Posts Tagged ‘ Star Wars ’

In no particular order…

Get past the first three chapters of Alastair Reynold’s House of Suns so I can start Glen David Gold’s Sunnyside.

Tell everyone that my favorite book is Carter Beats the Devil and you should all read it right now.

Write another column for DVDSnapshot because I’m way late with that.

Read this week’s comics (I’ve only read Dark Reign: The List: X-Men; huh, I was right, whadda ya know?).

Watch last night’s Fringe.

Rewatch last night’s FlashForward.

Don’t forget to DVR Dollhouse tonight.

Send people over to Tiny Broken Films.

Draw a name from a hat for the Captain Britain Giveaway (I promise, I’ll get in touch with the winner Monday at the latest).

Work out how to run the next giveaway, yes?

Finish Starman Omnibus Volume 3.

Remind people that High Moon collected comes out next week and you can get it on Amazon for only a little over $10 for 180 pages of goodness.

Put some comics on ebay.

Turn people on to Adam Pawlus’ excellent Figure of the Day Star Wars figure blog.

Stop buying toys under the pretense that the unborn will play with them in five year’s time.

Email back the awesome artist who emailed me this week and write something for him.

Spend some quality time with the dog.

And the wife, I suppose.

Stop telling said wife that due to the size of my head, the unborn will come out like the Mekon only less green.

Pimp some other folks‘ blogs. Like these. Because I don’t do that enough, and I do read blogs, I just tend not to comment that much.

Comment more on blogs I read.

Block out the beat sheet for the next spec screenplay I’m working on, which has a premise so awesome that it’s a guaranteed hit. Guaranteed, I tell you.

Rewrite the last spec screenplay I finished after leaving it to sit for a few more weeks.

Try and think of some topics to blog about that aren’t just random images.

Or, you know, lists.

Conquer world.

There, that should do it.

I was walking to work this morning and, being without my iPod for some reason, overheard the following conversation between a boy of about eight years and the lady walking him to school – who I assume was either his mother, grandmother or nanny.

Him: “I want the Emperor, Han Solo and Chewbacca.”
Her: “Hmm.”
Him: “But I really need the Emperor.”
Her: “Isn’t it more important that you’re playing the game rather than what dolls you have?”
Him: “They’re not dolls.”

Unfortunately at that point the people behind me headed in a different direction, but I’m pretty sure that the rest of the conversation involved a detailed description of the many, many differences between action figures and dolls, and how dolls were clearly for girls but action figures were obviously for boys.

I remember similar conversations when I was little around Star Wars toys specifically. Sure, I had a Hulk toy somewhere and maybe a Spider-Man toy, but it was the Star Wars ones which I collected almost religiously, playing with them every day.

I still remember when I was six years old and I was lying on the couch, under a blanket and off school. My dad came home and produced a Star Wars figure I’d never seen before: Han Solo in some kind of parka. On the picture on the card, he was riding some kind of weird horse that looked like nothing I’d ever seen, and the logo -

- the logo, with the original Star Wars logo wrapped around it, read The Empire Strikes Back.

It turned out that the figure was from the new movie that hadn’t been released yet. At that point, in the days before VCRs and TV showing movies a year after they’re released, I hadn’t even seen Star Wars, but I had a hardback annual reprinting the comics adaptation of the movie.

I actually think that this may have been the very first figure I got, but my memory is hazy on the point.

In any case, that Han Solo figure, and the fact that my dad had given it to me when I was sick, really paved the way for what – to his eternal confusion – became pretty much a lifelong habit.

The thing is, I think that I knew in my heart that my mum had picked the toy up and passed it to him to give to me as he came home. I knew somehow that with the hours he worked he didn’t really have time to stop in and pick something up for me, but that was on a subconscious level.

It wouldn’t really have mattered anyway. I loved that figure – and my dad – for opening the promise of a new adventure with these characters that I’d read about.

And to this day, I find myself explaining to him and my mum that they’re not dolls.

They’re action figures.

Pics from here and here.

…or a bad one, apparently…


And, of course, the inevitable

I’m probably going to get slammed for cribbing the code from the offical Star Wars site…click here for the original page.

There’s also some interesting background on the development of Boba Fett on the site here.

I kind of like the idea of a line of Shocktroopers – a shame we never got to see any of that kind of troops in the movies.

via

Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!

Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!

I would have watched the hell out of this show.

Just sayin’.

Sounds like something Morrison would dream up after a bad trip – but instead, Darth Bat and co are from Dean T Fraser’s awesome Empire of the Bat.

Sweet!

Via Agent M

I found these recruitment posters -designed by Feng Zhu – over on io9, having missed them when they first popped up.

