Can a Force User Ever Be “Gray?”

Posted on March 21, 2016by Guest Editorials

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The concept of a Gray Jedi—one who walks the line between both the light and the dark sides of the Force—is popular among many in the Star Wars fan community. And I don’t blame them! After seeing the dogmatic, stuck-up Jedi of the prequel trilogy, who wouldn’t want to add a bit more of the passionate flair characteristic of the dark side? And why shouldn’t Jedi be allowed to use some Force lightning on their foes every now and then? In our postmodern era, with anti-heroes like Batman and Deadpool, doesn’t it seem that a strict adherence to the light side is a bit…old fashioned?

Yet while at first glance the existence of a Gray Jedi seems possible, and maybe even admirable in theory, I will argue that the canonical Star Wars universe leads us to reject this possibility. A Force user who willfully attempts to use both sides of the Force over the long term cannot hope to maintain their internal moral compass—ultimately they will fall. Read More

Rebels Revisited: Soul of Silicon, or Waste of Runtime?

Posted on March 18, 2016by , , and

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Ben: Something that I’ve praised Star Wars Rebels for for a long time now is its character development. Because it focuses on a central core of characters and tells its story in a chronological order, the show gives the characters the opportunity to learn and change as the story progresses and time passes within the narrative. We’ve seen Ezra, Kanan, Sabine and even Zeb evolve their personalities and beliefs (some more than others) as their horizons have changed, their viewpoints have been challenged and they’ve been through increasingly difficult trials.

But there are a couple of characters in the show who haven’t really evolved in that sense as we move toward the end of the show’s second season. Hera is a major one, as is our favorite ISB officer Agent Kallus. And, of course, Chopper. Character development in that sense hasn’t really happened, because none of them have really changed. The Hera we meet in this show, for instance, is basically the same Hera that we see in A New Dawn, give or take a few circumstances.

There’s another aspect to character development, though, and that’s how an audience’s perception of a character changes as we see more of them. We see Hera and Kallus differently now than we did at the beginning of the show because we’ve learned more about them. And the same can be said for everyone’s favorite grumpy astromech droid after this week’s episode. Chopper’s character after his adventure with AP-5 is the same as it is before, but we learn more about him and our own view of him evolves. Read More

The Jaxxon Factor: Are Comics Really Better Now?

Posted on March 16, 2016by , , and Not A Committee

msw-jaxxoncoverMike: When I was first acquainting myself with the Star Wars franchise in the late nineties, the volume of Expanded Universe material I felt it necessary to catch up on was already quite daunting—most of a decade’s worth of novels and comics were already out there, and more were arriving all the time. Luckily, one huge batch of content was pretty widely regarded as not worth my time: the original 107-issue Marvel Star Wars comic series. Having run from 1977 to 1986, it was more than a decade out of print by the time I laid eyes on A New Hope, and to say the stories had fallen out of fashion during the peak of the Bantam era would be an understatement. So for a long time, I didn’t see a reason to go anywhere near them.

Much later, well after the prequels were over, I finally decided to give them a go. It took two tries—first in 2009 and again in 2013 after Episode VII had been announced—but I eventually worked my way through the whole series. I got to experience firsthand things I’d been aware of in some cases only by rough description (Jaxxon, Arbra, Valance the Hunter) and in other cases by their appearances in more recent EU (Zeltrons, Nagai, and of course Lumiya). Reading almost ten years’ worth of comics over a (cumulative) span of several months, the series’s evolving tone was incredibly pronounced, from the borderline slapstick of the earliest stories to the relative seriousness of the Kiro and Tay Vanis storylines to, near the end, a tenuous balance between the two extremes as the Hiromi weaseled their way into the Nagai/Tof conflict. Read More

Escape Pod: The Katana Fleet

Posted on March 14, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

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In addition to the many existing Legends stories that are ripe for adaptation in the new canon, there are some that, while full of potential, Legends never really got around to telling. One of these is the legend (ha) of the Katana fleet. Dating back to Dark Force Rising, the second book of the Thrawn trilogy, the Katana fleet was a huge force of two hundred Dreadnaught heavy cruisers that went missing thirty-two forty-five twenty-seven many years before the Battle of Yavin only to be discovered by the smuggler Talon Karrde, and eventually to become a piece in Grand Admiral Thrawn’s game against the New Republic.

The fleet was constructed at a time when the Old Republic’s power had grown stagnant—we knew that much even in 1992—and was meant to symbolize a return to greatness. All two hundred ships had their controls slaved to the flagship, meaning that they could be crewed by a scant two thousand people each (as opposed to the ships’ usual complements of sixteen thousand, or later Star Destroyer crews of more than double that). This way, the Katana fleet represented military might without militarization; the cutting-edge slave-circuit technology meant increased security for the Republic with a bare minimum of its sons and daughters put in harm’s way.

That was the plan, anyway. Upon the fleet’s launch, the crew of the Katana itself was ravaged by a deadly virus that had the fun side effect of driving them insane before it killed them. In their delirium, the crew jumped the Katana to random hyperspace coordinates and brought the entire fleet with them, never to be seen—by the Republic—again. Read More

Not Her Father’s Star Wars: Raising a Daughter in the Disney Era

Posted on March 11, 2016by Guest Editorials
“I think…this is a good movie.” - Anne, a few days prior from turning 3, uponwatching A New Hope for the first time, her first Star Wars film.
“I think…this is a good movie.” – Anne, a few days prior from turning 3,
upon watching A New Hope for the first time, her first Star Wars film.

When my daughter Anne was born, I was a bit of a lapsed Star Wars fan. As a kid in Junior High and High School I dove into the new (and not just to me) Expanded Universe. I devoured the Zahn trilogy novels as they were released, bought the monthly issues of the early Dark Horse Comics as I found out about them (I started monthlies with Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith and Dark Empire II), and fully embraced the Shadows of the Empire multimedia project. I saw all the Special Editions in the theatre, slowly downloaded the Episode I teaser trailer, stood in line for Phantom Menace tickets, did midnight madness for action figures, went to the very first showing in my hometown, actually did enjoy the movie, and then I went off to college, where my interest in Star Wars media in general somewhat, well, went away.

Now, to be clear, Star Wars hadn’t done anything to offend me. I didn’t rage-quit the fandom. I didn’t hate George Lucas or accuse him of doing dark things to my childhood. My notice and interest just went firmly into the periphery. I didn’t hate Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith at all, I didn’t feel like they did any sort of violence to childhood memories like some appeared to have believed, but, well, they were to me, just Movies That Happened, and movies that I saw, and enjoyed as I enjoyed many of the other movies I’d seen.

When The Clone Wars animated film came out, I noted its existence, but circumstances didn’t permit me to get to a theater to see it. I didn’t have cable at the time, and didn’t have the strong need to begin watching the series as it aired on Cartoon Network when it came on.

It was, again, a thing that existed, and that was cool in theory, but not a Priority. Read More