Category: Opinion

Meet the Marvels: Greg Rucka

Posted on August 24, 2015by

We are going to continue our look at representative comics penned by future writers of the Marvel Star Wars comics, trying to examine what makes them a bad or good choice to write Star Wars for the benefit of any readers that may be Star Wars fans but not comic book fans. In the past we’ve looked at Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, Mark Waid and Charles Soule, and now it’s time to take a good look a Greg Rucka, the writer of Shattered Empire, the comic miniseries that’s coming out as part of the Journey to The Force Awakens. And this time, choosing the comic series we are going to spotlight couldn’t have been any easier.

Greg Rucka’s writing career started with his Atticus Kodiak novels, a series of seven crime books starring a New York bodyguard, and he started writing comics with the critically-acclaimed Whiteout, an absorbing story about a female sheriff having to solve a crime at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and finding what appears to be the work of a serial killer; he also published Queen & Country, a gritty espionage series about a British SIS agent and his world. Once his reputation as a good writer was consolidated, he went to work for DC Comics, writing Detective Comics (where he created many of the characters that would become part of the detective series Gotham Central, that he would co-write with Ed Brubaker) and Wonder Woman, and famously being part of writing team for the also-critically-acclaimed weekly series 52.

Leaving DC after being taken off the still-unpublished Wonder Woman: Earth One, Rucka came to Marvel to pencil one of the most interesting runs in The Punisher in recent history, perhaps only second to Garth Ennis’s long stint on the MAX title. If this series of accomplishments would lead you to think that Rucka is a crime writer first and foremost and has no business writing Star Wars, you couldn’t be more wrong: not only does he write the steampunk adventure comic Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, but he also wrote for Marvel the title whose first issue we are going to be talking about today: Cyclops.

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Narratives of Failure – What Works and Why?

Posted on August 21, 2015by Obiwomble's Outlook

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In recent years the video game industry has sought to present their products in a more sophisticated light, to demonstrate as it were that they have ‘grown up’. The option gone for, in these cases, is the bleak ending, with the notion that, in the end, all your hero character can do is choose how to fail, not how to win. Mass Effect 3 is one well-known example, but the recently released Batman: Arkham Knight is an equally worthy, perhaps worthier, contender.

Say the words ‘narrative of failure’ to a Star Wars fan and two options spring to mind – The Empire Strikes Back and Revenge of the Sith. Yet, though both tend to get lumped into the category of ‘bad guys win’ stories, do they really? ROTS ends on a hopeful note for the future and while they’ve been blasted by their experiences, no one is dead at the end of ESB.

It is important to recognize the importance of the medium used. There are notable differences between film and video games, particularly with regard to the user, that suggest that film can get away with certain narrative moves video games cannot. The principal difference being activity. While the audience may indeed become emotionally or intellectually hooked on a film’s plot, they are still essentially passive in the sense they are the audience and cannot impact the tale. In contrast, video games require a level of active involvement with, in the best games, an ability to affect the plot outcome. At its most basic, this is simply in continuing the game and not being killed, but has gone much further with games having multiple endings that are chosen by player choices. Read More

“What If”, But For Real—Let’s Recontextualize the OT

Posted on August 19, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

sanacoverWay back at the beginning of June, issue #6 of Jason Aaron’s Star Wars comic series ended with a bombshell: the apparent bounty hunter tracking Han and Leia for three issues or so finally caught up with them, only to claim that she was Sana Solo, Han’s wife.

By the time you read these words, Star Wars #8 will have been released, and we may well know the truth of Sana’s claim (though probably not). But back in June, this made for a big news story; the comics are canon now, after all, so if Han has a wife in them, then he’s got a wife in A New Hope! Isn’t that a big deal?

Well, yes and no. For starters, there are all sorts of possibilities here. Even if Sana’s not just stark-raving mad (or, y’know, lying), she could in fact be his ex-wife, or they could still be legally married but estranged—and said estrangement could be for reasons that make Han look like a million credits and make Sana look like the devil, or vice-versa. As of this writing, we just don’t know. Read More

Princess Leia Deserves Her Own Star Wars Film

Posted on August 17, 2015by

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Of the “Big Three” characters of Star Wars, Princess Leia has the smallest profile and least exposure in tie-in products. This strikes us as very odd, because Princess Leia was the most revolutionary of the three main characters of A New Hope: the gritty mercenary with the heart of gold and the heroic youth were pretty common archetypes. Leia was something different though – she was a princess, but she didn’t play a passive role even during her own rescue! We hope that we really don’t have to sell anyone on why Princess Leia is awesome, because that should be blindingly self-evident. Leia’s a princess turned senator turned resistance fighter – how does that not make for an extremely compelling backstory?

But for all that, she’s shockingly underused compared to the other two parts of the Big Three. Luke Skywalker is in practically every OT-related Star Wars work and is prominent in the Legends EU, while Han Solo gets his own Anthology (sorry, “A Story Wars Story” – gag!) film and helmed two book trilogies in the Expanded Universe. Leia certainly has a strong role in many EU books, but rarely gets to lead her own stories. There’s no reason why that has to be the case. Indeed, there have been some great Leia stories recently. The late Legends Razor’s Edge by Martha Wells was an excellent Leia-led book, though we were a little disappointed that Leia couldn’t even get her own tale without Han and Luke as supporting cast. Mark Waid’s recent Leia miniseries was excellent (and should be revisited or made an ongoing!). We’ve also raved about how well Alexandra Bracken is writing Princess Leia in her upcoming The Princess, the Smuggler, and the Farm Boy and how we’d love for her to author more books about Leia. So there are plenty of avenues to tell more stories about Leia, and we’d be over the moon to see more Leia-led comics, novels, or video games. But without hesitation, we’d say that Leia could not only support a Star Wars anthology film but that she deserves one. Read More

Tsar Wars: The Hapans Strike Back

Posted on August 12, 2015by Aggressive Negotiations, Imperial Court Circular

Hapans-GOI[1]Here’s the third entry in our series on monarchy in Star Wars! On Monday, Bria and I discussed why Star Wars had so many monarchies. On Tuesday, we took a trip to idyllic Naboo and tried to make sense of their political system. Today, we’re visiting the EU and looking at the very strange place (even by Star Wars standards!) known as the Hapan Consortium. We may have had a little too much fun with this one, but we have no regrets.

 

Bria: So you’re going to start this by softly singing ‘Hapes Hapes Hapes’, right?

Jay: I’m not sure what that is, and if I’m singing anything it’s gonna be a Disney song… which is entirely appropriate I think. Although we’re not quite at a matriarchal Disney princess movie yet.

Bria: Someone needs to go back and reread Courtship of Princess Leia.  That’s what all the pretty people are singing when the Hapan delegation arrives to offer Isolder as tribute uhh I mean husband to Princess Leia.

Jay: And here I thought Mon Mothma was selling Leia for the good of the Republic! But honestly, I do need to re-read it. For all the (occasionally justified!) crap CoPL gets, the politics are intriguing.

Bria: Yeah, without CoPL, we never get Hapes or Dathomir or Tenel Ka of House Djo, First of Her Name and Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium.

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