Author: M. Dean Cooper

Checking in with Jason Fry, Part Two: Rules of the Road

Posted on May 6, 2014by Interviews

Last week, I spoke with Jason Fry, longtime Star Wonk and co-author of the brand-new Expanded LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary. If you missed it, head here for Jason’s thoughts on that book, his own Jupiter Pirates series, and his initial musings on the new landscape of Star Wars canon.

In Part Two below, we get a little more into the nitty-gritty—in particular, how the current Story Group-coordinated status quo has—and hasn’t—changed the process of writing new Star Wars books. Jason also shared some thoughts on the recent April Fools fiasco over on Wookieepedia, and his own experiences at the site.

Getting back to the 500-pound gorilla, you and Ryder Windham were actually known to be writing Star Wars Rebels tie-in books well before the recent announcements; as one of the first people to write for the “new” canon, how has the process changed and how has it stayed the same? You’re known, of course, for working well with the EU, but is there more scrutiny on those little details now that they’d constitute a sort of “recanonization”? Read More

A New Dawn, Indeed: Our “Official Statement” on the Reboot

Posted on May 2, 2014by Site Stuff

anewdawnSo, there’ve been a lot of questions raised in the week since R-Day; what’s canon, what’s not, how old is everybody, what’s still being printed, even what we’re supposed to call everything now. Also being asked: what happens to Eleven-ThirtyEight, now that the subject of the overwhelming majority of our content no longer “counts”?

As such, I just wanted to take a moment to state for the record that aside from the half-ironic (and temporary) “Legends” banner up top, pretty much nothing about ETE is going to change.

Our mission statement from the beginning was “to help ease the transition into the Sequel Trilogy era”, and while I’m sure all of us had our moments of wild hope, from my point of view, some degree of reboot was part of the plan all along. Read More

Checking in with Jason Fry, Part One: A Certain Point of View

Posted on May 1, 2014by Interviews

When Eleven-ThirtyEight was starting out last summer, Jason Fry quickly became one of the first Star Wars VIPs to agree to talk to us. We were already familiar with Jason from his frequent visits to TheForce.net’s Literature forum, and I’m happy to say that his frank, easy-going and accessible manner carried over into our new relationship with him as—and picture air quotes as I say this—journalists.

So when the reboot hit the fan on Friday, I knew immediately that if there was one person whose reaction I wanted to hear, and who would actually be kind enough to offer it, it would be Jason. Also, he’s got a little thing called the Expanded LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary coming out today (and a new Jupiter Pirates book on the horizon), which I’m sure didn’t hurt. He had so much to say, in fact, that I’ll be saving the second half of our talk for next week. Enjoy! Read More

Das Reboot – The First 48 Hours

Posted on April 28, 2014by , , , , , and Not A Committee

confused stormieSo that happened.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about you probably wouldn’t be reading this site, but so as not to confuse the aliens who exhume the internet a million years from now: Star Wars continuity has done the unthinkable and performed a hard reboot.

Going forward, the only “canon” Star Wars material is the six films and the Clone Wars TV series; everything else is out unless drawn directly from said material—even novelizations are currently a question mark. New novels, comics, etc. will be written with the oversight of Lucasfilm’s Story Group, and for the first time ever, be considered equal to the films—as, naturally, will the new TV series Star Wars Rebels.

All the old stuff, however, is pretty much staying in print, and being rebranded under the shiny new “Legends” banner, an example of which you can now see at the top of this site. I stuck it there partly as a lark and partly to commemorate the wonderful (and wonderfully exhaustive) universe we here at Eleven-ThirtyEight have been mired in for most of our lives, but I should add that we aren’t going out of print, either. What exactly this means for the site going forward is something I’ll get into later this week, but first I wanted to share our immediate reactions—and in some cases, our second thoughts as the weekend went on.

Serendipitously, the finale of Alexander’s A Case For Starting Over series was already scheduled to run tomorrow, so stay tuned for that, and much more over the coming weeks. Read More

The Expanded Universe Explains, Vol. VII

Posted on April 24, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

16. What was R2-D2’s backstory pre-Episode I?

Technically, I can’t answer this one, but I’m including it here largely as a curiosity: unless both my memory and Wookieepedia fail me, there is essentially zero information about Artoo prior to The Phantom Menace. He seems to be in pretty good shape when he first appears in the film, so it’s reasonable to conclude that he was a relatively new arrival—but then, the Naboo are notable for keeping pretty much everything nice and polished, so even that’s far from certain.

Interestingly, despite the fact that TPM ostensibly shows him first being put together, there is a bit more information out there regarding Threepio’s pre-saga existence. Before the prequels, in fact, older Expanded Universe sources had established him as being more than 100 years old. This was reconciled with TPM thanks to the fact that he’s already more or less operational—Anakin says he built him, but there’s no indication that he started from scratch. Read More