Even George Lucas reportedly ‘hated’ a character introduced into Marvel’s Star Wars comic book run during the 1970s.
There are many polarising elements within Star Wars fandom – from which movies are the ‘best’ to debates over how to pronounce certain names. When it comes to key characters in a galaxy far, far away, there’s a vocal majority that often singles out the likes of Jar Jar Binks and Ewoks as being on the ‘sillier’ side of the spectrum.
However, there’s one character above all others who appears to be the epitome of such fan-based embarrassment, even though he still keeps popping up in the Star Wars universe from time to time. We’re talking, of course, about the six foot tall green rabbit, Jaxxon.
Introduced in Marvel’s original Star Wars comic book run in the 1970s, Jaxxon was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Howard Chaykin in issue # 8. The character was based on the Warner Bros. cartoon star, Bugs Bunny, and first appeared as part of a group of mercenaries brought together by Han Solo on the planet Aduba-3.
That storyline was Thomas’ own take on the film, The Seven Samurai, which was also an important influence on Star Wars’ creator, George Lucas. Although the tough-talking green rabbit could hold his own in a fight and ultimately helped save the locals of Aduba-3 from the tyrannical Serji-X Arrogantus, Lucas reportedly ‘hated’ the character. According to Thomas, when he handed the comic book’s writing duties over to Archie Goodwin with issues # 11, the later was told by Lucasfilm to never use the ‘green bunny’ again.
However, you can’t keep a giant anthropomorphic space rabbit down for long and Jaxxon would often appear over the following decades in the most unlikely of places. He next popped up in an article in Star Wars Gamer in 2001, which fleshed out the character’s details and revealed he was from the homeworld of Coachelle Prime and that he was a Lepi. Jaxxon would next appear in The Clone Wars: Invitation Only webcomic, written by Lucasfilm’s own Pablo Hidalgo, and a skeleton of a Lepi wearing the character’s space suit can be seen in The Clone Wars episode, A Sunny Day in the Void.
Despite these fleeting comebacks, Jaxxon remained a topic of fan derision, with a 2006 article in Star Wars Insider claiming the character was, ‘Marvel’s most-infamous addition to the Expanded Universe.’ A previous poll on the official Star Wars website in 2002 asking which Expanded Universe character fans would most like to see cameo in Episode II or III resulted in Jaxxon only receiving 2% of the overall votes.
As the years went by, many more fans were introduced to and warmed to Jaxxon, so much so that he was brought back in comic book form in Star Wars Adventures Annual in 2018, and again in the 2023 tales, Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories and Star Wars Adventures: Ghosts of Vader’s Castle # 2. The character was also immortalised in plastic as an action figure as part of The Black Series line in 2021, the first such physical Jaxxon collectible.
Love him or ‘hate’ him, it doesn’t seem like we’ve seen the last of the huge green Lepi just yet. In fact we suspect it’s just a matter of time before he cameos in a live-action Star Wars TV show or even gets his own spin-off series. Star Wars: Jaxxon, anyone?
