Category: Obiwomble’s Outlook

Centerpoint Station: An Indictment of the GFFA

Posted on January 27, 2014by

A couple of weeks ago, my In Defense of Superweapons article omitted Centerpoint Station, save perhaps as a vague mention as falling into the ancient star-killing tech category. Some commentators wondered about that, which in turn led to this!

Centerpoint Station is, to me, quite different from all the other superweapons – for they were designed as weapons. All of them have a quite clear and defined intent – to kill and destroy on a mammoth scale! Centerpoint Station is not this. Oh sure, the Empire advanced the line that the Death Star was for asteroid clearance but the duplicity and lack of belief in the statement is obvious. The Death Star projects exist for one purpose: To terrify a galaxy back in line. (Although it could be said the designers or the Empire didn’t really consider the full implications of their success.)

In contrast Centerpoint Station was created by its ancient builders to do just that – build! With Centerpoint Station we are no longer in the area of technology being created to kill but rather technology being perverted from its original aims!

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In Defense of Superweapons

Posted on January 16, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

Ah, superweapons, Star Wars would not be the same without them! Despite this, they have a vexed reputation within the Expanded Universe. The frequent accusation is they cover for author laziness, need a SW story fast? Whip up a superweapon! But before that charge is investigated in more detail, what is a superweapon, one definition is this:

“A weapon, especially an extremely destructive one, based on highly-advanced technology.” (http://www.answers.com/topic/super-weapon)

And arguably one against which there is little or no defense! Certainly the Death Stars qualify, despite suffering reactor overload due to some really inconveniently placed torpedoes and missiles!

So, to the initial charge: Is the insertion of a superweapon really the result of author laziness? Or can it be said to instead represent the villainous heart of the story’s adversary? After all, only villains use superweapons? Don’t they?

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Classic Star Wars Re-Visited 20 Years Later

Posted on January 2, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

Some stories make such a strongly positive impression that you wish to own them but not necessarily rush to re-read them! Classic Star Wars by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson is one such story. As part of my general upgrade to trades over comics, I secured copies of them some years back but had not read them. I read the issues but that was 20 years ago and I’m certainly not who I was then so how does it look to me now?

Originally published as a newspaper strip from 1982 to 1984, this 3-year tale focused on the then largely vacant gap between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (ESB). In this way it set the tone, perhaps unknowingly, for all subsequent bridging stories, at least up until the Clone Wars material – they wrote it knowing what they were bridging to! Dark Horse Comics decided to re-publish the strip but they wanted to publish it as a monthly comic, in colour. An extensive period of re-formatting and careful colouring followed, as colour could easily obscure the graceful linework by Williamson if done carelessly. The 20-issue series ran from 1992 to 1994, with it being collected into 3 trades in 1996.

Two decades on and I’d estimate that I’ve read around a couple of hundred Star Wars comics in that time, how can a 20-issue series, of material written in the 1980s compare to these? The answer is quite easily because quality is timeless and the one thing no would ever accuse either Goodwin or Williamson of lacking is superb creative skills! It also avoids a couple of pitfalls that older material, at least where the superheroes of Marvel and DC are concerned, regularly fall into.
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Ostrander vs. Miller: Worldbuilding vs. Characters

Posted on December 19, 2013by

On one side, John Ostrander and frequent collaborator, Jan Duursema; on the other, John Jackson Miller. These individuals have arguably been the heart and soul of the comics Expanded Universe for the last decade. When both Legacy and Knights of the Old Republic were running, it was a golden age for Star Wars (SW) comics. Dark Horse Comics’ (DHC) axing of both titles was their biggest and most spectacular own goal, though opting for miniseries a la the Mignolaverse isn’t far behind.

Yet, if we were to pit these titans against each other, what might the outcome be? I think it would be fair to say their strengths play out differently – where Ostrander excels at worldbuilding and a grand, epic sweep, Miller’s forte is crafting characters you immediately latch onto and care about. With their successor projects, as it were – Dawn of the Jedi and Knight Errant, this difference is particularly noticeable.

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In Defense of Implausible Victories

Posted on December 3, 2013by Obiwomble's Outlook

More than any other work in Star Wars, the New Jedi Order (NJO) arc gave rise to a sense that for the Republic and Jedi to win the war something quite heinous would have to happen. Deploy Alpha Red? No, that isn’t smart against an enemy with superior biotech, but once having gained a decisive advantage over the enemy, would they all have to be fought to the death? The finale to the story, The Unifying Force (TUF), had to tackle this thorny question head-on and gave a decisive, unequivocal answer. No.

I recently re-read TUF, it’s been a decade since I last read it, so neither I nor the story can possibly appear the same. In the climatic battle which sees a Yuuzhan Vong armada assault Mon Calamari, the allied fleet gives a strong accounting of itself but is, nonetheless, outnumbered and outgunned. They cannot win this by force of arms. And, in a lot of ways, that’s the point! Star Wars may, by title, be a story about wars in space but there’s nothing that actually requires the victories be particularly military. In some respects the series is quite anti-militaristic.

One area is in its victories and this goes all the way back to the Original Trilogy. A small solo-piloted starfighter destroys a moon-sized battlestation able to destroy planets? And then, heaping further insult upon the Empire, an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, with a Super Star Destroyer as its flagship no less, loses to a “pitiful band” they outnumber and out-gun! Should the Rebel Alliance have won at Endor in military terms? No. Should Thrawn have won at Bilbringi? Probably. The Yuuzhan Vong? As shown in The Unifying Force, certainly, they had the superior fleet numbers and strategy.
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