Category: Opinion

Fleeing the End Special: The Great Reboot (nearly) One Year On

Posted on March 16, 2015by

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It’s nearly a year since the Star Wars universe got rebooted. The reasons for that move will not truly become clear until December this year when The Force Awakens is released. It will be whatever events that reveals that will in turn likely explain why the move was warranted – or not! In the interim, how has fandom responded?

There have been three distinct streams of opinion: Pro-new EU only, pro-Legends only and the ‘a plague on both your houses, I’m enjoying both’ approach. Of these I have become aligned with the middle faction, no surprise there. Yet a year ago I thought it would not be the case. What has changed?

A large part of the change in my view can be attributed to A New Dawn (AND). For all people like to claim there is nothing special in it being the first of the new books, the claim is false. There is indeed something special by being first. AND is, due to being the first one out, the book that expectations come to rest on, and which influences the chance of future purchases. Read More

The Escape Pod Explains – The Battle of Taanab

Posted on March 13, 2015by

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One of the frustrating things about running an op-ed blog instead of a news blog is, you occasionally have to set aside what you’re most excited to talk about in favor of the thing that’s most fully developed. In this case, I’m writing these words within hours of the announcement of the first standalone Star Wars film, Rogue One, but it’s way too soon to have anything worthwhile and intelligible to say about what’s basically just a title at this point. If you’d like to see me talk about why this appears to be great news, you can head here to see me make the case for a Red Squadron novel about a year ago, or stay tuned to Tosche Station Radio, where I’ll be a guest next week for just that reason.

Moving on—the other weird thing about this piece is that I couldn’t quite decide whether to bill it as an Expanded Universe Explains or an Escape Pod, for reasons that will become clear shortly. For starters, though, let’s talk about Taanab. Originally referred to, of course, in Return of the Jedi, the “Battle of Taanab” was a conflict that for some reason involved civilian (and scoundrel) Lando Calrissian back before he got mixed up with the Rebellion. When he was awarded the rank of General despite seemingly no military experience, he speculated that Alliance leadership must have heard about his “little maneuver” at Taanab. Read More

Star Wars or Ultimate Controversy Wars?

Posted on March 11, 2015by Obiwomble's Outlook

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Marvel have now got three Star Wars titles running, shortly to be joined by a fourth. They know they have major competition from their predecessor licence holder, Dark Horse Comics, but this is something they are used to. After all, Marvel and DC have been trying to out-compete each other for years. So, what are Marvel up to now?

To some, the answer seems obvious. Marvel will do a big event, a big, bombastic event story. I would agree that that may happen, and the just-announced Journey to The Force Awakens series is one contender, but I would not expect a major event to be in the cards until 2016. Why? Marvel excel at marketing bombast, but they also excel at planning out their events. Unlike DC, Marvel often do know where they’re going and their good events outnumber their bad. If you look at how Marvel handled their Ultimate line at the start, there were no events in the way we now know them. Yet there was no shortage of both new and reinvented concepts combined with strong execution – it is The Ultimates that practically gave us Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Read More

Meet the Marvels: Mark Waid

Posted on March 9, 2015by Six on the Wild Die

Daredevil_Vol_3_1In past entries of Meet the Marvels we spotlighted the works of Jason Aaron and Kieron Gillen, writers of the new Star Wars and Darth Vader comics respectively. We are not going to discuss Kanan‘s Greg Weisman in this series, as Ben Wahrman already took a good look at his career, so we are going to finish this feature (for now) looking at Mark Waid, writer of the Princess Leia miniseries.

And boy, what a daunting task. While Aaron and Gillen are both excellent writers, their careers started relatively recently. But Waid is a real veteran. No, I’d even go beyond that label and say he’s a legend. Several comic book scholars (and this author) consider his seminal Kingdom Come series to be the dividing line between the Iron Age of Comics and the Modern Age. Yes: to some, he defined a whole era of comic book publishing, one marked by the marriage of the Silver Age’s sense of wonder and the Iron Age’s modern sensibilities. He’s written for extended periods almost every single iconic superhero, from Superman (co-writing the fantastic Superman 2000 proposal) and Batman, to the X-Men or Captain America, leaving his mark in all these well loved properties. He’s also very active in the community, never shying away from controversy and often offering a clear point of view on many polemical subjects. Some would call him larger than life. So how to choose just one issue to spotlight here? Read More

Legends: The Past Has Much to Teach

Posted on March 4, 2015by

We left the Legends universe in a rather unique spot. Much of the timeline of the GFFA had been filled in, and though there were still spaces to tell new stories, more of the universe was defined than many of us had perhaps hoped. Now that we are seeing new Star Wars publishing, in an era that had largely been untouched by the previous Expanded Universe, we can’t forget about the existence of Legends or its relevance. It might not be the current canon of Star Wars, but it’s still a part of ValleyOfTheDarkLords-EGTFthe framework of the universe. Much like ancient ruins (abandoned Sith tombs, anyone?), Legends has a great many of the answers and ideas we need for the next generation of Star Wars literature. Maybe even a Force-ghost or two.

In short, where did we leave Legends? As one reasonably complete story, to be honest. There are many time gaps still that could easily be filled in by other stories. Some of the earliest works do not make sense in the larger timeline simply because we didn’t have important pieces of the story. Nonetheless, there is a story that flows well together and allows for many new stories to be formed. We have all of the information right in front of us, and we can trace the development of Legends from its earliest days right up to July of 2013. We can even see where Legends might have gone if it hadn’t been decanonized.

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