Comic Wars: Episode 8

Greetings, space-dweebs! And welcome once again to another episode of Comic Wars.

In the last episode, if you recall, I pointed you to a wonderfully pointed and sick critique of The Phantom Menace. Well, our prostitute-kidnapping friend has returned with a complete tear-down of Attack of the Clones. It’s just as good as the first one. Watch it.

In the mean time, we muddle our way through issue #8: Eight Against A World, starring Dick Van Patten – I mean Han Solo.

Now, the title should sound a little familiar. I suppose it was really too much to ask them to at least reach double digits before completely ripping off their own prior issue titles. Not only is it a repeat, it’s incredibly content-free, as well as incorrect: They are not fighting an entire world, just one band of ruffians. Did these people even read their own comic book? (I’m collecting quite a bit of evidence to suggest that they, in fact, did not.)

Allow me to briefly draw your attention to the blurb about Luke’s Deadly Mission. I’m not going to cover it much in this review, because it’s really boring. The short summary is thus: Luke leaves Yavin – piloting a Corellian Corvette all by himself, no less – to go look for a new hiding place for the Rebellion. Nowhere in this issue does he meet with any deadly foes, or even a mildly dangerous hyperspace detour.

Also note the guy on the far right in the blue spandex and brown vest. He is nowhere in the issue, I guarantee it. I can only assume, because of the floppy hat and goggles, that he is supposed to be the cocky kid who reminds Han of Luke (you’ll see), but that kid dresses exactly like Luke, with the white karate top and tan leggings. Whereas this guy is easily in his mid-40’s and looks more like Bruce Dern than Mark Hamill. More proof that whoever designed the covers did not actually read the issue.

And the ominous red shadow that is advancing on Han and his merry men? Who is that? The main villain in this story line is a normal human who has an exceptional mustache, not some Wampa-crushing monster. I guess this is supposed to be some metaphorical representation of the terror that they face on this planet. Either that or Exhibit B in the People vs. Stupid Cover Artists.

Wait – the cover said “Eight Against A World”, and now it’s “Eight For Aduba-3″? Which is it? Did they come up with two awesome titles for this episode and were just unable to decide between them?

And, just as you thought the title would be the worst offender on the page (go on, I know you were thinking that), the eye moves just subtly downward to take in the horror that is the opening scene. How doest thou offend me? Let me count the ways:

1. When last we left Han, he was standing alone, unmolested, while three Chinese playboys entered the room and gave him an offer he couldn’t accept. Now, he’s being manhandled by a warty green ogre, the Asian gentlemen are nowhere to be found, and in their place are, from left to right, an alien from They Live, Luke Skywalker (note how little he looks like the man in blue on the cover), and Bob Roth strung out on meth.
2. The sheer amount of words Han spouts out in this single frame defies the sequential art concept. I mean, he spouts out three speech balloons before reacting to the hand on his shoulder that is clearly there the whole time. I’m all for a little suspension of disbelief, but this is ridiculous.
3. Luke Skywalker? Really? We’ve been alone with Han & Chewie for a whole issue and you’re already copying the main characters? Did last issue really sell that poorly?

So the reason Han is being roughed up is because the girl he was flirting with at the end of last issue is supposedly Green Guy’s girlfriend. Although, knowing jerks like this, he’s probably one of those guys who fantasizes that he’s dating the stripper, even though she just wants his money. That’s what passes for romance on this backwater planet.

I’m not sure what species he is, but apparently it’s a feature of his kind that one of his hands has three fingers and one has four. In most species this is a genetic abnormality, but in his, apparently it’s a feature. Especially since the spare finger can jump from hand to hand depending on the laziness of the artist.

Either way, he and his mismatched hands are ready to liquify Han for talking to his “girlfriend” and Han’s rather insulting bon mots are no defense. He proceeds to beat the shit out of Han (and his punches make the sound “THPOOOM!” every time he uses them, which I’m sure he trained long and hard to achieve) and knocks him into all the other patrons of the cantina, who become upset and begin attacking Han as well.

This fight scene continues to display Han’s propensity to speak EVERY SINGLE WORD THAT ENTERS HIS BRAIN (despite what we saw in the movies). It makes me wonder if the writers have ever been in a bar fight. Or any fight. Or seen a fight on TV. Or have ever seen Star Wars. While dramatized fights certainly have their share of witty banter, “Oh oh! Ducking time again!” sounds like something no one over the age of thirteen could write, much less read. Once again, 90% of these things could be either thought balloons or narration boxes. Or better yet, just left on the cutting room floor.

Han’s soliloquy in the second panel of the top row suggests that, rather than the grizzled veteran smuggler we all assumed him to be, he’s really only seen as many aliens as we have (i.e. the Cantina from the first movie), since he seems to be surprised that determining the gender of a different species might be difficult. If I were him, I’d be less surprised that the gorilla is a female, than that she thinks she can procreate (or even simulate procreation) with a creature who has an exposed brain and has to be completely covered up by a pressurized exoskeleton to survive in a primate-friendly atmosphere.

Brainy McGasmask’s super power seems to be the ability to make an impact sound (“SKOK!”) while swinging his fist through the air above Han. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he has four fingers on his left (or “Skokking”) hand, and only three on his right, much like Mr. Green Jeans over there.

As Han is delivering a Street Fighter-class uppercut to our rebreathing friend, he delivers the line “Okay … Now you can look!” For the life of me, I can not figure out who he’s saying that to, or what he means by it. It’s like they had some quota of speech bubbles to fill, and just let the intern do it.

Once again, we’re treated to another display of Wookiee martial prowess, in the form of Chewbacca standing there getting punched for three panels before retaliating.

While I appreciate the gratuitous Wookiee awesomeness, the physics of it just don’t work. Perhaps I’m being a bit picky here, but hear me out. Just as Superman shouldn’t be able to stop a speeding locomotive, no matter how strong or invulnerable he is – Newton’s second law says he’ll get thrown back because he weighs less than the train – Chewbacca shouldn’t be able to stand there and get THPOOOMed without even flinching. This guy just sent Han flying across the room. Chewie should at least have to step back to avoid the sheer kinetic energy knocking him over, even if he’s too tough to be hurt by it. He’s not even standing in any sort of fighting stance where he could absorb an impact  - he’s just flat-footed. Bah!

Having taken care of this ruffian, Han and Chewie turn back to the changelings who approached him about a job back in the last issue.

So, the locals have a problem: Their poor village gets raided every year by a band of hooligans led by a mustachioed douche named Serji-X, whom they call “Arrogantus – the Arrogant One”.

Sigh. Look, I realize that Lucas got really, really, bad at giving characters names in his later years (c.f. “Nute Gunray”), but “Arrogantus” is worse than Harry Potter’s use of Latin. At least in Harry Potter, it sort of makes sense, because they’re on Earth and even the wizards and witches derive some part of their culture from the Latins. It just doesn’t make any sense in the Star Wars universe.

Hey, but at least it’s a new villain. Even though he looks like the mascot of a breakfast cereal (“Hey, kids, be sure to eat your bowl of Captain Quazar for breakfast! It’s out of this world!”).

So, Captain Quazar – I mean Serji-X and his band of “Cloud-Riders” (riding bikes that are eerily prescient of the speeder bikes in Jedi) attack the same poor town at the same time every year, stealing their money, banthas and women (“First you get the banthas, then you get the money, then you get the women”). And if the villagers resist, the outlaws burn down their meager crops.

Now, I’m no outlaw (although I did omit some of my online purchases when filing my taxes this year), but it seems to me that committing the same crime in the same place at the same time every year seems like a bad plan. You might want to mix it up a bit, keep those peasants on their guard.

