The Empire’s deadly TIE Bombers may have made their live-action debut in The Empire Strikes Back, but their first appearance in the Star Wars franchise was actually two years before the film. TIE Bombers are the Galactic Empire’s go-to bombing craft, with a vast payload of explosive ordnance and extremely precise long-range targeting systems making up for its lack of maneuverability and shielding. TIE Bombers are nearly as iconic as TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors, and certainly as dreaded as their speedier counterparts.

TIE Bombers were featured prominently in Empire’s marketing, with some poster designs featuring massive squadrons of the vessels. Ultimately, however, TIE Bombers had only a few seconds of total screentime, 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 draw out the Millennium Falcon. TIE Bombers would go on to have other, more prominent, roles in other Star Wars materials, but, fascinatingly, their debut was in one of the franchise’s earliest non-movie properties.

The TIE Bomber Made Its Debut Two Years Before ESB

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

During the initial skirmish 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 appropriated the vessel, its complement of TIE craft also fell into their hands, along with captured Rebel X-Wings and Y-Wings. These stolen Rebel and Imperial fighters would form the Raider Squadron, which he would deploy against the Millennium Falcon after the events of A New Hope.

Marvel’s
Star Wars
comics also saw the debut of the DP20 Corellian Gunship, with Crimson Jack using one such vessel as his flagship before commandeering the Star Destroyer.

TIE Bombers Were An Unused Concept From A New Hope

TIE Bombers and their distinctive design were not created by Marvel, however. TIE Bombers were originally intended to appear in A New Hope, and although the bombers did not appear in the movie itself, there was concept art depicting their intended design. Marvel’s Star Wars creatives worked with Lucasfilm to make sure the comics aligned with the movies, and thus they presumably had access to unused concepts like the TIE Bomber, allowing them to give the craft their debut years before The Empire Strikes Back.