Baltimore Comic Con 2015: Interview with Mark Waid

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Bria

Given what a fan I am of Mark Waid’s Marvel work, briefly chatting with him about his work on the Princess Leia series was one of the highlights of my Baltimore Comic Con this year. I loved the heck out of those five issues and was excited to have the chance to ask him all the questions the book left me with and to talk Star Wars in general. And hey! It’s not every day that you get to interview someone who just won the Harvey for Best Writer the night before.

Bria: The first question we always ask everyone is how did you become a Star Wars fan?

Mark Waid: I’m old enough to say I was there on opening day. I was there… all right, I have a story. This is a horrible, horrible story that makes me look like an idiot. So… it’s not true. I was not there on opening day. My friends and I got together that weekend and there were six or seven of us and we were having the same argument that you always have when you get six or seven people together on a Saturday night in a car with no direction. They go “Okay, we need to see a movie.” Okay, well there’s a couple of movies opening up this weekend. What do we see? Everyone wanted to see this one movie and I fought really hard to see this other movie because I said, “Look, this is going to be amazing. It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to change your life.” So because I fought for it, we went to see… You Light Up My Life. And I never lived it down. The next weekend, we all saw Star Wars and they were all like, “You idiot! What is wrong with you?” Then that was it. Like everyone else, I saw it a dozen times that summer and it was amazing.

Which is your favorite film?

The second one by far. It just… to manage to take all the stuff that made the first one cool and then add some gravitas was really awesome.

Favorite character? (I know that’s a hard one.)

It is a hard one! I really do think it is Leia.

Mine too! So did you pitch Marvel to do Star Wars? From what I hear, everyone and their mother were calling the editors and saying “I really want to write it!” or did they come to you?

They actually came to me and they said, “We want a Princess Leia series. Are you interested?” While I love the character, I didn’t have a story. I didn’t know where we wanted to go with it and I was on the verge of saying, “Look I appreciate this but this is not for me.” And then I started thinking about… if you let me do it the day after A New Hope ends; if you let me do it the day after and you get a chance to really delve into what it’s like for her to have lost everything? Then I’m in and they totally bought that. That’s really where it stood; the idea that in first movie, there’s no time for it to sink in for her. Continue reading →

Baltimore Comic Con 2015: Interview with Charles Soule

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Bria

This weekend at Baltimore Comic Con, I was lucky enough to chat for a few minutes with the awesome Charles Soule. You may know him as the writer who’s also a lawyer who wrote a fantastic run on She-Hulk last year (amongst other things) but Star Wars fans currently know him as the guy who’s writing the rad Lando limited series for Marvel. We sat down and talked all things Star Wars and about his great work with Alex Maleev on the Lando book.

Bria: So the first question we always ask everyone is how did you become a Star Wars fan?

Charles Soule: Oh man, I’ve been a Star Wars fan since I was a little kid. I went to see the movies with my family. I must’ve seen a release of A New Hope at some point because I would’ve been a baby.

The ’96 ones?

No, it would’ve been before that. I don’t know—they kept rereleasing them for the first ten years or so and I must’ve seen it at that point but I remember very distinctly seeing the AT-ATs come out of the fog in Empire Strikes Back and all the Cloud City stuff which was so amazing. I had all the toys and stuff like that. So I was a fan from pretty young and my whole family was pretty into it so it was something that I could share with my brothers and sister and it was great.

Do you have a favorite one of the original films or any of the movies really. I’m not a Prequel hater. Continue reading →

Walmart’s Star Wars Commercials Challenge Antiquated Gender Roles

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Emily

I’ve been spending a lot of time watching daytime television while I’ve been on maternity leave, which means I’ve seen some commercials I haven’t seen watching prime time. The first one I saw made me smile. “The Circle Is Complete” starts with a dad bringing home a Kenner action figure for his son in 1983. Fast forward to now, the little boy is now a dad and brings home a TIE fighter Lego set–for his little girl.

This thrilled me.

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There Has Been… An Uprising.

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Bria

Star Wars Uprising was officially released on September 10th. I refrained from downloading it until September 12th. I maxed out my XP and the storyline 11 days later. This is weird.

Unless it says KOTOR on the box, I’m not much of a gamer. I enjoy playing video games when I have the opportunity but I rarely lose an entire weekend to a new game and I don’t even have a system besides my laptop. So you can see why I was so surprised that I was able to go through the game so fast even with my obsessive and competitive personality.