And speaking of peasants – why are you robbing poor people? They barely have enough to survive themselves. You do realize that when people are desperate enough, they will fight back. Whereas if you target more comfortable or well-off people, while they might have somewhat better security, they won’t fight back as fiercely, since they probably have insurance.

So, of course Han decides to take the job, pretty much pro bono (and without so much as consulting Chewbacca, I might add), as these villagers have little money. They only offer food and shelter, which I’m sure Han has plenty of on the ship. So I’m not sure why he’s getting involved. I guess the whole “saving the galaxy” thing is getting to his head.

Which doesn’t stop him from insulting them at every turn (“Gee it’d be a real loss to the galaxy if your village ceased to exist. Ha ha.”). Have some class, spacehole.

So he puts out word that he needs some help and sets up interviews in … his hotel room … sitting on his bed … with his shirt off. I’m sorry, did we just enter a porno?

The first applicant is a pocupine-person, wearing only a cape, boots and matching green jockstrap … wait, this is a porno! No, no, it’s just the writers’ attempt at another alien species, which, for some reason, all have to be anthropomorphized earth animals.

Anyway, porcupine-man impresses Han with his quills (bow-chicka-bow-wow) and gets hired. Next up is … Jodie Foster from Taxi Driver.

Seriously, I applaud the desire to add some sex-appeal into this storyline, but her outfit is just laughable. First of all, there’s no pink in Star Wars. And second, how does she expect to be taken seriously in the rough-and-tumble underworld with pom-poms on her shoulders, a rose in her hair, thigh-high boots and fuck-me pumps? I guess she must be tough if she’s survived so far dressing like that. I have a feeling that Mr. Thpooom would have made quick work of her, guns or no guns.

I’m not going to say that Lucas writes the best female parts – far from it, in fact. But at least in this trilogy, Leia does more than just look good. She acts as a foil to Han for the first two movies, dressing very conservatively until being captured by Jabba. In fact, sex appeal is just not a part of the Star Wars universe (aside from that one exception) which is why it sticks out so much here.

After some juvenile, sexually-charged banter, she gets the job and leaves, which means it’s time for another Earth-based reference. Enter Don-Wan Kihotay.

If it wasn’t obvious before, it becomes apparent that this comic is aimed at eight-year-old boys who have never read, or heard of, The Man of La Mancha, or cared that this character is a cheap steal from great literature. (Of course Lucas stole as well, but he did it in a more general sense, and stole from the archetypes of mythology. He didn’t just change the spelling of people’s names).

The fact that they added “Wan” to his name is, I hope, a reference to Obi-Wan, rather than Don Juan, because I’d rather not see this fool try to seduce any women, especially the bimbo with the shoulder sponges.

I’m really dreading this next bit. But I can’t think of anything else to say about Don-Wan, so we might as well get this over with.

Hoo boy. Yes, there is a six-foot anthropomorphic rabbit with cartoony-elastic legs in the middle of a Star Wars story. Oh, but he’s not just a rabbit, he’s a “Lepus Carnivorus — a meat-eatin’, rocket-ridin’ rabbit”. It’s bad enough that they’re trying to cross Star Wars with Looney Toons, but to make him such a ham-fisted attempt at an unlikely bad-ass is just pathetic.

I also love how his spindly-leg kick sends Mr. Thpooom flying down the stairs. I guess this is supposed to show how powerful his kicks are, but the artwork belies that. Real rabbits can jump because a great portion of their body mass is concentrated in their (comparatively) massive hind legs. This idiot is thinner than Paris Hilton’s shadow. There’s no way he can kick that hard.

The only explanation for this and Chewbacca’s fortitude is that the Green Goblin is a paper tiger, which makes the fact that he tossed Han around even more hilarious.

Next up is the kid from the first page who looks like Luke, for some unknown reason.

Although, between page 1 and page 22 his sleeves have gotten torn off somehow. I guess he wanted to show off his guns or something. He basically has nothing to offer Solo’s effort other than a tank-tread-based robot he’s built. Wait a second. Annoying useless kid, builds robots. Why does this sound familiar? Oh yeah.

And, once again, the intern was left to fill in some speech balloons, because I can’t believe that professional writers would write the line, “Because I’ve stuck on Aduba-3 all my life”. Are we to surmise that Marvel Comics – Marvel! – did not hire proofreaders for a flagship comic such as this?

The kid’s name is “Jimm, but I call myself the Starkiller Kid”, which must be a reference to Luke’s original name in an early draft of Star Wars. If even Lucas thought it was a bad idea, why did these people adopt it? And since when does adding an extra “m” to “Jim” make it spacey?

Well, other than Han’s line “We can always use a good robot, son” (Why? Doesn’t it depend on the type of robot?) this scene just serves to segue into Luke’s non-adventure, so let’s go ahead and skip over it.

It’s the next morning, and before Han has the chance to brief his motley bunch, the enemy shows up. And rather than just blow them all to bits, Serji-X opts to parley and try to buy Han off, assuming that since he looks like Daniel Day-Lewis from Gangs of New York, his charisma will do the trick. But no dice – Han has already developed a conscience and would rather take the villagers’ last dime than get bought off by this guy. Which I can understand. I hated Gangs of New York. Yeah, I hated it, fuck you.

At this point, plucky comic-relief Jimmy Starkiller tries to blast Serji-X, but Han has his Number One Whore, Amaiza (wow, that sounds like a female character’s name I would have thought up in junior high school) knock him out with a THOK to the head.

And just a little while ago, he shot Greedo (FIRST) to get out of paying some debt to Jabba. Actually, it wasn’t even to get out of paying his debt – it was just to get a little extension on it. So, now, after hanging with Luke and Leia for, what, a couple days, he’s gone from murdering an honest bounty hunter for a little more time to pay back his debt to honoring a truce agreement with an admitted criminal. I guess his character arc is not as profound as it once appeared. And if Lucas has his way, he’ll have no character arc at all.

As an added bonus, I noticed the letters-to-the-editor page in this issue, mainly because it consists almost entirely of a negative letter and its response.

This confirms my suspicion that the writers were working with a pre-final script and as such are not to blame for including things in the comic that got cut from the movie. But I would still argue that they made qualitative changes to the dialogue that are unforgivable. And I agree with this letter-writer that the artwork seems rushed, especially given the uneven nature of it.

So, nice try, editor, but you’re not getting off the hook that easy.

Comic Wars: Episode 7

Welcome to Comic Wars, Episode 7.

Before we get started, I have to point you to an awesome, scathing review of The Phantom Menace. It’s 7 installments of 10-minute YouTube videos, but it is well worth your time to watch it. Not only is it insightful and intelligent, but it is hilariously funny. One of the best parts is actual clips of Lucas from 1977 talking about how storytelling trumps special effects, juxtaposed with footage of him from the late 90’s talking how much crap he was going to pack into every frame of the Phantom Menace. Go watch it.

Another reason I bring up that review is to talk about storytelling. Up until this point in this series, I haven’t really gone into the story at all, because, well, it’s Star Wars - we all know the story. It is what it is. If you don’t already know it, you’re probably not reading this.

But now we get to delve into the minds of Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin who wrote this and the next couple of issues. I’m not sure how they worked with Lucasfilm to decide what got into the comics, or even how much Lucas cared (as compared to today, where every book, comic, video game, etc., gets vetted by someone before going to print) because the story (and the art) quality takes a steep nosedive immediately in this issue.

The cover is pretty cool, though – apart from the crap dialog, and Flash Gordonian “laser-gun” that Han is holding. It has a buff Chewbacca beating up two aliens at once, and Han in a heroic crouch, with a conveniently placed “Wanted” poster in the background.

