Everyone knows about the “Robot Chicken” and “Family Guy” parodies on the boob tube, but the “Tag & Bink” comics are arguably even better. They are written by Kevin Rubio, who broke onto the “Star Wars” parody scene with the short film “Troops” and brought his talents to comics with “A Death Star is Born” in “Star Wars Tales.” The meticulously detailed art comes from Lucas Marangon, whose visual gags (as scripted by Rubio) are often as funny as the dialogue and situations — for example, young ghost Anakin and old ghost Anakin give each other the evil eye at the end of “Return of the Jedi.”
Tag and Bink are like the title characters of the Shakespeare parody “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”: Somehow, through machinations that are often clever enough to deserve a giggle themselves, they end up in the background throughout the saga. The titles of the four “Tag & Bink” comics are “Tag & Bink Are Dead” Issues 1 and 2 (both 2001), “The Return of Tag & Bink Special Edition” and “Tag & Bink Episode I: Revenge of the Clone Menace” (both 2006). Rather than using those clunky titles, I’ll refer to them respectively by the films they parody: In order, “A New Hope,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Return of the Jedi” and the prequel trilogy.
As noted, a lot of the chuckles come from the way Tag and Bink get into scrapes that line up perfectly with the plots of the films, allowing them to be masked background characters. They start off as cowardly Rebel troopers on the Tantive IV who steal stormtrooper armor in order to save their own skins. Thus, they end up on the Death Star. As the saga moves forward, they are TIE pilots and Emperor’s Royal Guards, and also end up in the guise of Boba Fett and a skiff guard in Jabba’s palace.
Other laughs come by taking a little assumption from the film and following it to a ridiculous degree. In the “Jedi” parody, Tag and Bink are the royal guards whom the Emperor orders to “leave us.” So they walk around the back of the elevator, where they are then in an awkward position because there is no elevator on that side and they are too embarrassed to walk back around to the front.
The “Jedi” parody is an expansion and reworking of “The Revenge of Tag & Bink” from “Star Wars Tales” Issue 12, which mostly featured the duo bickering in the Sarlacc pit as various guards go flying and screaming past them. Rubio notes in the opening crawl of the “Jedi” parody that he “was never satisfied with the results (of the ‘Tales’ story) and always thought he could make it better if allowed more time, but as usual he was already three weeks late.” Two pages of material are repurposed and redrawn, as Rick Zombo had drawn the “Tales” story.
What makes the “Tag & Bink” comics especially rich is that they aren’t stream-of-consciousness slapstick. The plot, although crazy, is logical, and threads follow through the four issues. For example:
- C-3PO’s loud vocabulator gets the duo caught by Vader on the Tantive IV in “A New Hope,” so Bink, as a stormtrooper, blasts the droid out of revenge in Cloud City in “Empire.”
- The “Empire” and “Jedi” issues find Lando using Tag’s Battle of Tanaab victory as a line to pick up women, much to Tag’s annoyance.
- Tag and Bink steal the Imperial shuttle Tydirium for the Alliance and assist a guy named Manny Both-Hanz (a play on Mon Mothma saying “Many Bothans died to bring us this information”).
- The duo inexplicably pop up as Force ghosts at the end of “Jedi,” which is a springboard for the prequel story where they are bungling younglings in the Jedi Temple. It ties together at the end when Darth Vader, fresh from slaughtering younglings in “Episode III,” lets them go so long as they forget they ever had Force abilities.
The only thread that’s a bit wonky finds Rubio either forgetting or (more likely) not caring, for the sake of the joke, that Jango and Boba Fett are different people. In the “Jedi” issue, Boba’s lady problems with a gal named Kannan (he doesn’t pay enough attention to her) allow our heroes to escape, and in the prequel issue, Kannan is dating Jango. When Dexter’s diner calls out “Order 66!,” Jango’s programming kicks in and he attacks young Tag and Bink, leading Kannan to accuse him of ignoring her. (Wookieepedia explains that Kannan, who is based on a friend of Rubio’s, ages very slowly.)
The prequel issue is the funniest of the four. Young Tag, blessed with Corellian suaveness, hides around corners with Bink at the Naboo lake house in “Attack of the Clones” and helps the hapless Anakin say the right things to woo Padme. (When Anakin goes off-script, he says stupid things about sand, Tag observes.)
Padme: “We’d be living a lie. I couldn’t do that. Could you, Anakin? Could you live a lie?”
Tag (whispering to Anakin): “Now dude, trust me. Agree with her, and then turn and walk away real cool, like you don’t really need her.”
Anakin: “No, you’re right. It would destroy us.”
Padme (as the scene extends beyond the film): “Anakin, wait!” (She pulls Anakin into a deep kiss.)
Bink: “That’s amazing.”
Tag: “Yeah, it’s sad, but that kinda stuff works all the time. It’s the ‘catch-and-release’ principle.”
The “Tag & Bink” quadrilogy skips the Battle of Hoth (the duo was picking through the Yavin base rubble and dodging Boba Fett) and “The Phantom Menace” (as they weren’t born yet), so readers don’t get a complete parody of all six films. But I can’t find much to complain about. With the loving attention to detail – both of the films and Tag and Bink’s arcs – this quadrilogy ranks on the short list of best “Star Wars” parodies in any medium.