Author Archives: Shane

Marvel Cosmic Primer

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It’s been a pretty slow news week on the SW front so I’ve decided to go ahead and throw this up on the jumbotron for you all to take a look at.  Star Wars is a big part of my fandom but it will always be second to my first love of geekdom, comic books.

Marvel Comics has never really been my thing.  I will freely admit that I am and have always been the quintessential DC fanboy, so most of my knowledge of Marvel probably isn’t any more than the average comic book fan.

There is one caveat to that, though, and it’s one that I’ve only discovered in the past couple of years.  At the same time that Marvel was rolling out what many people consider a landmark in comic events, Civil War, they were also running a different sprawling event, Annihilation.

Annihilation was a story line that was concerned with the cosmic level setting and characters that generally don’t get much more than cameos in the regular comics.  Characters like the Silver Surfer or Captain Marvel generally show up occasionally and do something but they don’t tend to stick around all that much.

This event was the spotlight for these characters.  One cosmic level entity, Annihilus, is trying to take over the galaxy and he’s being opposed by the heroes of the cosmic setting, many of them that most readers either don’t know or they don’t remember.  The primary characters of the story are former Heralds of Galactus and a really pretty old character that nobody had done anything with in quite a while, Nova.

To any of you out there that don’t typically like comic books but do love a pretty good sci-fi story, I would recommend Annihilation to any of you.  I will say, however, that there are somet things that reader needs to know in order to understand the situation.

That’s what this post is for, it’s probably going to be pretty long.  The actual primer starts after the jump.

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Ewoks are the Devil

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So, I’m working my way back through some of the books that I remember being either some of the worst books I read or those I was warned off of in the EU when I was younger. Right now, I’m working my way back through a book that I already know I can really rant on it for pages and pages, and I will. On the other hand, I’m learning some stuff about it. In comparison to Children of the Jedi, it reads like a masterpiece, it’s just some of the other bits that are just grating.

In the mean time, I owe you all something to take a look at. You get Ewoks.

At the end of the day, what are the things you remember about RotJ? The battle around the Death Star, the Sarlaac, the last lightsaber fight? Yeah, all of those are the good parts of it that I remember. Ewoks make my blood run cold.

More after the jump.

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Lazy Sunday Afternoon

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Looking for something to fill your time while there doesn’t seem to be anything to do with SW floating about? Well, how about this? Have you heard about Star Wars Uncut? It’s a project that was started in 2009 as a crowdsourced attempt to recreate the entirety of of SW:ANH as a fanmade piece. Well, a few months back, the project was completed and the ‘Director’s Cut’ was released, containing the handpicked best shots stitched together to recreate the entire film in 15 second clips. The project was actually nominated for an Emmy (Scratch that, the project won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media in 2010). So, follow this link and give it a watch.

Sorry, no embed, the site wasn’t cooperating. Here’s the trailer, though.

Apparently this is a thing I do now

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Is post Star Wars related parodies of pop music.  Or in this case, 3d animation of Stormtroopers dancing to pop music. For those curious and somehow unaware, the song is by LMFAO (God I wish I was making that up) and the animation is a piece of student work from the University of Lethbridge (Canada), New Media Department.

Children of the Jedi, Part 4 and Conclusion

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There are a few things that I expect when I’m reading a published book from a major series from a major publisher.

One of those things is editing.

Another one of those things is that when I read it, I don’t feel like I need to be proofing this for my fourteen-year-old brother for a freshman English assignment. The writer submitted this, which is one problem. The second problem is that someone then approved it.

And I just want to make this clear: at this point, I am not talking about the things I talked about before—story elements that don’t make sense, characters not acting like they should, etc. I’m talking about literal technical writing ability.

My expectations were obviously too high.

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What Scoundrels Could Mean for the EU at Large.

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I’m going to pitch an idea here that goes against my fundamental theory of Star Wars.  In my head, Star Wars is about the asymmetric struggle between two powers for control of the galaxy and good and evil and all that jazz.  Now, I may tend to come down on the side of what most people might consider ‘evil’ most of the time, but I will someday tell you why Palpatine may have been evil and how it might have been a good thing for the galaxy.  Suffice to say that evil sucks but it is efficient.

But like I said, my favorite SWEU stories are reflections of the movies and how they worked.  The original Thrawn trilogy is still my favorite EU narrative ever, and it perfectly mirrors the Original Trilogy, one relatively small group of people fighting for what they believe is right against a larger, more powerful group.  It just so happens that the small group is Thrawn’s fleet and the larger group is the Republic.

But that doesn’t mean that these kinds of stories always work, I have some serious problems with stories like Jedi Academy, where it’s still there, but it’s a rehash.  And some books that are really different from the formula I’ve enjoyed, like Allegiance or Choices of One.  So, obviously I’m willing to make some exceptions for good books.  Another one that I’m sure will win that exception is Scoundrels.  I can rest assured it’s going to be good because it’s Timothy Zahn and he’s never done anything to upset me in the EU.

But Scoundrels got me thinking about this whole idea.  It’s a particular kind of story, isn’t it?  It’s the heist story.  The most common thing it’s being compared to is Ocean’s Eleven but at the same time it’s really similar to The Italian Job or Gone in Sixty Seconds.  It’s a genre.  What does this kind of book mean for the continuing narrative of the EU?

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Moves like… You know what, just watch this video.

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So, one of the bigger hits of the past nebulous period of time has been a kind of dico-ey rock song by Maroon 5 called ‘Moves Like Jagger.’  The song has a catchy enough hook, but fails in that it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Rolling Stones.

And now this thing has happened.  The inevitable parody.  Moves like Jabba. The video is potentially NSFW, so watch it yourself before you show it to the kids. Embedded video after the jump.

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The Star Wars Art of Benjamin Carré

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Sometimes you just stumble across something awesome.  While looking at Kotaku.com last night I came across a piece of incredible Star Wars art.  The post included a link to the artist’s deviantart account and I decided to check it out.  I was taken completely off guard by the quality of this guy’s work.  After a bit of poking around, I found out that he had done some of the covers for Dark Horse Comics KOTOR series and figured out who he was.  His name is Benjamin Carré and his Deviant ID is orincar.

Now I’m linking you to this.  Because it AWESOME.  Check this out!