Smile Time Variety Hour

To everyone on American Idol/Keeping Up With The Whoevers/America’s Next Top Something  – this is what you’re going to look like in twenty years:

Although I admit I never get tired of seeing the Rerun Dance.

Comic Wars: Episode 3

The third chapter of the Star Wars comic book sees the heroes finally reaching the Death Star. In fact, that’s the title of the chapter, in a strange, very non-sci-fi font.

I have to say I’m rather impressed that they are using words like “foemen”, which, even to this day, I had to look up on the web. I could gather what it means by its parts, but had never actually seen that word before. Kudos to Roy Thomas for trying to elevate the level of vocabulary in his comics.

Meanwhile, on the Millenium Falcon, Luke is still referring to Ben by his full name, and Ben is still referring to the Force in scare quotes.

And, apparently, Luke has already almost forgotten what The Force is, even though it’s been mentioned sixteen times since he met Ben and needs to recap what he thinks it is. You can tell Ben has had about enough of Luke by the shade of red he’s turning in the first panel of the second row. Get that man a Beta-blocker, stat!

But Ben recovers enough to continue Luke’s training.

This sequence is only notable for the awesome sound effects the artists included. As I recall, from elementary school chums, “Swissssh” represents the sound of a basketball passing through the basket without making a sound by touching any hard surfaces. A case of “nothing but net”, as it were. In this case, it means Luke can’t see shit so he completely misses the remote. Notice how they don’t show the remote shooting Luke in the butt, like they did in the movie. And “Forp!” is just funny.

And on that point, why does Han have a remote and a “blast helmet” in his ship? The remote only seems to be useful for lightsaber training, as anyone half-skilled with a blaster could take it out pretty easily, and if they didn’t they’d shoot a hole in the side of the ship and kill everyone onboard. Sounds like something any space pilot should stock.

And the “blast helmet”? A helmet with a “blast shield” fixed in place? What good is that for anyone? Is it supposed to be like a welding mask, in that you can’t see anything but the brightest light? I don’t think so – that visor looks pretty opaque to me. I dunno, maybe starship repairs are supposed to be done completely blind.

But soon, of course, our heroes come out of hyperspace expecting to see Alderaan, but finding nothing but “a small moon”.

Once again, the comic writer’s have inadvertently inserted an English-based idiom into the dialog. In the fourth of the six panels (that’s a lot of panels), somebody – we’re not sure who – says “Holy–!”. Since the only “religion” we’re aware of in the Star Wars universe is the Jedi cult, there is really no call for using this term. It’s like a Hindu stubbing his toe and saying, “Jesus Christ!”.

Then we finally get a good closeup of the Death Star.

The first thing that strikes me is that it looks like the Falcon is *not* going to fit into one of those docking bays. And, from what we’ve seen, the Falcon is smaller, height-wise than the TIE fighers, so it’s not clear what those docking bays were meant to accommodate.

Also, when Han (or whoever) says, “would you look at the size of that thing!?”, they look like they’re about to collide with it, so they’d better plan quickly. And we see that the writers had to slam some more “space” lingo into the dialog where it wasn’t wanted, making Han say, “They’re still not going to suck Han Solo up like so much space dust–”.

First of all, Han never referred to himself by his own name after introducing himself to Luke and Ben. And second of all … “space dust”? What is this, Buck Rogers?

So, of course they hide in the secret compartments in the floor of the ship and ambush the “crack Imperial Troopers — those cruel murderous guardians of a far-flung galactic empire”. Really? I thought they were Stormtroopers, the slowest, most useless, poorly-armed, -armored and -disciplined troops ever known to man. What are these crack murderous troops you are referring to, O scribe of the comic?

Take note of the second panel in the second row. The officer says, “TK421! Why aren’t you at your post?” Why, oh why, did he stick to the script in this miniscule example, when the writers felt no qualms about messing about with much more notable lines? Granted, there’s no percentage in changing “TK421″ to anything else, but on the same token, there was no reason to change “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, or the number of the garbage compacter they were in (next chapter), either.

Also, we get to see another great sound effect: “NRRLK!” I’m not even sure how to pronounce that – there’s no vowels.

Once they get into the control room, Han gets petulant and is not in a mood to save the princess.

The conversation between Luke and Han where Luke tries to convince Han to go save Leia is a pivotal moment in the movie. It shows us the battle between Luke’s wide-eyed optimism and Han’s weather-beaten cynicism. And how Luke figures out how to appeal to Han’s greed rather than his morality to try to rescue the Princess.

In the movie, he starts out with the fact that she’s the one who sent the droids and that they’re going to kill her. Only then does he resort to wealth and reward.

The comic writers saw fit to replace all that with, “She’s beautiful”, “So’s life”, “She’s rich”, “So’s–huh? Rich?”.

So Luke skips the whole moral part of it and goes straight for Han’s libido. And when that’s not enough, he appeals to his wallet. That will probably make a great story for Han and Leia’s kids and grandkids: “I wasn’t interested in rescuing your mother for her beauty. It was her vast quantities of money that got me off my ass.”

Plus, I didn’t think you could cross your legs like that in Stormtrooper armor.

So, of course they bluff their way into the detention center and end up in a big firefight.

In which Han says possibly one of the most cryptic phrases in the comic so far: “All right, Chewie — starting blasting!”

Is he telling Chewie to start firing? Or is he informing him that he (Han) is proceeding to start shooting? I don’t understand. Maybe he has to yell to be heard over the strange “FTIK” and “ZIK” sound effects.

Tune in next time to see our heroes battle with a trash compactor. Then a toaster, and a fondue pot. Hey, why not? It was the seventies.

Zombies vs. Strippers, Round 2

If you’ve ever wanted to hear the line, “Them’s crack-whore zombies!”, there’s probably something wrong with you. But head on over to the Cutting Room Floor and find out for sure.

Guns, Chicken Fingers, and Pornos

Episode 2 of “Trailer Pod Boys” is on-line. Check is out here at the Trailer Pod Boys Podcast site.

This week we jump right into the round table discussion of the first 3 episodes of the 1st season of Trailer Park Boys.

MultiMillia

Don’t look now, but there are more zombies over at the Cutting Room Floor.