John Ostrander on Dawn of the Jedi, Legacy, and Character Versus Action

Posted on December 16, 2013by and Interviews

John Ostrander, alongside frequent collaborator Jan Duursema, has built up likely the most far-reaching Star Wars résumé ever—first with the prequel-era saga of Quinlan Vos, then far into the future with Luke Skywalker’s great (great?) grandson Cade in Legacy, and most recently going all the way back to the beginning in Dawn of the Jedi, which resumed this past month with the new miniseries Force War. If Star Wars history were a map, you could say that Ostrander/Duursema are the pins holding it up at the corners. John recently took the time to look back with us at Legacy‘s future, and forward at DotJ’s past.

 

 

Eleven-ThirtyEight: It’s been over seven years since Legacy first debuted in June 2007. You have been in the comic industry for decades and contributed to and/or created numerous titles. What are your thoughts on the impact Legacy had on the Expanded Universe and in your mind what is the legacy of this series?

John Ostrander: What is the legacy of Legacy? <g> To be honest – it beats me. Does it have one? It’s not something with which I concern myself very much. I do the work, I hope the stories entertain, and I let the legacy, if any, take care of itself.
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What Star Wars Can Learn From Mass Effect

Posted on December 13, 2013by Feature Articles, Pen and Paper
You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you'll never be better than Commander Shepard.
You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard, but you’ll never be better than Commander Shepard.

In the previous incarnations of this series examining what Star Wars could stand to take a few lessons from, Mike Cooper examined the Avatar franchise (no, not that one) and Lucas Jackson took a long look at the exquisitely-executed pseudohistorical freerunning-with-a-side-of-murder simulators that comprise Assassin’s Creed. In today’s article, we’ll be probing another series of popular video games: BioWare’s Mass Effect, unhelpfully defined by Wikipedia as “a series of science fiction action role-playing third person shooter video games.”

For those whose knowledge of the franchise begins and ends with that vague, kitchen sink-esque description, we’ll take a few moments to elaborate on the nature of the games and the overarching story before we move on to the meat of the article. In Mass Effect, players take on the role of Commander [insert name here] Shepard, a highly-trained marine in the military of the Systems Alliance (the interstellar arm of humanity) in the year 2183, serving aboard the SSV Normandy, a state-of-the-art prototype stealth reconnaissance frigate.

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Top Shelf: Rogue Planet

Posted on December 12, 2013by Cry Havac
Rogue Planet, by Greg Bear

There are very few Star Wars books that really hold up as great works of art. Many are great genre entertainment, fun and excellent by the standards of tie-in fiction or pulp space opera adventure. But few are the kind you’d care to show a snooty friend to make the case for the literary merit of the Expanded Universe. One of the few novels to pass that bar is Rogue Planet, written by multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Greg Bear, and that’s why Rogue Planet belongs among Top Shelf’s collection of the best of the EU.

When I speak of literary quality, I don’t mean that Rogue Planet is comparable with Hemingway. Rather, that it examines deep themes with maturity and sports excellent characterization and prose. It is a serious, rewarding portrait of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship that explores ideas about life, morality, and responsibility in a grand, mystical science-fiction setting.

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Dear Fandom: Stop Trying to Quantify Everything

Posted on December 10, 2013by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

This is a Star Wars site, and I try hard to keep us on topic (our Twitter account is a different story). However, I also try hard to keep us looking at the “big picture” instead of the minutiae, and sometimes, that means talking about larger “geek culture” issues that might exhibit themselves in SW fans, but are by no means limited to them. As such, I’ll endeavor to use franchise-relevant examples in this piece more often than not, but it should be understood that I’m not levying any charges here against SW in particular.

I’m here to say that we need to get out of the habit of assigning numerical values to every little thing. Not everything needs a number attached to it. Not everything, pragmatically, really can have a number attached to it. And some things very much should not have numbers attached to them.

This extends to ranking things, as well. Let’s face it: everyone’s favorite Star Wars movie is Empire. It’s accepted wisdom. But that will never stop a SW geek from telling you so if they’re given the opportunity, and typically continuing from there into the other five films.

I’ve never been a big RPG person; maybe that’s why I feel a disconnect here. I know a lot of us grow up in that universe—where everything from the sharpness of your sword to the firmness of your constitution has an exact value without which the game doesn’t work. I played the Knights of the Old Republic games because I wanted to experience their stories, but leveling and friend:enemy ratios and dark side points were all things I had to endure, not valuable parts of the experience in their own right.
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Crazy Old Wizards – Re-Re-Thinking Vergere

Posted on December 9, 2013by Feature Articles

“You’re Sith, aren’t you?”

She went very, very still. “Am I?”

*     *     *     *     *

You recognize this little exchange, don’t you, little Jedi?

It’s from Traitor by Matthew Stover. The questioner is the teenage Jacen Solo – Han and Leia’s son – and the answer is from his enigmatic alien mentor Vergere,

Within the novel, the question is never directly answered, and it doesn’t need to be. It seems to serve principally to illustrate Jacen’s naïveté, revealing the inadequacy of the categories that he’s using to try to interpret the world, and the fear and insecurity which rise from that inadequacy: he’s a hardened young warrior, a killer of monsters – but in his heart and soul, he’s still afraid of the dark.

In subsequent novels, though, a more straightforward answer has been given to Jacen’s question. Vergere has indeed been portrayed as a Sith acolyte, a prose-fiction counterpart to Asajj Ventress and Savage Opress.

Moreover, this apparent “retcon” of Vergere’ backstory been closely associated with a shift in Jacen’s own trajectory as a character.

In Traitor, it seemed, Vergere was trying to help Jacen overcome his fear of the dark, by giving him a more honest understanding of the Force, one less bound up with ideas of dualistic conflict. In the later novels, however, the result has been turned on its head. As Vergere’s Sith identity has been revealed to the reader, and to Jacen, Jacen has become a Sith himself – a crazed tyrant who was eventually assassinated by his twin sister.

The implication seems to be that she was just setting him up for a fall. Read More