Author: Ben Crofts

A Tale of Two Reboots (aka Why You Should Read A New Dawn)

Posted on September 29, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

So, Star Wars rebooted huh? Big deal, it’s happened before elsewhere with about as much success and failure. 2010-11 saw two comic companies reboot their superhero lines – Top Cow and DC. Of these two, the DC one was by far the most controversial. The reason for it being that, demonstrated by the comics, the creative teams got two months to wrap up their stories and if they failed to do so? Too bad. More than a few such end issues indicated there were longer plans in place, which were no longer in the picture!

It would be logical then to conclude that post-reboot, no one bought DC comics, much in the way some fans have decided against the new SW post-reboot books. It would, but there’s more than one kind of logic and there’s loyalty to consider. Oh yes, consumer loyalty can well survive a brand reboot, but it tends to be only certain types of loyalty that can do this – namely to a writer or artist. The company name may be mud but there’s a sense that it’s not fair to punish a writer or artist for a reboot they had no ability to affect. Read More

The Empire and Rebels: Causes for Optimism

Posted on September 15, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

kallus-imp

I have a copy of A New Dawn on the to-read pile and it’s giving me the evil eye: I did buy it to read it, didn’t I, so what’s taking so long? Some things should be properly appreciated, so no, I’m not going to casually barrel through it at speed. One thing I’m quite confident of is I’m going to like how the Empire is portrayed due to a couple of things: First, John Jackson Miller has an excellent track record and second, the Emperor has an efficiency adviser? That’s genius. Efficiency gurus are a modern-day Bogeyman who are more terrifying due to existing – you can’t bargain or reason them, they feel nothing, they only think in maths equations – in short, a perfect villain.

Despite this there is much trepidation around the show Rebels, particularly where the portrayal of the Empire is concerned. I was never going to be inclined to like the Clone Wars cartoon. The offense was simple but enduring: It steamrollered the 2002-2005 work done in the same era with casual contempt. Rebels, however, is not doing that. No, it has its own time period, it is not setting fire to somebody’s else’s lawn, so what’s the problem? The fear is that the Empire will be rendered as too easily defeated, too incompetent, that it will be a joke. I don’t think that needs to be feared as much as may be thought. Read More

The Dark Horses of Dark Horse Comics

Posted on August 29, 2014by and Feature Articles

xwrs-wedgeSome of my earliest memories of Star Wars fandom are of searching my local comic book store for trade paperbacks of X-Wing: Rogue Squadron. Huge book stores were still in vogue back in the nineties, so odds were good that the only thing between me and whichever novel I’d decided to read next for my Great Bantam Catch-Up of ’97-’99 was a quick trip to Media Play or Borders. Catching up on the comics was another matter—something “mainstream” like Dark Empire wasn’t too hard to track down, but there were at least six trade collections of XWRS already in print by the time I got around to it, and a couple more on the way—and that’s not counting the first story arc, The Rebel Opposition, which wasn’t collected until the first XWRS Omnibus several years later.

For sixteen-year-old me, just figuring out which TPB came next was something of a challenge; actually finding the damned thing in tiny little Seeley & Kane’s a couple blocks from my house was far more uncertain. I eventually managed, of course, but if those trades hadn’t been out there, I’d have stood virtually no chance of finding the original issues, meaning I wouldn’t have had another shot at reading the series until the aforementioned Omnibus set much, much later.

All this is to say that it’s incredibly heartening to see the announcement this week of Marvel’s first Star Wars “Epic Collection” TPB, including much of Dark Horse’s post-Revenge of the Sith material, some of which is less than a couple years old. Regardless of the Legends banner on the front, Dark Horse’s Star Wars catalog includes some of—no, many of—the best SW stories ever told, and I’m thrilled to know that the comics license changing hands doesn’t mean new generations of fans will lose access to that material; at least not all of it. Read More

In Defense of CGI

Posted on August 27, 2014by

jabba-cgi

Computer Generated Imagery or, as it’s better known, CGI gets a huge amount of flak from just about everyone. It may have revolutionized filmmaking, it may have opened the doors to unrealized dreams for directors but none of that stops it from getting a regular royal kicking! Now why is that? I am inclined to suggest it is a combination of factors – lazy thinking and fool filmmakers. Together, these two factors form an unholy alchemy into a destructive firestorm of criticism that never fails to repeatedly roast CGI.

First then: Lazy thinking. The charge made against CGI is that it is lazy and unimaginative. This is the sort of charge anyone could come up, no matter their state of being. Drunk as a skunk? You can still slur that CGI is lazy. High as a kite? Hey man, I may be lazing here stoned but it takes a laze to know a laze and that CGI is a laze! This charge falls apart the instant it hits reality. Here’s the world of CGI as the accusers would like it:

CGI Data Monkey hits Run on his computer panel, goes down the pub for a swift couple of pints, comes back a couple of hours later and blam! Work’s done. Read More

Sacred Shaaks – Eleven-ThirtyEight Goes Negative

Posted on August 8, 2014by , , , and Not A Committee

disneypyre

Despite all the hay I’ve made over wanting this site to be a source of positivity, I belong to the school of thought that says if you’re not making anyone angry, you’re doing something wrong. Between my natural contrarianism and a nagging aversion to treading the same ground as every other fan blog under the suns, now and then I’ll go out of my way to highlight a point of view purely because I don’t hear it very often. Even if I don’t personally agree with something, if I feel like there’s a fair point to be made that’s being denied a seat at the table due to nothing more than aggressive common consensus, I consider it our responsibility as a soapbox to expand that conversation rather than condense it.

While that philosophy has poked its head out at least a handful of times already, its most blatant expression on this site is one I haven’t really addressed overtly before—the phrase “no sacred shaaks” in our tagline up top. Totally aside from whatever my actual opinions are, nothing gets my back up more than a reasonable person being shouted down because their opinion is unpopular. One of the things I love about Star Wars is that it can be interpreted in so many different ways; nothing about it is wholly good or wholly bad, and to orthodoxically condemn or defend any one element is to reduce it by definition—but ask some fans and you’d never know it. Read More