Who Should Own Star Wars?

Posted on March 18, 2015by , , and

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The best part about choosing topics for Not A Committee, Eleven-ThirtyEight’s group format, is that sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about an issue myself. When I read this article on Vox a few weeks back, highlighting what’s known as the “Despecialized Edition” of A New Ho—ah, I’m sorry, Star Wars—and lamenting the fact that such exhaustive fan work can only be distributed in defiance of the law, I could see both sides of the issue. Not that I was clamoring for Star Wars to become public domain necessarily, but us dedicated fans are so used to talking about the franchise as modern mythology, the contemporary equivalent of Beowulf or The Odyssey, that we can kind of take for granted the fact that nobody owns Grendel and Odysseus, while Luke Skywalker is someone’s property—for a long time one specific person’s property, and now the property of one monstrously huge and mercilessly ligitious corporation.

So as I am empowered to do in these situations, I farmed it out. I put the question to the staff, in these exact words: “is there an argument to be made for ANH (at least) to be in the public domain, either by now or at some definite point in the future? Should Lucasfilm be able to own it for eternity, or does its cultural importance mean it should belong to everybody?”

While the complexity of this issue was one easy consensus to reach, the breadth, and content, of their answers were certainly an education. Read More

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