Author: Ben Crofts

One of the more notable news announcements from the San Diego Comic-Con was the announcement of what Marvel would be doing with the Star Wars license. The immediate response over the next couple of days from the fans was dependent on which fans you talked to. Comic fans were intrigued by the creative teams announced, SW fans far more disappointed with the chronological placement of all stories announced. There was indeed a sense of: The EU-that-was got swept away for this?

What stands out most from Marvel’s announcement is the level of resources they are applying to SW. Canonicity or no canonicity, Marvel know Dark Horse held the license for twenty years and did a hell of a lot with it. They know a lot of stories were told, thus they have to start off big. At the same time Marvel may not have absolute freedom to act as they see fit. Certainly that would explain the apparent timidity of opting to set all their books after the first SW film, when Marvel have a sustained record of being considerably more daring and innovative. This is particularly so when you factor in that JJ Abrams, a very spoiler-averse director, is in charge of Episode VII. It may be, after his involvement with SW ends, that we see a more risky approach by Marvel but that’s eighteen months away. Read More

Totalitarianism is a frightening notion and, in theory, one of the things the Rebels fight against in SW. The last pre-reboot book, Honor Amongst Thieves, had Han and Chewie pay a visit to a cold, tightly controlled Imperial world called Cioran. It makes for a quite chilling example of what the Empire’s vision of utopia is. At the same time the story is smart enough to know that for Star Wars a light touch is better where totalitarian systems are concerned. Why? Because totalitarianism is both a past and present horror.

With the end of the Cold War, the spectre of totalitarianism faded to a degree. To many now, the Cold War is two decades away and consigned to history. Yet, while the world has the sheer lunacy of North Korea to remind it of totalitarianism’s excesses, its more subtle form embodied in China tends to be missed. To do justice to what totalitarianism embodies would be for SW to abandon much of what it is. No looking up, no hope for the future, no freedom to even think, never mind act! Read More

Recently a YouTube video answered the question of: How to make Star Wars cool? The answer was: Give it a bitching new soundtrack! Or, more accurately, re-edit SW into a trailer that riffs on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy trailer! And does it work! It actually throws all the great things about SW right in your face – namely, all the fun stuff!

Fun gets a bad rap these days and has for years. Fun is not deemed to be suitably grown-up, fun is not serious, fun lacks gravitas and dignity. Fun in a post-9/11 world seemed out of place, something that did not belong. Certainly there’s a real schism in Marvel and DC’s superhero output before and after. Before, Kang destroys Washington and then gets defeated, city gets rebuilt. After? That story would likely be unthinkable – why are the heroes not held at fault for failing to stop the bad guy? A SW riff on this would be that the Rebels are at fault for not stopping the Death Star before it blew up Alderaan, bunch of lazy bastards that they are!

It took years but finally Robert Kirkman took aim at this worldview in Invincible, with one character laying into the lead with all the bad things that have happened and gets told – yeah, that happens! Huh? Shit happens and that’s it? Well, what else is there to say? We live in a fucked-up world at the best of times, that shouldn’t be news to anyone. Yet superheroes are sent barreling down this skewed path in search of a perfect morality that’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And, for SW, so too, are the Jedi. Read More