(Is it just me, or does the idea of paper “Wanted” posters being placed all over the galaxy seem like a losing proposition. I think Roy and Howard still hadn’t gotten their minds wrapped around this whole “Science Fiction” thing yet. But beside that, it really has nothing to do with this issue. Nowhere in this comic are Han and Chewie wanted by the law. They mostly get in trouble with pirates and crazy hicks.)

And, getting back to that dialog. I’m sure I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: they are “blasters”, not “laser-guns”. There’s a difference. A laser is a focused beam of light. A blaster fires a discrete energy burst. They never say “laser gun” or “laser sword” in the movies, they say “blaster” and “lightsaber”. It’s one of those nice touches that makes it otherworldly, while Roy and Howard keep pulling it back by injecting Earth-normal terms, like “laser” and “holy” and “was this trip really necessary?”.

The artwork in the first six issues was highly inconsistent. Sometimes it was very detailed, enough to recognize the actors who played in the movie. Sometimes you could barely tell that the blobs were supposed to be people. But for some reason even this first page seems to feel different, even though Howard Chaykin is still the artist. Is it just that all of a sudden we’re witnessing events that did not take place within the movie, and so it has a patina of non-canon to it? Or has something objectively changed? I think you know which answer I’ll end up at.

This page is all exposition to get Han and Chewie off on their “adventure”. I think it’s amusing that Luke and Leia are back in the outfits they wore through the bulk of the movie, even though there’s no real reason for them to do so. We’ve already seen Luke in two different outfits (not counting the stormtrooper uniform): the X-Wing flight suit and the mustard-yellow biker outfit for the throne room scene. Why would he get back into his Tatooine moister-farmer duds (which now seem to have shrunken quite alarmingly – what kind of crappy Sullustan labor do they have running the laundry at the Rebel base?) when he’s not on a desert planet anymore?

And Leia seems to have had her hair put back into the much-beloved cinnamon bun style, even though she probably doesn’t have the dozens of handmaidens here that she had back on Alderaan (I wonder if that’s why she was so upset at its destruction – now she has to take care of that mountain of hair herself).

Let’s not forget poor Artoo, standing there, seemingly missing his the bottom half of his left arm/leg and emitting a pitiable “BLOOP” before he inevitably falls over.

I’m not sure what nonsense to begin with on this page. Let’s get the “star-spurs” out of the way first of all. Apparently, my complaints about “space” jargon were sent back in time to 1977 and were read by Roy Thomas, but instead of cutting it out, he switched over to “star” words instead.

In the very same panel, Han talks about getting back to Dantooine to pay off Jabba. This in itself is a Force-choking offense. As we all know, Dantooine is some remote planet that used to have a Rebel base on it. Tatooine is where the Trilogy started (and ended, if you don’t count the Ewoks, which I don’t), and where Jabba runs his crime syndicate.

But now that they’ve gone ahead and made the astronomical mistake of confusing Tatooine with Dantooine (and why would anyone make that mistake, eh George? Nice imagination, there.) they go right back and reverse it in the next panel, when Han says, “Set ‘em for Tatooine.” Which is it? Are they going to Dantooine or Tatooine? Did no one read over this comic before they went to press?

And what happened to Han’s hair in the second panel on the middle row? He suddenly has a Monkees bowl cut. The fluidity of Han’s hair kind of becomes a running joke in this issue, as we’ll see. I have to chalk it up to the fact that no one in the seventies had any idea what to do with their hair, and that complete lack of ability to coif themselves respectably bled over into the eighties, and eventually ended up with the mullet. Thanks, The Seventies.

The bottom row is just useless filler. Three panels showing what I can only assume is Roy and Howard’s ideas of various alien worlds, but look more like Fisher Price toys (and I can’t even tell what the last panel is supposed to be – it just looks like the trash jettisoned by the Star Destroyer in Empire), while Han makes a completely inane statement about having to fly some light-years before cutting to hyper-space.

How fast do they think the Millenium Falcon can go on sub-light engines? If it’s anything less than the speed of light (which it is, by definition), well, then they’ll be waiting a few years before they jump to hyper-space. Are we to believe that several years have passed before we even get to the main plot of this issue? You might actually wish that were so, once we get there. Or that there was a plot to this issue, which there isn’t. Just a series of random encounters.

First up, Han and Chewie get attacked by pirates. (And don’t you think that Han didn’t shout the words “SPACE-PIRATES”, because you know he did.) And I’m not just talking about pirates of the kind you might see in Firefly or any decently written scifi story. No. We’ve got full-blown Ice Pirates-style pirates, complete with bandanas, swords, eye-patches and buccaneer boots. Oh, and don’t forget the stormtrooper.

I have to credit the writers – when creating their motley band of space-pirates, they thought it would be cool to include a stormtrooper who had defected. That’s a great idea, and you could even write a whole story around that. But do you think he’d continue to wear the stormtrooper armor? Especially given the fact that it doesn’t seem to protect the wearer from pretty much anything, coupled with the fact that if he wore it on any planet or station with the merest hint of an Imperial presence, he’d be caught and shot on sight for desertion? He’s either the stupidest or ballsiest pirate in the group, and for that, we should fear and pity him.

Getting back to Han’s hairdo. The first panel on the middle row shows that Han has spent the last few light-years attacking his locks with a curling iron, getting rid of the Davey Jones look for the moment. Did they use a different artist for every page, or what?

Han seems to know these pirates, though. Or at least their leader, Crimson Jack. They trade jovial barbs (a little like Han and Lando would do in a few years) and then Han just hands over all the reward money he got from the Rebellion. This combined with the story about how he lost Jabba’s loot to the Empire seems to paint Han as being a pretty terrible smuggler. He just hands over his loot to whoever boards his ship. Why the hell does he have the smuggling compartments, anyway?

I find it kind of hard to believe that any sane person at Lucasfilm would have approved a storyline where Han loses all his money within minutes of getting it from Leia.

But even more than that, they created this rag-tag band of pirates, with enough thought to give one of them a sword and another an entire stormtrooper uniform, and they only occupy two pages of story time. Unless they come back in some future issue, that’s a real waste of time and effort.

So, after Han and Chewie hand over the only honest money they’ve every made to the pirates, they decide to lie low for a while on some Outer Rim planet. Let’s see what kind of planet-side shenanigans Roy and Howard can think up, shall we?

After landing, Han and Chewie make their way into the town center, remarking about how few people are about, until they stumble upon the reason: apparently, this town only holds 20 people, because they’re all harassing some poor “insect-guy” on a Bantha.

(Oh, and let me just take a moment here to say that it cannot have been easy for these writers to write a comic about two characters where one of them speaks only in grunts and growls. It’s not a situation that any sane comic creator would have gotten into willingly. It’s just one of those things that works better on screen than on the page, so I’m not going to make fun of any of the “Guh-Runk”s or “Hrak Hrak”s that float above Chewie’s head. Unless they’re really funny.)

The worst part about this page is (and I know this will come as a big shock to those of you who know me, or have read the previous episodes) the religious reference.

I have no problem with them creating an alien priest character – scifi is loaded with great religious characters from all sorts of races and planets. But Han’s reference to Sunday School is inexcusable. A)”Sunday” has no meaning outside of Western Earthen civilizations, and B) “Sunday School” is very specifically a Christian practice.

Are we to believe that Han, born and raised on Corellia, somehow grew up in a Christian family, thousands of years before, and millions of light years away from, the supposed birth of Christ? I may be inordinately sensitive to religious references, but this seems to me to be a confirmation of the unchecked Christian bias on the part of the writers. Those of you keeping score at home, let’s see how many references like this we can rack up.

