The Empire Strikes Back’s TIE bombers were actually introduced 2 years before the film

The Empire’s deadly TIE Bombers may have made their live-action debut in The Empire Strikes Backbut its first appearance in Star Wars the franchise was actually two years before the film. TIE Bombers are the Galactic Empire’s preferred bombardment ships, with a vast payload of explosive ordnance and extremely accurate long-range targeting systems, making up for their lack of maneuverability and armor. TIE Bombers are almost as iconic as TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors, and certainly as feared as their faster counterparts.

TIE bombers were featured prominently in of the Empire marketing, with some poster designs featuring huge squadrons of ships. Ultimately, though, the TIE Bombers only had a few seconds of total screen time, with several bombers being shown in flight during Darth Vader’s introductory scene and a pair of TIE Bombers firing proton bombs at an asteroid to attract the Millennium Falcon. TIE Bombers would have other, more prominent roles in other Star Wars materials, but, fascinatingly, his debut was in one of the franchise’s first non-film properties.

The TIE Bomber debuted two years before the ESB

Two years before the release of Empire Strikes Back, readers of the Marvel classic Star Wars comics would see TIE Bombers deployed for the first time. As pirate captain Crimson Jack explains, he and his crew encountered a heavily damaged Imperial Star Destroyer that fought Rebel forces during the Battle of Toprawa – a major Rebel victory that ended with the Rebellion’s theft of the Death Star plans. The Star Destroyer didn’t stand a chance against the pirates, who boarded the ship and killed its crew before commandeering the warship.

During the initial conflict with Crimson Jack’s frigate the Star Destroyer deployed TIE Bombers and TIE Fighters, which were easily shot down by the pirates. After Crimson Jack and his crew seized the vessel, its complement of TIE ships also fell into their hands, along with the captured Rebel X-Wings and Y-Wings. These stolen Rebel and Imperial fighters would form Raider Squadron, which he would deploy against the Millennium Falcon after the events of A New Hope.

TIE Bombers Were an Unused New Hope Concept

However, the TIE Bombers and their distinctive design were not created by Marvel. TIE Bombers were originally planned to appear in A New Hopeand although the bombers did not appear in the film itself, there was concept art depicting the intended design. Marvel Star Wars The creatives worked with Lucasfilm to ensure the comics aligned with the films, and so they likely had access to unused concepts like the TIE Bomber, allowing them to debut the craft years earlier. The Empire Strikes Back.