On this Thrill of the Hunt I will be focusing on the Imperial Troop Transport comic!
In 1979 the Imperial Troop Transport was the first vehicle released by Kenner that was not seen in A New Hope. To justify it's existence it came with a short, black and white comic book.
The Transport was sent in by Darth Vader to find the droids after the Stormtroopers discover the escape pod. It then tracks down the Jawa Sandcrawler the droids were on before they were sold to Owen Skywalker, not Owen Lars. I won't go any further describing the story. The last page is the big climax and if you are just hearing of this and want to read it, I don't want to spoil anything. There are a few continuity errors that are well documented. With some research some
are easily explained away, others aren't. That aside, it's still a quick but decent read. I have exhaustively searched for the actual writer and artist that put this book together. Nothing. I guess we have to give the credit to the Kenner design team. The overworked cubicle employee!
When I was hunting for a copy of this there were only two copies on Ebay. One near mint individual copy, and one complete unopened toy. They were both going for a very pretty penny. Like a flawless supermodel penny. They both went extremely quick. One to me, and the other to another lucky soul with more money than me. I lost that first bid. HAHA!
As of this writing there are a very few of these for sale. Sadly they are in poor condition. So why is this comic being featured, if there are in fact a very few out there? It's the choice you have to make between price and condition. These are easily found online in digital format, as are most of the stories you will find in this series. The thrill of the hunt for me is holding that near mint copy in my hands!