Apparently, Mr. Insect-Man was attempting the very grave (ha!) crime of trying to bury a cyborg in a, well, I was about to say “all-human graveyard”, but that doesn’t make any sense, as there all all sorts of aliens here. Let’s say “all-organic graveyard”. Which is apparently objectionable to the locals.

But the best part of this page is in the top right corner. Chewie is getting all medieval on their asses, so much so that his head hair is standing straight up, while his eyes have glazed over in his blood frenzy. The poor quadopus man has just had his spine (if he has one) broken and is moments from a coup de grâce, while Han is busy “rough-housing” the other miscreants.

The aliens in the final panel on this page look less like the wretched hive of plausible aliens that appeared in the Mos Eisley Cantina and more like some Shrinky-Dinks that were left out in the sun too long. Or like something I drew when I was five years old.

The rest of this issue is taken up by Han and Chewie duking it out with these hick aliens while Han expounds about their prejudice and how silly it is.

Once the attackers threaten deadly force, Han and Chewie respond in kind. This is actually pretty cool, since in the movie, Peter Mayhew’s costume did not allow him to really show the kind of physical violence a Wookiee is capable of. It is merely hinted at (which is OK, by the way – they do it well). But in the comic, there is no such limitation. Chewbacca is a 7-foot tall barely-civilized ape-like creature who is adept at flying spacecraft and somewhat skilled at holo-chess, although, it’s hard to tell because we’ve only seen him play against a computer, and even the easiest level of computer chess can kick my ass.

But the unbridled violent potential latent in any Wookiee is finally unleashed in this comic book, and it is a wonderful thing to see – he can finally open his mouth, unencumbered by the physicality of the mask, and deal brown, hairy death to his enemies.

Even better, as we see in this panel, is that Wookiees have fifteen separate words for violence. Of course they all sound like “Gronnk! Shuuuk!” to us, but never mind that. And what the hell is with Han’s hair? Is he wearing goggles on his forehead now? Or have his bangs just gotten that long and curly?

So Han, Chewie and the insectoid priest finally defeat all of the prejudiced locals and bury the cyborg on the cemetery hill. Do they think that the creepy locals won’t just wait until they’ve gone and dig him up again? Funeral rights are not usually won by a gun battle.

But after burying the poor cyborg, Han and Chewie head to the cantina for some well-deserved debauchery. Which means that this issue has now moved on to its third storyline without ever setting up a coherent plot. Granted, after the heavy story arc of the first six issues, perhaps they were just going for a random-encounter type of issue as a break between major plots, but still, Han and Chewie deserve better than this.

I’m all for Han sowing his not-yet-royal oats. He and Leia have not gone down the path of falling in love, so he’s still a swinging bachelor. And he should be every bit the match for James T. Kirk in the banging alien chicks department.

But if this is any example of the pickup lines he uses (not to mention the sad state of his hair) I’d be amazed if he’s just as much a virgin as Luke:

What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this — I hope!

What does that even mean? He takes a well-worn, completely clichéd, Earth-based pickup line, and throws “– I hope!” on the end. Is he trying to fry some synapses in her brain with radical non-sequitors in hopes that, in her confusion, she will agree to sleep with him? Or is this some ploy that is reputed to work well on the blue-skinned, yellow-lipped women of Minibaar-7?

But she seems amenable, and as they’re leaving, Han checks in with his wingman Chewie, who is busy groping Lady GaGa and what I can only describe as a slutty yellow-skinned Jewish Ninja Princess, what with her Throwing Stars of David strapped to her thighs.

Before Han can seal the deal, however, he’s cockblocked by a trio of what look like Chinese gangsters in green bathrobes who come from the planet of people who speak more obliquely than Yoda.

Whoever they are, they seem to have scared Han’s hairpiece into curling itself up into a little swirl on the top of his head, while his chin has grown a few inches.

Next issue will explain what trouble Han has gotten into in Paradise – although this planet has seemed like anything but Paradise so far, so I’m not sure where that comes from. But I can’t let this issue go without showing you the ad on the back cover:

This is one of the scariest toy ads I’ve ever seen. First of all, it prays on command. That’s bad enough, but the creepy, intense description of what she’s made of “under the nighty” makes my skin crawl. And what kind of fun is a doll that just kneels and prays? This is purely a ploy for parents to indoctrinate their children into their chosen religion (any religion at all, as long as it’s Christianity).

I’m glad to see she at least comes in caucasian and African-American (sorry, “White” and “Black”) varieties. We wouldn’t want to exclude anyone – except those Asians, Middle Easterners and Canadians, amiright?

But the coolest thing is the technology behind it. They didn’t have microchip sound machines in 1977. This chick has a full-fledged miniature record player “in her tummy”. And if you turn the record over, she sings “Brother John” (I have no idea what that is, and I have no desire to find out).

She could have been yours for a mere $9.95 plus $2 postage in 1977. I would love to know how many of these were sold. Because I’m sure that the audience for Star Wars comic books (young boys and geeks of all ages) overlaps mightily with the “buys religious gifts for young girls” audience.

Comic Wars: Episode 6

Welcome to the sixth episode of Comic Wars. In case you missed the previous episodes, you can start here. It is at this point that we reach the frayed end of the lifeline connecting the crazed imaginings of the comic book writers to the comparative rationality of Lucas’ universe. From here on out, we’re off the reservation.

Once again they chose cover art that merely symbolizes what happens, without showing anything that actually happens. Yes, Luke and Vader enter a battle on opposite sides, although they don’t actually cross sabres until the next movie (or perhaps earlier, we’ll see where the comics take us). And if they did fight, we all know that Luke’s lightsabre (which was actually Anakin’s before) is blue, not red. Red is Sith color. Jedi lightsabres are all pride flag colors.

And for some reason they drew a Y-Wing fighter on the cover, but I don’t think they ever show a Y-Wing fighter anywhere in either issue 5 or 6, even though they were there in the movie. This leads into an entirely different Blue vs. Red discussion, which we’ll get to later.

And no melodramatic cover would be complete without the damsel in distress lying prone, being protected by her knight. It’s like some cheap imitation of a Boris Vallejo painting, minus the skill and vast amounts of bronzed skin.

While we’re here, take a look at Vader’s pants. Notice the horizontal stripes/seams. Comic artists have used that effect all over the place (most notably with Colossus, although I always thought that had to do with his metallic skin) and I really don’t know why. Do they just not like expanses of unbroken color? If they paid attention to the movie they might have noticed that Vader has vertical ribbing in his tights (for her pleasure, I’m sure), not horizontal. If they just wanted to break up the color they could have used that, but they went with the horizontal lines instead. Does anyone know why comic artists love this so much?

In the movie, two squadrons (at least) attacked the Death Star: Blue squadron and Red squadron. It’s not clear to me if Red was all X-Wings and Blue was Y-Wings or whether there was a mix in each group, but as we all know there were two groups and Luke was Red Five. “Red Five – I’m going in” has become part of the fan lexicon almost as much as “May the Force be with you.”

But, in their infinite wisdom, the authors of the comic book pared it down to one squad – Blue, which makes Luke “Blue Five”. First of all, if you only have one squad, do you really need the color? And if you do, why not use the same goddamn color they used for Luke in the movie? You had a fifty-fifty shot of picking the right one, you couldn’t watch the movie – or scan the script – one more time and let the coin toss land on the Red side?

Hoo-boy, here we go with the religion again – “space-gods”? Really? Aren’t gods, by definition, not tied to our plane of reality? What would be different about a “space” god?

But the best part of this page is the line from the lovingly-shaded Imperial mid-level officer in the third row, “Why aren’t they simply defending themselves on Yavin’s fourth moon as we expected?”

