Why Star Wars' Worst TIE Fighter Debuted in Marvel Years Before the Movies
Marvel’s original Star Wars comics saw the debut of an Imperial vessel two years before it appeared on film in The Empire Strikes Back. The Imperial TIE Bomber, a heavily-armed variant of the standard TIE Fighter, first appeared onscreen in The Empire Strikes Back and briefly showed up again in Return of the Jedi, but a similar-looking vessel was slated to appear in the original 1977 film. Marvel’s Star Wars comics were one of the first examples of reviving a then-unused film concept, which occurred frequently as the Star Wars franchise grew.
TIE Bombers are, as their name suggests, deadly Imperial bombers based on the standard TIE Fighter model. Like their standard counterparts, they lack shielding and their heavy payloads make them significantly slower and less maneuverable than TIE Fighters. TIE Bombers make up for this with their sheer capacity for explosive ordnance, carrying a plethora of proton bombs, concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, and thermal detonators, among other weapons.
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What would eventually become the TIE Bomber was originally envisioned as an Imperial boarding craft, which nearly appeared in A New Hope. While the ship didn’t appear in the final film, its design was used by Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino in issue 12 of Star Wars, where it was deployed by a heavily-damaged Imperial Star Destroyer against Crimson Jack and his pirate crew. In addition to debuting the TIE Bomber two years before The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars comic also used the vessel in a sequence that tied into the original story of how the Death Star plans were stolen.
In Star Wars #12, a TIE Bomber is deployed by one of the Imperial Star
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