I tell you, I don’t recall there being any Stormtroopers dressed like this (more at the links above)…

As much as people diss the Star Wars prequels, as much as people (stupidly) complain that George Lucas raped their childhood, as much as I think Jar Jar Binks was a monumentally badly executed idea*, I can’t hate the prequels.

Not even the worst of them, The Phantom Menace, which was released ten years ago today. Because as flawed as it is (and oh, you fair haired, yippee-screaming moppet, it is flawed) it’s also got some really good bits.

The podrace sequence; Darth Maul’s double ended lightsaber; the final lightsaber duel; the space battle. All are good, well executed scenes.

I sometimes think that people forget that this is a movie that, ultimately, is targeted at kids, too – and I know plenty of kids who think that it’s funny. They like it – but then they don’t have the history or emotional connection with Star Wars that we do; they didn’t grow up with it. And honestly, after the Ewoks, we should have known to be on our guard anyway.

Even so, I can still watch this trailer and remember the shudder of anticipation that I felt when I first saw it. And “Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi Wan Kenobi” still gets me in spite of myself.

However, if you still hate the Star Wars prequels, you could do worse than read Friend Of The Blog, Alert Nerd‘s Matt Springer’s free (!) ebook Poodoo – a collection of work he’s written over the past ten years about the Star Wars prequels. Did I mention it’s free?

So happy birthday, Phantom Menace. You may be the red-headed stepchild of the franchise, but you’re still mostly watchable to me.

*To be clear, I don’t think the idea of Jar Jar is a bad one; a native befriends the Jedi, rises to the rank of trusted confidante and eventually Senate representative where he’s manipulated into allowing Palpatine to take over as Emperor due to his naivety. But I think making him a faux-rastafarian comic character was a colossally stupid move.

Just wanted to share these two images from J Scott Cambell’s deviantart page, purely because I love them and they showcase a different side to his art.

That’s all.

Original image via

And I bet you thought I’d forgotten…

All Via

The good folk at Alert Nerd challenged the comics blogosphere to talk about their Scott and Jean a couple of weeks ago…and everyone was supposed to talk about it yesterday. And there were a lot – a lot! – of great posts.

I didn’t do it.

Partly because I kind of forgot, but partly because I don’t think I have a Scott and Jean. I don’t have something sacred that I just can’t discuss rationally.

I mean, you didn’t like the ending of BSG? Your prerogative, even if it means you’re wrong.

You didn’t like OMD? Me either. But the stuff that’s come after it is the best that Spider-Man has been in ten years, if not more.

You hate that Clark and Lois got married? Well, you’re a moron that can’t accept change and wants everything to be like it was when you were a kid, but I guess I can’t stop you from bitching.

You don’t like Star Trek Deep Space Nine, you don’t get that it’s the best that Star Trek ever was? Fine, your loss.

You hate that Cordelia and Conner slept together? Me too, but I’m not going to get worked up about it.

You think that Dr Pulaski was better than Dr Crusher? Okay, you’re kind of weird – but she did have a certain Bones-esque quality to her.

You’re going to cry and whine about how George Lucas raped your childhood with the last Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies? Grow up, asshole, nobody made you watch them.

You hate what DC editorial did to Cassandra Cain? Me too – but it was more the execution than the edict.

So maybe I don’t have a sacred cow. Maybe I’ve just come around to accepting change. Maybe I know that eventually, everything in comics gets reversed, and different people read or see things differently so there are always going to be differences of opinion. I’m not going to get worked up about that.

So. No Scott and Jean for me.

Unless…

..unless you’re going to say something against New Warriors.

Because if you’re going to diss on the original New Warriors under Fabian Nicieza, if you’re not going to see that at the very least the first two years are as close to a perfect super-hero book as you’re going to get…

In fact if you’re going to take shots at anything in those first four or five years of their book…

…yep, even Night Thrasher on his stupid-ass skateboard..

…you do that and it is on.

Well, apparently.

Or, as the Wookies say, Happy Life Day!

Actually the Wookies would probably say something along the lines of ‘Rrooowr rooowr rooroow’ – so its lucky they’ve got friends to say it for them…

I not-so-proudly present the Star Wars Holiday Special! (And if you can’t bear to watch it all, at least watch the last part…)

And this is why Carrie Fisher turned to drugs…

EDIT: All the videos were yanked from YouTube by Lucasfilm. Guess they’re as embarrassed by it as everyone in it was!

This week in Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians, prove that being vastly intelligent and long-lived doesn’t stop them from being complete tools…or from being manipulated by obvious-big-villain-in-waiting, rogue Guardian Scar:

Via

(To be fair, the Jedi banned ALL relationships not just inter-Jedi ones…but don’t confuse me with facts!)

Even if he is miming, it’s pretty damn impressive. Lyrics are here

Via Newsarama and Topless Robot