This must be the same lament of every movie villain ever - why aren’t the good guys just lying back and taking it? Why are they getting all uppity and defending themselves? It’s beautiful. This guy knows they have a gun that can explode a planet and yet he expects the Rebels – who know about the gun, and have technical plans of the battle station – to try to defend themselves from the moon’s surface.

He must have been promoted out of his white plastic suit too soon because his uncle was head of the gunners or something.

This comic keeps going back and forth between drawings of people that barely have facial features to these insanely detailed close-ups where every wrinkle and hair is shaded in with care. It would be nice to have some consistency.

But even that wouldn’t help when they totally butchered the “Red Five, I’m going in” line.

Darth Vader had to get one last jab in against General “Ultimate Power In The Universe”, didn’t he?

I just love this sequence so much it hurts. So far, the artists are doing a pretty decent job of depicting a space battle – just enough detail, good action lines, etc. And this page is no exception. So we can enjoy it for that.

Porkins’ death scene in the movie is ok, but it was always memorable for two reasons. One, Lucas actually decided to name a character “Porkins”, and then have him be fat. It just doesn’t get much more heavy-handed than that (until the prequels, anyway). And two, when Porkins’ ship is hit, he’s told to eject but he rides it out to his doom. But really – would ejecting have saved him? It doesn’t look like he’s wearing a pressure suit. And those fighter ships don’t seem to have any passenger seats – how could he have gotten rescued before the Death Star blew up?

The writers of the comic really wanted to play up Porkins’ death though, so they added a couple narration boxes talking about how Luke only knows him as Blue Six (even though, in the same panel Luke is calling him by name), but that Biggs knew him well enough to call him a friend.

But the coup de grace is Biggs’ line: “So long, Piggy. You wil be avenged!” I doubt even Lucas could have gotten an actor to say such a ridiculous line dramatically with a straight face.

Peter Cushing, along with Alec Guinness, is one of the finest actors to ever appear in a Star Wars movie. Those two are kind of like Christopher Lee and Ian MacKellan in Lord of the Rings – they just class the whole thing up.

Grand Moff Tarkin (WTF is a “Moff”, anyway? Almost sounds like a kind of species of Muppet.) only had a few scenes, but he was such a great villain. Not only was he pure evil, he had Darth Vader on a leash – how bad-ass is that?

Most of his lines became memorable through his delivery alone, his last line being one of them. In the movie, it’s “Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.” He’s cool under pressure, although he’s also dead wrong. But that’s beside the point. He’s going down with his ship.

So, once again, changing lines for no reason, we get “Evacuate? Never! The very idea is treasonous. We shall prevail — in the name of the Galactic Empire!” Never in the movie does Tarkin resort to petty jingoism. He’s above that. He didn’t rise to the position of Grand Moff by just reciting propaganda. That took some intelligence and strength of character. Ordinary Moff’s on the other hand are just thugs who were in the right place at the right time, but Grand Moff is an entirely different story.

It’s a shame that his last words in the comic got cheaped out like this.

The climax of Luke’s character arc in this movie is that at the crucial moment, he forgoes the targeting computer and trusts in the Force to aim the proton torpedo at the thermal exhaust port. His targeting computer is working fine, but he hears Ben’s voice and decides to switch it off. This is where he really starts becoming a Jedi. It’s huge. It’s the pivotal moment of the entire movie. The Wachowski brothers used that exact type of scene in the Matrix when Neo begins to believe in himself, that he can defy physics and take on the Agents. It’s classic Hero’s Journey stuff.

So, given all that, what do you think the comic writers decide to do? That’s right, they make his instruments malfunction so that he has to aim manually. Ben is basically a life coach at this point, saying, “It’s OK, you can do it. You’re awesome.”

This, above anything else, shows how much they missed the point of the movie.

And then of course we get the expositional thought balloons where Luke, for no reason whatsoever, assumes that Ben’s voice in his head means that Ben “merged with the force” and is not representative of some sort of psychosis. Nice defense mechanism, there, Luke.

The next Rebel pilot to go is Biggs. This is another big moment for Luke in the movie. Biggs was his best friend – the only link to his old life. Even though they cut the scene with the two of them on Tatooine, we get a sense of their close friendship in the brief moments they have preparing for and attacking the Death Star. So when Biggs gets toasted by Vader, it’s a big deal for Luke, and he does a pretty good job showing it – and then getting a grip and finishing the mission. A good character moment for Luke.

(Although, I don’t know why they ever let Biggs behind the wheel of an X-Wing. He doesn’t seem to be that good of a pilot. Wedge has to take care of the TIE fighter that is behind Luke, when it was Biggs’ job, and Luke has to save Biggs’ ass at one other time. I guess the Alliance was really desperate for pilots. Although they seemed to have hundreds of spare pilots to fill out the awards ceremony later on – tell me not one of them was better able to fly than Mr. Agonized Scream Of Flesh And Metal.)

The worst part about the comic adaptation of this scene is how much of an asshole Wedge is. “Hey Luke! We lost Biggs! Do you copy? We lost Biggs! Your best friend from childhood! The only link to your past! He’s dead, Luke! Dead! Do you copy? You little whining shit.”

Well, looky here – it turns out there really was a Red Group. This is the first mention of them. And once again, why did they put Luke, Wedge and Biggs in Blue Group?

I guess we hadn’t seen them before because they were busy getting “beaten off”.

Vader in the movie: “What?!”

Vader in the comic: “By the immortal gods of the Sith!”

For the last time, even though The Force is thought of as a “religion”, there are no gods mentioned in the Star Wars movies. Nor does anyone say “Holy” anything.

And how quickly do the contents of an exploding TIE fighter start to decompose? Without atmosphere and bacteria, I would think space would be the last place decomposition would happen.

I realize it’s unrealistic to expect the comic writers to religiously copy the dialogue from the movie, or even, given that they won’t do that, to avoid making up new “spacey” words. So I’m prepared for some of that to happen. But “technicos”? Really? Is that the best they can come up with? Did they really think that people would actually use that term as a shorthand for “technicians”? How about “techs”, or even “Hey, you”?

Speaking of space jargon, Luke uses the terms “Space-Devil” and “Space-Dust” in the same speech balloon. I do believe that violates the Geneva Space-Convention, rule 917/J regarding density of “space” terms in dialogue.

I never thought about this before, but look at all the pilots in that throne room. Why didn’t they send all six hundred of them up against the Death Star? Is it because they only had seventeen ships? If so, now they’re down to two X-Wings and the Falcon, so they’re still kinda fucked.

The writers attempt to explain why Leia didn’t put a medal on Chewie (other than the obvious reason – he’s subhuman, and therefore not worthy, essentially a pet) in that he was too tall. But a) I didn’t see a third medal lying around that he could put on later, b) he just helped save your ass, so get a fucking step ladder, and c) now they’re making sweeping generalizations of the average height of Space-Princesses.

Do they really think anyone thinks of themself as a “space-princess” just because it is commonplace in their life to travel through space? Did we call Diana an “air-princess” because she traveled by plane frequently? I don’t think so.

Well, this wraps up the story of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Thank you all for joining me on this voyage, but don’t leave, because as the comic warns us: there is a “next issue” in which we will get to see what kind of insane “space”-stories these writers come up with when not even constrained by Lucas’ cockamamie script. (Hint: It involves space-pirates with actual space-eyepatches and space-cutlasses. That’s imagination for you.)

The Clap(board)

The Clap(board)

Daily I have to launch an application from my Dock in which in the icon is a clapboard (or claperboard). And daily, I launch the wrong program – sometimes more than once.

I finally took a good look at my apps dock to see exactly how many icons I have that are clapboards in one form or another.

