Solo and Chewbacca, respectively the Human pilot and Wookiee co-pilot of the YT-1300 light freighter Millennium Falcon, run afoul of an Imperial fleet after leaving the moon Hovan 99. As they evade a Star Destroyer and several TIE Fighters, Solo takes the Millennium Falcon blindly into hyperspace rather than taking the time to calculate jump coordinates. The ship emerges in an unfamiliar system that contains several planets and moons, and the pair lands on a blue world after detecting life on it.
The ship's rear repulsorlift controls give out on their way into the planet's atmosphere, causing the Millennium Falcon to crash into a forest that reminds Solo of the moon of Endor. As they search for a settlement, Solo and Chewbacca are attacked by a group of Humans who wield spears, bows, and axes. Chewbacca fights them off with his bowcaster and his own strength, knocking some of them off a cliff to their demises, but Solo is struck by several arrows and begins to slowly bleed to death. Anticipating that he will not survive, he asks his co-pilot to return him to the Millennium Falcon, where he passes away in the captain's chair.
126 years later, three Humans make their way through the same forest—an archaeologist named Dr. Jones, his sidekick Shorty, and their guide, in search of a legendary monster that has been sighted in the area. Chewbacca watches from afar as they come across the Millennium Falcon, board the ship, and discover Solo's skeleton. The skeleton feels familiar to Jones, and, rather than continue his search for the monster, he decides to leave it as part of the "Great Unknown".
==Conception==
In 1999, Dark Horse Comics began publishing Star Wars Tales, a monthly series of comic books that featured several short Star Wars stories in each issue. Leland Chee, the keeper of the Holocron continuity database, declared that most Tales stories were S-canon, which rendered them non-canon unless referenced in a source other than Tales. Any completely outrageous or intentionally comic stories would be definitively non-canon, however.
With the freedom to tell apocryphal stories, staff at Dark Horse began tossing around the idea of telling a story that involved both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, both of whom were characters created by George Lucas and portrayed by Harrison Ford. Solo was a Star Wars character while Jones was not; the two had respectively been main characters in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movie franchises in the 1970s and 1980s.Raiders of the Lost Ark Although Jones had previously made a cameo in the computer game Star Wars: Yoda Stories,Star Wars: Yoda Stories he and Solo had never been involved in a crossover together. Eventually, Dark Horse contracted author W. Haden Blackman to write a story featuring both characters.
Back when he worked for Dark Horse in the early/mid-1990s, Karl Kesel had a rejected idea for an Indiana Jones adventure in which the titular archaeologist met a mysterious woman who is trying to access a secret passage by translating an inscription carved into the rock which indicates that something happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, resulting in Indy helping to open a door which reveals the Millennium Falcon to be inside with C-3PO aboard, who tells Jones that he reminded him to Solo. Upon learning about his concept's similarities to "Into the Great Unknown" in 2018 through his guest appearance at the IndyCast, Kesel acknowledged that he had spoken about his pitch to representatives of both Dark Horse and Lucasfilm Ltd., so he wondered if someone remembered his earlier proposal.IndyCast: Episode 267 at IndyCast
==Production==
While conceiving the story's plot, Blackman recalled stories from the set of the 1983 film Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. The stories claimed that Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca, was required to be accompanied by crewmembers who wore brightly-colored vests while in the Californian forests of the Pacific Northwest, filming scenes set on Endor, so as not to be mistaken for Bigfoot and shot. Working from there, Blackman crafted a story that involved Solo and Chewbacca landing on Earth in the Pacific Northwest, Solo dying, and Chewbacca being mistaken for Bigfoot while roaming the forests in the proceeding years. Taking the long life spans of Wookiees into account, he decided to have Indiana Jones discover Solo's remains over 100 years later.
Blackman included several explicit references to both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films in the story in an effort to appeal to fans of both franchises—for example, Solo compares Earth to Endor, referencing the fact that Return of the Jedi Endor scenes were filmed in the Pacific Northwest (Chewbacca is also called "Sasquatch" in the comic by the local Native Americans). Solo utters the line "I have a bad feeling about this place," a variation on a line spoken in every Star Wars film, and, just before dying, tells Chewbacca "I'm going first into the great unknown," echoing a line spoken by Jones's friend Wu Han in the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The story's title, "Into the Great Unknown", also comes from Wu Han's line,Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and is written on the first page of the comic in the style of the Indiana Jones franchise logo. Indiana Jones is accompanied to the Pacific Northwest by Wan "Short Round" Li, his sidekick from Temple of Doom, although only the nicknames "Dr. Jones" and "Shorty" are used in the comic. Additionally, as both Solo and Jones were played by Harrison Ford, Jones calls Solo's skeletal remains "familiar."
In 2008, Blackman called "Into the Great Unknown" one of the most fun Star Wars stories that he had ever written. After he penned it, the comic was penciled and inked by Sean Gordon Murphy, lettered by Steve Dutro, colored by Dan Jackson, and included as a ten-page story in the nineteenth issue of Tales, which was published on May 14, 2004. Ten days prior to its release, "Into the Great Unknown" was previewed on IndianaJones.com. Tales 19 was later collected in the 2005 trade paperback Star Wars Tales Volume 5,Star Wars Tales Volume 5 and 2008 saw "Into the Great Unknown" re-published in the comic Star Wars Fan Club Special 2008.Star Wars Fan Club Special 2008
==Continuity==
Although Blackman conceived of "Into the Great Unknown" as taking place in Earth's Pacific Northwest, the planet in the story is never identified as Earth. Its star system, however, is mentioned as being "no longer far away," a play on the events of Star Wars taking place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…" Similarly, Indiana Jones and Short Round are never explicitly identified, only being referred to as "Dr. Jones" and "Shorty," respectively. Blackman confirmed in an interview with Vanity Fair Frank DiGiacomo that the character was indeed Indiana Jones, and DiGiacomo has posited that the planet is in fact Earth, "Shorty" Short Round, and the local Humans Native Americans.
In the story, when Solo is dying after being riddled with arrows by the Native Americans, he says to Chewbacca that he always thought that it was Chewbacca who would die first while saving him or his children, referencing Chewbacca's heroic albeit controversial death while saving Anakin Solo in R. A. Salvatore's 1999 novel The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime.The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime
"Into the Great Unknown" does not indicate when its story takes place, although Solo does mention his children, the first two of whom were born in 9 ABY;The Last Command, chapter 5 while Indiana Jones' mention of Atlantis would indicate that the story takes place during or after 1939. Blackman eventually clarified that the story doesn't have any exact date because it wasn't canonical, though he sets the story seven or eight years after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, setting the story around 1942 or 1943, which in turn would set the date in which Han and Chewie crashed the Falcon at the Earth around 1816 or 1817.
Although the story is non-canon, the moon Hovan 99 and its system were later canonized in The Essential Atlas Online Companion, which placed them in the Senex sector. Earth and the "Earth system" were mentioned in the 2011 Disney Theme Park ride Star Tours: The Adventures ContinueStar Tours: The Adventures Continue and its promotional materials, and Solo and Jones both appeared in the non-canon video games LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings and LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars.
==Reception==
Although "Into the Great Unknown" is the first officially-licensed work to include both Solo and Jones, two creations of George Lucas, Blackman is unsure whether Lucas is aware of the story's existence.
==Appearances==
==Collections==
*Star Wars Tales 19
*Star Wars Tales Volume 5
*Star Wars Fan Club Special 2008
*Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 7
==Notes and references==
==External links==
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Category:Non-canon comic stories
Category:Star Wars Tales 19 stories