Uprising is addicting and not what I expected. On the game play front, it’s fairly simple once you get the hang of it and doesn’t require much skill. Essentially, you select which opponent you want to attack and then your character does so. Things get a little more interesting once you can train in skills that take your attacks up a notch. I’m a fan of the dodge and roll and the spray of blaster fire for efficiency. The only planet that keeps giving me trouble is Anoat thanks to the poison and the never-ending onslaught of nek dogs.

At a certain point, the game does tell you in a not so subtle way to chill the hell out and take a break. The main story missions are locked depending on your character level; something that comes into play once you’re closer around level 18 and it’s harder to level up. Every day, you’re offered a Daily Opportunity mission, 5 Assault Missions (that eventually trigger a Sector Battle which is basically a day long free for all that makes you gape at the Victory Points totals some people rack up), and a Daily Credits mission for each planet that you’ve completed the story for. While you can play repeatable missions as often as possible, they don’t offer nearly as much in terms of gear and nothing for XP. Granted, the XP part doesn’t really matter once you hit Level 40 and don’t get XP anymore… (No, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?)

Continue reading →

Tosche Station Radio #128: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy with Alexandra Bracken

Posted on September 28, 2015 by admin

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This week on Tosche Station Radio we are incredibly fortunate to have Alexandra Bracken join us! We dispense with the usual format this week because, let’s be honest, chatting with Alex was too much fun to let anything else get in the way. We discuss The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, Alex’s love of all thing Star Wars, and our mutual love of puppies. Sit back and enjoy, this is perhaps the most fun we’ve had interviewing a guest on the show!

Alex Bracken can be found online on Twitter, Tumblr and at AlexandraBracken.com

Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of Majestic Giraffe Productions. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and your support on Patreon!

Review: Kanan #6

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Bria

It’s another issue of Kanan but there’s no puppy dog padawan in sight. We’ve jumped forward in time again to rejoin the crew of the Ghost as they land on Kaller—the first time Kanan’s been back in over a decade. Overall, the issue is a fun read and a nice way to tie things back to the rest of the Rebels crew that we all know and love but I often found myself missing the Clone Wars era story about Kanan. There’s still so much that we don’t know about how Caleb really ended up becoming the Kanan that we met in A New Dawn.

One of the really fun things about this book is that Greg Weisman writes it in addition to having been an instrumental voice in creating Rebels. More than a few times, I silently marveled at how I could hear the voice actors reading the lines in my head and then subsequently chuckle at myself since obviously Weisman is going to have a damn good handle on who they all are.

Pepe Larraz takes a well-deserved break this issue and so we have Jacopo Camagni on art this week with colors by David Curiel. He draws a very nice Sabine and the colors of her hair stand out nicely without falling into anime territory thanks to Curiel’s good work. Camagni definitely seems to have fun with facial expressions and why yes, I do believe I caught a hint of puppy!Caleb in a panel or two.

At the end of the day, this was an enjoyable issue and a nice way to tie up Kanan’s history with everything that happened on Kaller. It’s definitely not an issue that you should skip simply because of the time jump. Your enjoyment level depends entirely upon personal taste. That said, I’m definitely looking forward to going back in time to the adventures of young Caleb… especially given the cover for issue #7!

Review: The Princess, The Scoundrel, and The Farm Boy

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Bria

At its core, the young reader retellings of the Original Trilogy sounded like they were unnecessary. After all, hasn’t the target audience seen the movies? Doesn’t Lucasfilm have enough of our money? Thankfully, the folks over in Lucasfilm’s publishing office found a way to put a fun spin on each of the three books and definitely caught our attention with the released excerpts. All three are out today but first, obviously, is The Princess, The Scoundrel, and The Farm Boy by Alexandra Bracken. The concept is simple: tell a third of the story from the point of view of each of our three main heroes. Leia gets the first third, Han the middle, and Luke the finale and this is where the fun begins.

Bracken draws from not just the films but also the radio dramas for inspiration as she dives into each character’s heads and proves herself to be a good pick for the book and for Star Wars. At times, it can be a little jarring to read the film dialogue verbatim but that’s unavoidable for this sort of book and not a mark against her writing. Instead, it’s more worthwhile to focus on where Bracken really succeeds. It’s a relatively quick read that adds enough to the story that we already know so well to stay interesting to adult readers as well as kids. There are some lines that will make a reader laugh out loud and others that are just so beautifully written and capture everything about a moment.