The total number was 5, though it feels like 20 the way I constantly launch the wrong program, but alas it’s only 5.

Here’s the run down:

Cinema Tools. This is the one I use the least, almost never actually. It’s the database and conversion program that came with Final Cut Studio. It is one I will use for more extensive projects (particularly the one NeoZAZ is work towards over the next year) but for what I’ve filmed over the past years or so, I haven’t needed. But since it’s something I know I’ll need in the future, it stays.

Final Cut Pro. This is one of 3 programs I’ll launch everyday. It’s distinctively different from the others red digital time code graphic, but even with that I’ve missed the target and opened one of these other programs when meaning to launch Final Cut.




Live Type. The Title and text animator and generator for Final Cut Studio. It’s one I’ve just recently been using, migrating off of After Effects for Titles and credits. I accidentally launched Final Cut when meaning to launch Live Type, but most of the times it’s because it’s sitting right next to the Final Cut icon.




Soundtrack Pro. This is number 2 of 3 programs I launch everyday. It’s what I use to edit all of Trailer Pod Boys audio – host recordings, show clips, intro segments, music, everything. And it’s my primary application for all sound work. Most times, I’m able to launch this app when I’m intending to use it… but not always.




Celtx. My one and only Script formatting and writing application. The only one of the 5 that is not part of Final Cut Studio. And the last of the 3 that I open daily. It’s got a distinctively different motif than the other 4, but with it closest resembling Cinema Tools, I tended to mix the 2 up often, especially when I’m running with a thought that I need to get in Celtx quickly and I’m in a rush – that pretty much when I launch the wrong program thus making the time to get my thoughts on paper take even longer.

Of course I’m sure part of the problem is the close proximity these icons are to each other on the dock:

An obvious solution maybe to move them farther away from each other. But I can’t seem to do that. For all of the things I’m not anal about, and all of the things I leave completely unorganized with zero structure in production projects (much to the dismay of my creative partners I’m sure), my app dock is one thing I’m strictly OCD about. All of this program are grouped together as my “production area”. The Final Cut Studio icons are alphabetical, left to right, then ending with the non-final cut studio app, Celtx. It’s a pattern I’ve tried to break up, but couldn’t live with for more than 10 minutes. Ironically, I auto hide the dock so for most of the time I’m in front of my computer I don’t even see it. But if it’s out of order, I know it, I can feel it. So I guess I have to live with the ten to twenty minutes a year I lose opening then closing the wrong programs to have that piece of mind.

This article really doesn’t serve much of a purpose. I guess it’s more of a way to for me to address this issue, an issue big enough for me to get down on paper I suppose. Admission is the first step to recovery, maybe this post will help me move the icons with comfort, or even better, launch the correct application when I need it.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Pictures

Considering how many times I’ve gone to Universal Orlando in the past 2 months, it’s hard to believe it’s taken me this long to finally snap some pictures of the new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” area of Islands of Adventure. But yesterday I finally made the effort to take a walk through the winding wooden walkway that’s been setup to take a look at the new attraction area.

First I have to admit, I know about as much of “Harry Potter” as I do brain surgery (actually, I once saw a special on Discovery about brain surgery, I may actually know slightly more about that subject as I’ve never read nor watched anything related to Harry Potter). But I am a huge Theme Park/Thrill ride enthusiast, so I am excited about this new area of the park. Specifically the new ride. A ride so “top secret” that even ScreamScape.com hasn’t been able to find out anything about it yet. The mystery of this new ride is killing me!

With my parent along for the tour, I got a little bit of an education on what some of these buildings are probably going to be. Unfortunately, I already forgot most of what they said, but I’ll try to piece together what I can:

The general consensus among my parents (all 2 of them) is that this building must be Hogwarts. All I know is that it is a mammoth sized building. It is ridiculously huge! These pictures serve no justice on how big this thing actually is! The detail is amazing, and it is a very gorgeous piece of construction. Even without knowing anything about Harry Potter, I was really impressed and in awe of this structure.

What may or may not translate in these pictures is how high up this structure is. Even if it’s a clever architectural trick to make it seem higher and bigger than it actually is, it is quiet high off the ground. The detail is amazing.

These pictures are of “The Town” – They told me the name of “The Town”, but I forgot already.

A new construction between Hogwarts and “The Town” that’s not quite to the point that it can be recognized yet. It could be just about anything right now.

I think this duck was a foreman. He was quiet and calm until a construction crew came out of one of the buildings. At that point he turned directly to them and quacked quite loudly. I think the crew tried to sneak out early.

Comic Wars: Episode 5

Welcome to the fifth chapter of Comic Wars. From looking at the cover, you might get the impression that the rather more smooth-surfaced cousin to the Death Star actually strafes Rebel bases, picking off people and ships, rather than exploding entire planets, like the real Death Star.

While that does sound like a really awesome subplot that was never in the movie (I’m imagining some sort of cross between the Death Star and the Imperial Interrogation Droid that’s about the size of a meteor, manned by a couple dozen guys all wearing identical spherical helmets with little slits to see out of. And they go around the galaxy solving mysteries. Maybe they have a pet Ewok for comic relief. Coming this fall on the CW!) nothing like that actually happens in this issue. The cover is more like an impressionist collage of elements from the book, rather than a realistic depiction of any one scene.

In the scene, Luke and Chewie seem to be best buddies now, since Luke is barking orders at him, leaving Han out in the cold, and making him even more nihilistic than ever, thus leading him to exclaim, “It’s too late, kid! We’re finished!”. Whatever happened to, “Never tell me the odds!”?

On this next page, the human characters have a stunning lack of detail, while we can practically count every hair on Chewbacca’s face, and the inaccurately drawn TIE Fighter pilot is bursting forth from the minimalism of the page with his stunning realism.

Is the artist finding much more inspiration in the non-human characters in the story? (and the Imperial troops might as well be called non-human with their portrayal in the movies as faceless drones who couldn’t hit a wall from six feet with a shotgun. And aren’t they all clones of Jango Fett, anyway (if the prequels are to be considered canon, which I’m not sure they should be)? If he’s been cloned over and over again for the past twenty years, surely the latest generations have lost whatever humanity once embodied their physical beings. And if they stopped using clones after the Clone Wars – which is what I kind of assumed all along – then the poor saps who sign up for trooper duty only to enslave entire cultures deserve nothing less than to be called inhuman). Are the lines of dialog that started out being pretty banal when Lucas penned them and got even worse when the comic writers pissed all over them turning the poor artist against humanity in general and siding with those in the story who never even speak English?

This sequence is also notable for the sheer quantity and intensity of thought balloons. Back on the Death Star, Han spoke aloud every thought that flitted through that smuggler’s skull of his, but now everyone seems to be holding their thoughts closer to the vest. Which is good, because their thoughts are those of a MySpace drama queen.

But Leia’s despair pretty closely matches Han’s from the cover. I guess that’s why they ended up together.

I’ve talked before about the introduction of silly religious exhortations into the dialogue of this comic – usually when someone says “Holy–!” – but this is ridiculous: “… and Han Solo finds out that space-mercenaries, too, can pray!” Of all the characters that might pray in the entire story, Han is the least likely. He openly scoffs at even the quasi-religion of the Jedi; he mocks the beliefs of everyone and doesn’t believe in anything supernatural, even his belated, “Hey, Luke, may the force be with you.” is strained and insincere. There is no way he was praying just because a couple TIE fighters were hassling him.

This scene in the movie is a great character-defining moment. In most movies, once the main characters have been through hell together, they predictably fall into an all-for-one sense of camaraderie. But after our heroes escape certain death many times over in the Death Star, Han retreats to his baser instincts and makes sure that Leia knows that all he cares about is the money. It sets up the final scene where he comes back to save the day, beginning his character arc from selfish smuggler to genuine hero and all-around pansy.

