The Battle Against Sise Fromm

MyComyc #2: Kea Kidnapped

Writer: Uncredited (translated by Abel G. Peña)

Penciler: Beaumont Studios

Medium: Comic

Publication date: 1986

Timeline placement: 15 BBY

 

Following the theft of the Trigon One weapons satellite by Thall Joben, Kea Moll, and the droids, Kea is kidnapped by the Fromm Gang once again. As ransom, they demand the return of their stolen Trigon superweapon, as well as their stolen Trigun manga collection. 

While their useless masters remain behind, Artoo and Threepio go to Tig Fromm's base, where Artoo handily incapacitates the guards with his "blinding ray." A large security droid rolls out to oppose them but falls victim to Artoo's "circuit board disruptor beam." 

 

The droids find Kea shackled to a wall. They free her and escape without incident, while Tig Fromm shouts ineffectually for his guards to stop them. The gang is reunited and everyone sits around on giant beanbag chairs. "They sure are fantastic droids!" Kea says. Strangely, Jord Dusat is also here on Ingo despite being left behind on Annoo in the previous episode and still being there in the next one.

 

I have to say it, the human characters' hairstyles in this arc are starting to haunt me. Kea's skunk-do has got to go.

 

The Trigon Unleashed

Writers: Richard Beban and Peter Sauder

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 21, 1985 

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

Thall eventually decides that they should probably do something with the Trigon One besides leaving it sitting around so he and Artoo head out into the Ingo wastes to hide it. At the speeder shop, Threepio starts fiddling with the TV's rabbit ears and picks up first what he describes as Artoo's favorite program, a Western featuring astromech droids, and then (somehow) a video call between Sise and Tig Fromm where they discuss their plan to get their superweapon back. Just then, Fromm henchman Vlix Oncard and his army of Annoo-dat clones attack!

 

Let's take a moment to discuss the weird and confusing lore of the Annoo-dat, the species of the Fromm family and their criminal underlings. The true Annoo-dat come from the planet Annoo in the Outer Rim Territories. They are scary-looking four-eyed lizard people who were created in the year 2002 and look like this:

 

 

How can this be, you ask, if the Fromms are Annoo-dat yet look completely different and have existed since 1985? Patience, all will be revealed. 

 

Two hundred ninety years before the events of The Phantom Menace, Annoo had fallen into ruin due to internecine warfare, so the Annoo-dat waged a conquest of the planet Gelefil, a planet in the same star system populated by the Ret, who look like this:

 

 

The Annoo-dat renamed the conquered planet Annoo, in replacement of their lost homeworld. After a century of cohabitation on the planet, which seems implausibly fast given that the Ret can live for hundreds of years, the Ret assimilated into Annoo-dat society, adopting their conquerors' native language and considering their race part of the Annoo-dat species. Outsiders distinguished between the two by calling the former Ret the "Annoo-dat Blue" and the original Annoo-dat the "Annoo-dat Prime."

 

All of this information comes exclusively from a 2004 article in issue 170 of the gaming magazine Polyhedron, and was completely pointless as a retcon because there was almost no existing lore about these two species at the time, let alone contradictory lore requiring this convoluted cultural-historical intertwining.

 

Also for some reason in this episode Vlix Oncard says, addressing his goons, "All right, you clones!" I assumed the Fromm foot soldiers all looked identical because of the show's limited animation budget but apparently they were really supposed to be clones in-universe. This was never expanded on or mentioned again in the cartoon, but came up again in the StarWars.com continuity fix-fic The Droids Re-Animated. But that's a story for another time!

 

Anyway Thall and Artoo come racing back in their landspeeder to rescue Kea and Threepio from the Annoo-dat Blue clones. They don't get far, however, before the Fromms chase them into a dead end and they're all captured. Tig Fromm attempts to coerce them into revealing the location of the Trigon One by threatening them with a disintegration ray (which he drops and breaks) and revealing that the gang has captured Jord Dusat and Kea's mother, but Thall insists that they'll only talk to Sise himself. So everyone goes back to the Fromm headquarters on Annoo (formerly Gelefil, which is important to someone).

 

Brought before Sise Fromm, Thall immediately reveals where the Trigon One is hidden. Tig and Vlix head back to Ingo to retrieve it, but the wily Sise suspects that his prisoners are up to something and has them all locked up. Threepio tells the Fromm guard that there are valuable jewels hidden inside Artoo, but when the guard tries to get them out, Artoo sprays him all over with some kind of cake batter, which allows everyone to escape. Everyone, that is, except Kea's mother, Demma, who had already been taken away for interrogation.

 

Thall reveals that he and Artoo programmed the Trigon One to home in on Sise Fromm's communications signal. When Tig brings it to Annoo, it will crash itself into the Fromm stronghold. They only have 49 minutes to escape before they're all killed! Thall and Kea go to save Demma while Jord and the droids procure an escape ship. 

 

Some wacky high jinks ensue but everything works out in the end. Our heroes escape and the Fromm base and the Trigon One are both destroyed, leaving Sise, Tig, and Vlix alive but with their power base shattered.

 

So if you're keeping up, we first met our heroes on Ingo. They then traveled to Annoo, where Jord Dusat stayed behind while Thall and Kea returned to Ingo. It's possible that Jord also went from Annoo to Ingo and then back again in between episodes if we want to make Kea Kidnapped fit. Thall and Kea were then captured by Tig Fromm and Vlix Oncard and brought back to Annoo. Tig and Vlix immediately returned to Ingo to retrieve the Trigon One, then immediately went back to Annoo again. 

 

 

Next episode, Thall, Kea, Jord, and the droids finally arrive on Boonta for the big speeder race, leaving all this galactic jet-setting behind them.