Characterization is where this book really succeeds and is does so brilliantly as we get inside every characters’ head. Bracken joins an elite yet growing list of authors who write a very good Leia. She has the unenviable task of writing Leia be tortured by Vader and as she loses everything and doing so while we’re right inside of her head and she does so well. It’d be fantastic to see what she could do with the freedom to write her own plot.

Of the three sections, Luke’s is probably the least successful as it mostly ends up being starfighter battle scenes which, by their very nature, tend to be a little less engaging on the page than on the screen. The longer scene where he and Leia talk on the Falcon and then the added one with Wedge before he’s allowed to join Red Squadron are standouts for how awesome they are. It’s moments like these that make the book definitely worth reading.

While it may not be a must-have for every Star Wars fan, The Princess, The Scoundrel, and The Farm Boy is an enjoyable read that breaths fresh life into a classic story and Alex Bracken is definitely a welcome addition to the Star Wars galaxy.

Tosche Station Radio #127: Aftermath!

Posted on September 19, 2015 by admin

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Dunc from Club Jade joins us this week to review Aftermath and where it stacks u to what we had seen in Legends!

Kicking off the show, the hosts highlight What’s New on the Blog. We had our Dragon Con 2015 coverage! There were Aftermath reviews from Bria, Emily, and a Go/No-go. Nanci reviewed Lost Stars and Bria wrote about Nash Windrider and the True Power of the Empire. Nanci reviewed The Weapon of a Jedi and Bria reviewed Moving Target. We have a new staff writer, Matthew Bowers! He reviewed the Rebels Season 1 blu ray set and the Rey’s Speeder LEGO set. Finally, Bria reviewed Darth Vader #9, Star Wars #9, Lando #4.

From there we head to Fixer’s Flash, where the hosts have been busy with Dragon Con and reading. Deak’s Dirt is light this week, but Biggs’ Bull#&$! brings word of Rogue One and Episode VIII filming!

On Camie’s Concerns this week, we take a look at Aftermath. What do we think of it, and where does it stack up to what we saw in Legends? Could it be that our memories of Legends might be a little rose-colored? Tune in and find out.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and your support on Patreon!

Review: Star Wars #9

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Bria

Things aren’t looking up for Han, Leia, or Luke this week as they find themselves betrayed and in the Empire’s crosshairs and chasing after a lightsaber respectively. Star Wars is back this week with Issue #9 from Jason Aaron and Stuart Immonen and, well, we’ve still got a lot of questions.

But first, a bit of unsolicited advice for my fellow reviewers. Try reading a comic issue and then getting on an exercise bike and mulling over the issue in your mind because boy doe sit do wonders. How else would I have thought of the idea of just reviewing this issue in hashtags and then determined it was a poor one?

That said, #NotAllHutts would probably be Grakkus the Hutt’s hashtag of choice because, see, he collects Jedi antiques which makes him different from other hutts who only do the whole smuggling drug ring thing. Not all hutts. The Star Wars universe seems to be hell bent on exploring the heck out of how Luke goes from knowing nothing to knowing slightly less than nothing about being a Jedi over the course of three years. It’s not Jason Aaron’s fault in the least as he’s just one of at least four different groups within Star Wars that have decided to tackle this issue but it’s starting to feel a little old for me. Mostly, it just seems like this is the only plot line he’s really been given lately. Leia may be sent on a lot of missions but at least they’ve all resonated for different reasons. And speaking of the other Skywalker twin…

Leia is a delight in this book. It finally hit me (during the aforementioned cycle time) that Aaron has really nailed her attitude during the Death Star rescue mission over the past few issues. He’s seemed to find the perfect mix of take-charge and over-your-crap Leia in this book.

On the art front, Stuart Immonen is perfect. Please let us keep him for forever. (Except for the Kenobi interludes. Give us Simone Bianchi for this.) But Immonen the rest of the time, please and thank you.

Review: Lando #4

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Bria

Okay, that’s it. From now on, Lando’s real surname will always be Draper in my mind. Lando Calrissian-Draper. Lando #4 by Charles Soule and Alex Maleev is out today and boy oh boy is our favorite charming scoundrel in over his head.

This review contains some spoilers for the issue because it’s impossible to discuss otherwise and if we’re honest, this review is really just a bunch of thoughts about the issue.

Continue reading →