Apparently, the comic writers didn’t think the movie was heavy-handed enough in this scene and gave Han a couple extra lines: “What else is there? Well??”, underscoring just how much he loves the Benjamins in exclusion of all else, even freedom from tyranny. Meanwhile the artist makes Han look like a very young Randy Quaid.

Oh, there’s so much going on on this page, I hardly know where to start.

First of all, how did the Falcon’s cockpit get to be the size of an Arena Football stadium? I mean, really. The claustrophobic confines of the Falcon set not only are way more realistic – have you ever been in a plane or a (non-cruise) ship? Space is at a premium in any sort of vessel like that.

But besides that it very literally brings the characters closer together – they’re constantly reaching over each other to fiddle with knobs or get in and out of seats.

Somehow the inside of the Falcon’s cockpit has now swollen to Vegas casino-like proportions, with a large, polished floor and a windshield that looks like it was stolen from the Emperor’s throne room on the second Death Star. Heck, if that’s the cockpit, they could house the entire Rebel fleet in the cargo hold.

This is also another wonderfully ham-fisted scene, thanks to the comic writers. In the movie, it’s a great little scene where we get to see Han and Luke doing some verbal sparring about Leia and suddenly realizing they’re in a bit of a competition with each other for her affections (all together, now: ewww).

First of all, Luke, seriously. Do not sit like that.

Then we have a gigantic close-up of Luke thinking “I care!”, holding his gargantuan left hand up to his chin and looking soulfully at Leia’s retreating form.

Then, after a bit of back and forth with Han, Luke boils over into a furious rage, his teeth fusing together in a mass of enamel, the better to resist breaking when Han inevitably punches him right in his beautiful pearly whites. Luke looks like he’s about to turn into the Incredible Hulk.

Meanwhile, Han just chuckles, knowing that he can toss Luke out of the airlock anytime he needs to. Because he’s a murdering bastard, that’s why. Just ask Greedo.

The comic writers couldn’t have known at this point that Luke and Leia were siblings, since I don’t think even Lucas came up with that until he sat down to bang out Return of the Jedi (otherwise, I don’t think we would have had the kissing scene in Empire), so I can’t really fault them for throwing in another incestuous kiss as Luke is about to go save the galaxy. I’m sure they thought it would just add to the tension factor with the whole love triangle thing going on. They had no idea that Lucas would turn this into a Greek tragedy.

But still. Eww.

The final page in this issue once again has the narration box talking directly to a character, in this case “Blue Leader”.

But before that, we have Blue Leader saying, “Approaching target at 1.3 parsecs”, which is great because, taken in context, this use of “parsecs” seems to be a rate of speed, i.e. “approaching target at 350mph”, rather than a measure of distance (as in the real world) or a measure of time (as in Lucas’s world).

It’s as if the writers figured “parsec” was just some generic space-term that had no real-world meaning and they could do whatever they wanted with it.

But then he says, “Now–it’s do or die!” and the omniscient narration box responds with, “Or perhaps both, blue leader … perhaps both!” What does that even mean? To my mind, the “do” in that statement is “stop the Death Star from destroying the 4th moon of Yavin” and the “die” part is, well, the death of the Rebellion. Sure, we all know that they do destroy the Death Star, and most of the rebel pilots do end up dying (except for Luke and Wedge), but the Rebellion survives, so I don’t think this really applies.

Also, did they hire the guy that did Dr. Katz to ink this last page? Why are all the lines so squiggly?

Well, now that you’re all riled up and ready for the exciting conclusion to the greatest space saga of all time (hint: the good guys win) we’ll need to break until next issue, where you’ll see (according to the cover) Luke Skywalker have a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader, which is going to be tough, what with the spaceships and dogfighting and all. But hey, we’ll see.

Comic Wars: Episode 4

Welcome back to another issue of Comic Wars where, if it wasn’t in the movie, it doesn’t belong on the page.

(If you haven’t yet, please read episodes 1, 2 and 3.)

We catch up with our heroes getting cornered in the detention area just after freeing Princess Leia from her cell. And by this time, I bet Han is getting a bit tired of the mouth on that woman, and almost wishes she were back in her cell, if you know what I mean.

There’s nothing really out of line with the title page, other than all of the dialog is completely made up for the comic and would never have been written by Lucas (at least until the prequels).

Plus the fact that Han quips, “Now I know why they call this place Death Star” when there’s no way he knows that’s what it’s called. The only person he’s talked to who knows that name is Leia, and they’ve barely had time to start lusting after each other. Unless maybe when they were riding up the elevator to the detention level, there was a plaque that read, “Welcome to the Death Star, please select floor”. Or maybe the stormtrooper uniforms say “Property of Death Star” on the inside.

Oh, and now that I’m thinking about it, whatever happened to the poor guys whose uniforms they stole? As far as I can tell, they were shoved in the smuggling compartments and left there to rot. It’s not like Han did any smuggling after this point, so he probably didn’t look in those compartments too often, given that he was constantly on the run from bounty hunters.

I can just picture him giving the Falcon a thorough cleaning once the teddy bears defeated the Empire and finding a couple of naked bodies, fingernails worn down to nubs from trying to claw their way out. Unfortunately, Han had soundproofed the chambers so no one ever heard the cries for help. These two guys – plus the poor technicians, whose only crime was to be good at operating a sensor array – ended up dying of thirst in each others’ arms.

But, getting back to the story, Leia grabs a gun and shoots a hole in the wall leading them down into the garbage compactor:

Once again they completely miss an opportunity to use one of the best lines of the movie: “What an incredible smell you’ve discovered.” Also, once again Han says, “Holy –!” which we know was never uttered in any of the movies. So knock it off.

In the movie, Han is the last one down, by a few moments, so it’s not out of the question that he tries blasting his way out of the garbage room (although when Luke says they already tried that, I wonder why Han (or the audience) didn’t hear the blaster bolt bouncing around the chamber the first time. How long was that chute, anyway?) But here, Han even says, “These trash chambers are vacuum sealed” before trying to shoot. So, he knows it’s magnetically sealed, and shoots anyway? That seems suicidally stupid, even for Han.

And what kind of non-union, crappy Sullustan laborers assembled that hatch? I can’t tell whether it was designed to be an octagon or a hexagon, but there are seven radial struts, none of which are in any position to support each other. Chewie doesn’t look too happy about it, either. Maybe, being a Wookiee, he knows that the downtrodden slave races forced to labor for the Empire do shoddy work on purpose. Kind of like Oskar Schindler, but with Ewoks instead of Jews.

Here, Han, looking suspiciously like Superman, complains that they’re going to die in the stolen stormtrooper outfits. Is he really that vain? I mean, when the Imperial sewage crew is forced by the investigation team to dredge every compactor for human remains, is he afraid that they will point and laugh at the fact that there are crushed stormtrooper armor parts mixed in with the slurry that was once Han Solo?

This is what I was talking about in Chapter 3: If they went through the trouble to use the correct call sign for that stormtrooper earlier (“TK421″), why did they go and make up a new serial number for the garbage unit? We all know it’s 3263827 (I’m not the only one who’s memorized that, right nerds?). I mean, they don’t even have the correct number of digits! That would never have gotten past the Imperial Hatch Numbering Committee (and you just know there was a committee for that, don’t you?).

I’m not sure what “flying thru the five fire rings of Fornax” means, but I can only assume that it’s some crazy sexual maneuver that requires a flight suit, a lightsaber and a mynock.

This page displays some of the worst visual storytelling I’ve ever seen. Comics are at least 50% a visual medium, but the writer, for some reason, felt like he had to have Han narrate every intention, action, reaction and effect in the whole sequence.

