Yes, you’re seeing that correctly. That is the cockpit pod of a TIE Fighter with some X-Wing foils strapped around it. I don’t know whether to think that it’s rad or be personally offended at my beloved X-Wings being used in such a state. Probably a bit of both.
This delightful bit of starship mashup-ery comes from today’s Poe Dameron #11, by Charles Soule, Philo Noto, and Joe Caramagna. Specifically, it’s the preview of issue 12, which will see Poe and Threepio crash landed on a planet and on the run from the pirate forces led by Poe’s recurring foe in the comic series, First Order Agent (and, it turns out, pirate lord) Terex — whose forces catch up with Poe in space in today’s issue and end up overwhelming the resistance pilot, leading to the crash landing.
There’s some really weird amalgams in that fleet shot above, but the preview itself gives us our best look at that TIE/X-Wing amalgam — and hell, even an AT-ST cockpit with wings slapped on either side:
Really, it makes sense for a fleet of pirate ships. In the run up to The Force Awakens, there’s tons of ship parts and scrap around from the fall of the Empire and the New Republic’s rise to prominence. Why wouldn’t smugglers and pirates repurpose those into new shipworthy vessels? It might look hilarious to us, but it makes a good deal of sense in-universe.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not a concept that’s exclusively new to the rebooted canon. Fans of the old EU novels, especially the Uglies,” starfighters that were mashups of different parts to form new, horrifically weird looking (yet functional) ships. Here, for example, is a Z’ceptor, part TIE Interceptor, part Z-95 Headhunter, from the pages of Dark Horse’s X-Wing: Rogue Squadron Handbook:
Art by David Nestelle
I guess that’s another one to add to the ever-growing list of old EU elements worming their way into the new version of Star Wars canon.
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