What was Boba Fett's original backstory (circa 1996)?

I was cruising the Wook today when I clicked the link for The Last One Standing from the old Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Now, the 'Behind the Scenes' section includes the fact that GL later changed Boba Fett's backstory. So, since I can't get a copy of this book easily, what is the backstory on Boba Fett as per this tome?

I'm assuming he wasn't a clone, for one.

 

Do yourself a favor and get the book. "The Last One Standing" is one of the best Expanded Universe stories ever written.

The backstory part that was allegedly overwritten was like two pages at the beginning of the story that say Boba Fett used to be named Jaster Mereel, and he was a Journeyman Protector who was exiled from the planet Concord Dawn. After AOTC, this was subtly retconned so that Fett was using the alias Jaster Mereel, the name of his father's mentor, while he worked as a Journeyman Protector. Not really a big deal; almost all of the story is still intact.

 

Yeah...Fett's backstory has been pretty successfully blended along the way.

It's his character and motivations that's runs the gambit in confusing ways.

 

^^ Especially when you throw Traviss into the mix.

 

Well anyone who's wrote him. KT just was the last to do it so the focus is there, but she won't be the last. And no author ever gets Continuity 100% heck picking Fett for a story almost asures one will have issues at some point.

But did he have a backstory? Or was he just a Guy in Armor? I thought GL had nothing about him beyond that when he first made the OT.

 

Well his first appearance is the Holiday Special. Perhaps the only positive buzz that horror got...and the character then got into ESB.

Now whether there was much depth to him or not, who knows...the amount George has planned or hasn't planned is very "fluid" from one interview to the next.

Mostly...Fett got a backstory from EU writers in the 90s...and then GL remembered how popular he was, and decided since he has Darth Vader as a 10 year old in the PT, he should do it to Fett too. Genius, right? A whole generation of youth will grow up aspiring to be dark lords and bounty hunters!

 

There are MUCH worse things for kids to aspire towards. Even a Dark Lord and a bounty hunter are honorable, in their own way, to their own codes. At least they have honor, albeit twisted. Better than the idiocracy of pathetic role models available to the teeming masses.

Personally, I always wondered: given that Boba is an unaltered clone (AOTC) and has a large amount of medical problems (Traviss' LOTF works) you have to wonder if Jango was on the verge of falling apart himself.

 

Jango is a lot younger than LotF era Fett.

 

Boba Fett's large amount of medical problems happened mostly because of his triple-dips in the Sarlaac.

 

I will. Further cruising on the Wook turned up this guy, who is listed in The Last One Standing. Looks interesting.

 

Possibly the greatest Fett retcon is that the one in the YJK series isn't Boba at all...

 

To be honest, there was a gap in my Star Wars reading (late '90's to '06), and when I came back sooooo many things had been retconned...

 

"The Last One Standing" ends in such a way that Fett's activities in the Young Jedi Knights series, which takes place like five years later, don't make much sense. So the "Boba Fett" who appears in that series was later retconned to be Fett's daughter, Ailyn Vel, masquerading as her father.

 

Tales of the Bounty Hunters is one of the best Bantam Era SW books. The Last One Standing is, well, the standout, but all the stories are excellent. One of special note is Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88. Best killer robot story ever.

 

Yeah, TLOS is one of my favorite short stories. I also quite enjoyed the Zuckuss and 4-LOM story from the same book.

 

It was fun, but I wasn't all for the "leaving the galactic plane" part at the end.
My Personal Retcon made that giant Nebula into the Rishi Maze satellite galaxy.

 

Ah yes, Ailyn Vel. Or, as Havac put it in WHTTATWJC, "Booba Fett".

For me, the Fett retcon that truly takes the cake (heck, even for the entire continuity) is the backstory provided in the old Marvel comics. Back in those days, Bob'ika led the Mandos during the CW and was ordered by Palpatine to kidnap Princess Leia. Then came the PT. So, the uber-retcon: Instead of Boba, it was Spar (aka Mandalore the Resurrector) who led the Mandos during the CW. And since the Mandos fought for the Separatists, Palpatine ordered them around as Darth Sidious. And since Leia at that point wasn't even conceived yet, they were ordered to kidnap Padme Amidala. This is where they originally created Spar, I believe. Because it would be difficult to believe that the Mandalorians would follow a 10-year old into battle. Even though, in a way, they kind of did.

 

Last One Standing is, despite everything that's happened to the character since, in my mind the essential Boba Fett story (note, I haven't read a lot of the comics with him, but that'll change when the omnibus comes out). It's also a fantastic Han Solo story. It's just the bee's knees.

Therefore I Am:The Tale of IG-88 is another story. I will roll with a lot of the stuff that has been thrown out there over the years: Waru, 3 million clones, Ashoka, "Yippee," but if I could do away with one piece of the EU, it would be this one... But YMMV.

 

My hunch is that if Mr. Lucas had a backstory that he expressed in any way, EU writers would've respected it and taken it into account. As far as I know, the only established Boba lore at the time was that he was wearing the armor of a group that had fought the Jedi during the Clone Wars or something like that. (I think this was either in the ESB script, or the novelization, perhaps?)

Ah, good ol' Labria. If you want some backstory on him before reading The Last One Standing, he has a short story in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina that's only about 20 pages long, I think.

 

I would hate to be the editor of Boba's memoirs.

"Well, Mr. Fett, the later parts of the book are fine, but I find your childhood confusing. It reads more like a choose-your-own-destiny book. And it also sounds suspiciously similar to this guy called Jas-" ZAPP

 

Lucas seems to imply on one of the film commentaries that the "former stormtrooper" angle was his original backstory, but if so it doesn't look like anyone else got that message, because as The2ndQuest's writeup shows, that idea didn't emerge in official products until Dark Empire.

 

Don't forget that in his first appearance neither Han nor Chewie - post ANH - seemed to know who he was, and of course that Luke called him a "true friend". Oh, and Boba really, really seemed to hate animals.
What we really need is Tales of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

 

However, Boba Fett's first "public" appearance was San Anselmo's Country Fair parade on September 24, 1978, where he marched alongside Darth Vader during the parade.


I found this part interesting:
"I wanted to develop an essentially evil, very frightening character," said Lucas of Vader. "He started as a kind of intergalactic bounty hunter, evolved into a grotesque knight, and as I got deeper into the knight ethos he became more a dark warrior than a mercenary... I split him up and it was from the early concept of Darth Vader as a bounty hunter that Boba Fett came."

 

To be honest, the Boba Fett not being Boba Fett in the Young Jedi Knights books is kinda hinted in the books itself. There is a neat little quote by Noola in Shards of Alderaan, I think. I don't have the books at my hands right now or else I would post it.

I read the YJK after the I heard of the Boba = Ailyn retcon and when I read this quote, I thought it really makes sense...