Granted, the printed page lacks the motion of the movie screen, so you might need to tweak it a little to play out this joke. But there are better ways to do it. For instance, instead of extreme close-ups of Han’s face, you can have bigger shots of the stormtroopers finding themselves cornered and turning around to see that only Han (and possibly Chewie) is chasing them.

Or, assuming the artist is not up to the task (and he isn’t), you’ve got the fail-safe of all comics: the narration box. It would be simple, and appropriate, to have a box say, “Han chases the stormtroopers down the hall UNTIL … they are CORNERED and have to turn and FIGHT! Then, realizing that JUST ONE MAN – HAN – was making all the noise, they set about blowing him to SMITHEREENS!” Just insert the word “space” in a few random places, and Bob’s your uncle.

Or, failing that, just have Han think the things he’s saying, instead of saying them out loud like some kind of moron who speaks at length, very loud, to no one, while running full-bore in a life-threatening situation. So, in a sense, like every other comic book character ever.

As they say in the movie biz: Show. Don’t tell.

… and everybody knows what happens when you say “boop”*

*And if you don’t know, shame on you for not listening to the D-1-3 Show. Your new assignment is to go listen to all right now until you know what “boop” means.

Tune in next time to see Luke say, “Hurry, Chewbacca! We’re being attacked by the DEATH STAR!” No. Really.

‘Tis the Sceazon

For the past week my spam folder has been bursting with an unusual amount of entries, mostly from “delivery request information” or “payment requests”.

Just today, 3 made it past the spam filter and into my inbox, all payment requests notifications with attachments – attachments that the spam filter stripped and I hadn’t seen before.

The attachments are zip files, most likely containing some sort of malicious code, even more likely, something that will either capture all my activity in hopes of finding bank and/or credit card numbers.

Luckily there’s 2 things working in my favor to keep this from being a problem, 1 I’m on a Mac, and 2 it’s a fairly old trick that’s been reported before.

But, they are getting clever. The latest one was a payment request from “Converse”, and oddly enough my wife is a converse “chucks” freak. If I had happened to order her a pair of chucks for xmas (which I haven’t) and I wasn’t aware that a zip file is a major red flag for computer danger, I may have fallen for it.

The sad part about all this came to me when I associated the mass amounts of spam are coinciding with the fast approaching holidays. A time where many people will be purchasing items on-line thus typing in their credit and debit card numbers repeatedly.

It’s sad, yet not surprising, that cyber hackers are ramping for the holidays with as much gusto as the major retail chains. Sadder still, there will people innocent victims that fall for some of these scams.

Ruining holidays should be best left the time honored traditions: Family gatherings, scarce parking, and department store brawls, cyber hackers can have the rest of the year.

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.

Comic Wars – Episode 2

Welcome back to another edition of Comic Wars. I forgot to say last time that I was going to take each issue of the comic in turn, so it will take several episodes to get through A New Hope.

When we last left our heroes, Luke had gone out into the Dune Sea to look for his prodigal droid, R2-D2, and run afoul of some Tusken Raiders. This is where we pick up the story.

The title of this chapter is “Six Against the Galaxy”. I’m not sure what math they’re using for this. There are seven main characters in the movie: Luke, Ben, Han, Chewie, Leia, Threepio and Artoo. And once they meet up with the rebellion, there’s tons of people fighting the Empire.

In the movie when Obi Wan gives Luke his father’s lightsaber and Luke asks what it is, Ben just says, “It’s your father’s lightsaber”. In the comic, for some reason they decide to have Ben give Luke some sort of child-molesting innuendo, “Touch the brightly-colored button up there by the pommel — and you’ll see!” I almost feel like I’m back in the bike shop with Arnold and Dudley.

Here we first learn about “the force”. And at least for the next few chapters, it is referred to in scare quotes. I realize that it’s a new concept to people in 1977, and seems really funny to us now that we’ve had thirty years to acclimate to it, but they keep it going for a really long time.

But my favorite part of this page is the final panel. In the movie, when Luke protests about going to Alderaan, Ben says, “You must do what you feel is right, of course.” But here, they decided to turn Luke into even more of a whining bitch.

Ben says, “You must do what you feel, Luke.” And Luke says, “Right now, I don’t feel too good!” What does that even mean? Is he going to “not do too good”?

It reminds me of Gene Hackman in some MST3K movie about astronauts. Matt knows what I’m talking about.

One of the most memorable lines that came from the original trilogy was from Ben Kenobi. Actually, most of the memorable lines were from him. I wonder if that was because he was one of the two Shakespearean actors in the cast, both of whom die in the first movie.

Anyway, when Ben and Luke are first observing Mos Eisley, Ben says what is now one of the most iconic lines ever, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

I want to give the writers of the comic the benefit of doubt and say that they didn’t know how memorable that line was going to become, when they DECIDED TO BUTCHER IT AND LEAVE IT BLEEDING IN A DITCH.

First of all, they put Ben and Luke in the middle of town, rather than on a cliff overlooking the city.

Secondly, they give Ben the preamble, “Well here it is, lad”. Ouch. “Lad”? They never use the word “lad” in the entire trilogy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they used it in the prequels, though. The word found its ultimate epitaph in the NormalMan comics where every other nothing hero was called Something-Lad. I honestly don’t think any superhero in Marvel or DC comics in the last thirty years had “lad” in the name. Though I wouldn’t be too sure about DC.

And then finally they take out one of the two crucial words in the quote, and only let Ben say, “You won’t find a more wretched hive of villainy!”

Is it just thirty years of getting used to the quotes, or does that just seem wrong? I’m sure back when Lucas was writing this – you know, back when he could actually write – I imagine that he took some care with his words, and you know, this one worked out really well. Once you subtract the “scum” from the “villainy”, it just seems like subtracting the “Boba” from “Fett”. It just feels wrong.

Here we see another example of the comics trying to introduce a new concept to the comic-reading world. Forget about the fact that parsecs are a measure of distance, rather than time (Lucas apologists have retconned this one into oblivion) and notice the spelling, or rather hyphenation, of “par-secs”. It’s like not only had they not heard of the term before, but the script they received from Lucas either had it spelled wrong, or they figured it couldn’t be a real word, and so they could spell it however they wanted.

One of the most famous scenes deleted from Episode IV is the Jabba scene. I know I’ve seen a version of this where Jabba is a fat human. Then of course there is the Special1 Edition, in which Lucas shoehorned in an extremely fake CGI slug Jabba (not to mention a silent Boba Fett – Fett seems to be Lucas’ version of Heather Locklear).

But comic creators decided to turn Jabba into a green-skinned alien with sideburns that Wolverine would envy.

And in no version does Han say, “I’ll pay you because … it’s my pleasure.” That just sounds vaguely creepy.

One of the timeless things about Star Wars is that they didn’t use any Earth-normal phrases or idioms. That thought really didn’t make it into the minds of the comic creators, because they decided in their infinite wisdom to have C-3P0 say, “Was this trip really necessary?”

I’d like to think that even at 6 years old, I would have noticed that this was not what they said in the movie (heck, I could tell that the Biggs scenes that were inserted into the storybooks were not in the movie), even though I didn’t have VHS or DVD copies to view repeatedly. I think lines like that just don’t sound right in the Star Wars universe.

Not to mention the fact that if the Falcon was experiencing enough turbulence to hurl Threepio out of his chair so that he was barely clinging on by his arthritic fingers, he would end up suffering more damager than when he fell down the bluff on Tattooine.

Well, that’s about it for Issue 2. Tune in next time to see Luke begin his Jedi training and someone exclaim, “That’s no moon.”

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