"Lando kicks a s s!" - these are the three first words in comic book writer Geoff Johns' introduction to A Long Time Ago... Screams in the Void, which is the fourth volume of the A Long Time Ago... collections of the old Marvel comic stories from the late 70s and early 80s.

Lando Calrissian: one of Marvel's marvels
Marvel gave us many things some of which have later made a great impact on the Expanded Universe... for better or worse. Marvel gave us Jaxxon, Pliff and the Hoojibs, Orion Ferret, Zeltrons, Huhks, Shira/Lumiya, Flint, lightwhips, Aron Peacebringer and so on. And, in a way, Marvel also gave us Lando Calrissian.

Okay, we first meet Lando in The Empire Strikes Back where we learn that he's a gambler and a scoundrel. He has teamed up with the Empire against his old friend Han Solo in order to protect his own city and its inhabitants from the tyranny of the Empire. Part of the deal he had made with the Imperials was that if he delivered Luke skywalker, the Empire would leave his city alone. We learned that he wasn't such a bad guy after all, as he has a change of heart and attempts to free a now carbonite-encased Han Solo from the clutches of Boba Fett. In Return of the Jedi, Lando gets to lead the attack on the Second Death Star and even firest one of the shots that destroy the massive battle station.

But that's about it. We don't really learn anything about Lando's character or about the way he does things in the movies. Yet in recent Expanded Universe material Lando is fully developed as a shewd, cunning, but honorable (kind of) businessman who uses secrecy, subtlety, subterfuge, and manipulation to reach his goals rather than the Han Solo-ish shoot first type of bravado (because Han shoots first!). Lando also has a knack for delivering stinging ironic dialogue which are yet pervaded by a certain charm and class.

The compassionate gambler
Where does all of this come from? A good bet is that it comes from the old post-ESB Marvel comics. In the post-ESB era, Lando was brought to the forefront and was the central character in many stories and whole story arcs. On reason is probably that they needed a character to replace Han Solo who was "unavailable at the moment". But Lando was not a total Han-clone with the same bravado. The Marvel writers seem to have taken inspiration primarily in the word "gambler" and the fact that Lando actually does care about other people. We learn this in ESB when the first thing he does, when he realizes that the deal with the Empire has gone wrong, is to tell all the inhabitants of Cloud City to evacuate the city, after which he fully commits himself to helping the cause of the Rebellion. The Marvel people picked up on these small details and developed them into the Lando Calrissian we know today.

Gamblers stereotypically con and bluff their way to success. This characteristic is transposed onto Lando's dealing with Imperials and other enemies in the Marvel stories. Where we would see Han Solo head straight into space wearing little more than a diver's mask to head straight into combat with Crimson Jack, we would see a Lando Calrissian smoothtalk and trick his way out of trouble, often using false identities. Whereas Han would head straight into battle and shoot his way through out of trouble, Lando used the cunning of a gambler to cheat his way out of trouble. This characteristic has lead to many storylines that were slightly more complex in many aspects than what we were used to in Star Wars at that time. It has also lead to some rather hilarious situation, such as when Lando, who has just been involved in an airspeeder crash and is in immense pain, tries to convince a criminal not to shoot him by arguing that he is philosophically opposed to getting killed, and that it would be much more effective and cruel in the long run to just let him live with the pain and suffering the crash has cost him.

At the same time, Lando was haunted by guilt at having betrayed Han Solo to the Empire, and he would often confess to Luke, Leia, and especially Chewie how bad he felt about it (often in order to convince Chewie not to rip his head off). Despite Lando's being a scoundrel, the Marvel people also picked up on something that many others have missed - namely, Lando's compassion and caring for other people. There are numerous stories where Lando ends up fighting to protect someone against tyranny and oppression. For example, he teamed up with a group of rogue Ugnaughts when he learned that the Empire had practically used them as slaves.

Secrecy... subtlety... subterfuge...
The Marvel people have truly developed Lando Calrissian into a very cool, complex and entertaining character - shewd and compassionate at the same time - without whom Star Wars just wouldn't be the same. His cons and bluffs offer an interesting counterpart to Han's bravado. Lando himself points out to Mone the Iskalonian the differences between Han's and his own approach to things:

Lando Calrissian: The full-speed-ahead-and-bash-them-in-the-teeth approach may work very well for a Wookiee and a Corellian, but's not a technique that works for me. My plans involve secrecy... subtlety... subterfuge...
Mone: Lando, I've never heard words like that before. They have a grand sound! What do they mean...?
Lando Calrissian: Well, they're... they're what they sound like... they're... you know...