While Ord Mantell isn’t nearly as famous as other planets in the Star Wars universe, like Tattooine, Hoth, Mustafar, or Kashyyk, this planet in the Bright Jewel System, surrounded by at least 15 moons, does have a place within Star Wars Legends and the official canon.
The planet is featured in numerous novels, video games, and comic books, but nowhere perhaps more visibly than on the animated series, The Bad Batch. Clone Force 99 visits the planet quite often to get mercenary jobs from their underworld contact Cid, a Trandoshan who runs a bar on Ord Mantell.
However, the planet is first mentioned in The Empire Strikes Back when Han Solo reminds Princess Leia that he still has the bounty on his head from Jabba the Hutt.
Leia: Han!
Han: Yes, your highnessness.
Leia: I thought you had decided to stay.
Han: Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind.
Well, today’s record, Rebel Mission on Ord Mantell, is the story of their run-in with the bounty hunter…kind of.
The script for this record was written by Brian Daley. Daley wrote radio drama adaptations of the original trilogy, two of which aired on National Public Radio – Star Wars in 1981 and The Empire Strikes Back in 1983. Unfortunately, funding for NPR was slashed during the Reagan Administration, so the trilogy couldn’t be completed until 1996 when Return of the Jedi was produced by HighBridge Audio.
If you’ve never heard these radio dramas, they’re definitely worth checking out. The Star Wars Vintage Collection on YouTube has a playlist of all of them, as well as behind-the-scenes recordings.
Aside from the radio dramas, Daley was also an early author of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, writing a trilogy of novels collectively known as The Han Solo Adventures. The books in the series – Han Solo at Stars’ End, Han Solo’s Revenge, and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy – were published in 1979 and 1980. These stories follow Han and Chewie on their adventures before meeting Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine.
So, Daley was kind of an expert on prequel Solo stories and decided to tell the backstory behind this brief, throwaway line in Empire, much like the movie Rogue One was inspired by a few sentences in the opening crawl of Star Wars.
However, this was not the first attempt to fill-in the story of Han’s run-in with a bounty hunter on Ord Mantell. Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson not only wrote and drew issues of the Star Wars comic book from Marvel, they also worked on the Star Wars comic strip that was published by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate that ran from 1979 until 1984.
Oddly enough, Goodwin’s first Star Wars comic strip storyline as a writer was an adaptation of Brian Daley’s novel, Han Solo at Stars’ End. When that storyline ended, Williamson came on as artist and the two created their own story, The Bounty Hunter of Ord Mantell.
In that story, the bounty hunter in question is named Skorr, a yellow-skinned, pointy-eared humanoid with half of his face covered by a metallic mask who has his base of operations on the lawless planet of Ord Mantell. Luke, Han, and Leia come to the planet to scout it as a possible location for a rebel base and Skorr tries to collect the price on Solo’s head.
The storyline was printed in syndication between February 9th and April 19, 1981, and was reprinted by Dark Horse Comics in 1992. Because the comic strip was published before Daley’s story, it’s generally considered to be the official record of Han’s encounter on Ord Mantell. But that doesn’t really matter as both stories are now considered Star Wars Legends anyway.
As for the record, Rebel Mission on Ord Mantell, there are a few notable voices on the album that are worth mentioning.
Corey Burton plays Luke as he had before on the read-along record book based on Star Wars. He would go on to voice Yoda in the record books for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. However, Burton is best-known in the Star Wars universe for playing Count Dooku on The Clone Wars animated series, as well as bounty hunter Cad Bane on Clone Wars and The Book of Boba Fett.
But Burton has done plenty of work outside of Star Wars, too. On the original Transformers cartoon, he played Shockwave, Sunstreaker, Brawn, and Spike Witwicky. In the DC Animated Universe, he has played Brainiac on a number of occasions, including on Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Static Shock. And, among many, many other roles, Burton provides the voice for the titular creatures in the cult classic film series, Critters.
Anthony Pope stars as the voice of C-3PO, but he also provided the voice of Goofy for Disney from 1979 until 1988. Anime fans will know him as the voice of The Colonel in the original dub of Akira from 1988, as well as the detective in 2001’s Metropolis. Pope had parts in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Spaced Invaders, Mobile Suit Gundam, the Spider-Man animated series, Pole Position, Care Bears, SWAT Kats, and was the voice of the original Furby toy from Tiger Electronics. Sadly, Pope passed away in 2004 at the age of 56.
If you’d like to listen to Rebel Mission on Ord Mantell, released in 1983 by Buena Vista Records, I’ve made it part of my podcast series, When You Hear This Sound. Click this link to check it out!
