Well, here I go again at some kind of attempt at writing regularly for this 'Zine. It's been hard to come up with something to write about as, since this 'Zine started, my life has almost completely changed and comic books are a FAR smaller part of my life than they used to be (heck, I'm saving to get married now, who can afford comics???). Still, I'd like to think I still have something to offer the comic book reading public...even if it is only my uniquely British perspective.
So, that brings us back to the sticky question of what I'm going to write about. Well, in general, if I can actually manage to force myself to sit down and write this column on a regular basis, I'm just going to write about what's on my mind....keeping it comic book related, of course! Specifically, for this column, what's on my mind is Star Wars.
"Hey, I thought you were going to keep it comic book related?!" Well, yeah, I am, but you're going to have to forgive me on this one, it's a bit of a weak link. This month saw the start of the first ongoing Star Wars comic book for...ooh....a long time (yeah, like I can be bothered to go look it up? [Actually, Marvel cancelled their long running Star Wars series in September '86 - reading-through-again-Ian]). It's a pretty momentous occasion, if you ask me (and I know you didn't, but you'll have to bear with me). To me it seals the return of Star Wars to dominance of all areas of pop-culture...a process that started some years ago now with the release of West End Games' role playing game set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away that George Lucas first introduced us to in the summer of 1977 (well, okay, not me, I was only one year old at the time). Things had seemed pretty hopeless for the relatively few remaining Star Wars fans back then. A short time before (okay, so I'm doing this whole column off the top of my head and don't have time to go look up dates [oh, all right then, if you insist....the Star Wars role playing game was released in 1987, and this "short time before" refers to earlier in '87]) the Star Wars fan club had folded and it's superb fanzine, Bantha Tracks had ceased publication (at the time they said they'd notify existing members when a new club started....I recently learned that this actually happened when the Lucasfilm Fan Club started up [which published the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine...now known as the Star Wars Insider] although no-one told me! Grrr....). So....1987 was both a good and bad year...it saw the demise of the fan club, but the start of the role playing game...and the role playing game led to...Do I really need to spell it out? Well, I guess there might be one or two of you who don't know. In 1991, four years after the release of the role playing game, public interest had risen to a high enough point for George Lucas to agree to the idea of new novels based on his original trilogy of films. Thus, '91 saw the release of Heir To The Empire, by Timothy Zahn, which immediately shot to the top of the best sellers list. Star Wars was well and truly back, but this was just the beginning. Hmmm... despite the upbeat tone of my last sentence... at the time, when the novel came out... I hesitated. This wasn't Star Wars... this wasn't George Lucas... who did this Zahn guy think he was? I still hear this kind of thing from so-called Star Wars "purists"... who won't accept anything other than the original three films as being "true" Star Wars. However, once I finally started reading the new books I realised what a prat I'd been to think that way. By waiting so long to start reading them I'd really been missing out on something...the further adventures of these characters...something I'd been waiting years for! I felt it important to mention the role playing game as many people see the release of Heir to the Empire as the start of the "revival." While that was when things really began to snowball, Heir to the Empire would never have happened without the role playing game, which really started things moving. Zahn himself used a lot of the source material which was produced for the role playing game when writing his novels.
A year later, in '92, Star Wars made its return to the comic book world in Dark Horse's immensely popular Dark Empire series. Unfortunately, for this writer, I felt that the comic book series made all the mistakes that I'd expected Zahn to make in the novels. The Emperor was back...Luke turned to the dark side...all too predictable (the only thing Dark Empire didn't do was make Palpatine Luke's grandfather!). The art was...well...let's just say "not to my tastes" and leave it at that. Dark Horse had a hit, and a hot property, on their hands, but they still needed to do some work to please the fans.As I've said before, Star Wars was back...and if there's one thing that Star Wars has always been synonymous with, it's toys! Not surprisingly then, in 1995, Kenner (now owned by Hasbro) revived it's Star Wars action figure line under the banner heading of "Power of the Force." The line has proved hugely popular with both kids and adults. Like me I'm sure there are many folk out there who always told themselves that if there was ever a new line of Star wars toys then they'd be sure to buy each and every figure. Well...I've been trying...but I quickly learned that I live on completely the wrong side of the Atlantic to do it. It's just been impossible to keep up with wave after wave of figures from Kenner...and with the prices we have to pay over here (both in toy stores, which carry a very limited range...and the speciality stores which charge obscene prices) it's just not been financially viable. I even tried getting friends in the States to send me them, but it just proved to be too much hassle. The toy line as a whole has been excellent...with one snag. I don't like the idea of any toy manufacturer aiming its products at the collector. It just sucks. It sucks when comic book companies do it, and it sucks when toy companies do it. Yes...I collect both comics and toys...but I don't want them to be tailor made just for me...that takes all the fun out of it. And I hate, hate, hate the whole idea of these limited edition exclusive figures! Maybe I can just empathise with the poor kids who are denied access to some damn cool toys by this whole pandering to the collector market thing...but to me it just sucks. Oh...and one last thing about toys... take 'em out of the packaging, morons!
Moving swiftly on... 1997 saw the release of the Special Editions (which gave those aforementioned Star Wars "purists" something more to moan about), and suddenly everyone was a Star Wars fan... and, apparently, always had been (those of us who remember the death of the fan club felt a little agreived at this... but were, and still are, enjoying the revival too much to really care). Now, with the release of the trailer for the first new Star Wars film in over twenty years, things have reached fever pitch (and, by the way, we don't get that here in Britain 'till July... just another thing that sucks about this country).Which brings me back to where I started...the new ongoing Star Wars comic book from Dark Horse. Now there's a new movie, a line of novels, more than one line of toys, an ongoing comic book...oh, and I completely forgot about the computer games (but I won't bore you with my exploits as Kyle Katarn). Star Wars truly reaches into every aspect of popular culture (well, except TV, but it never really did, apart from the Droids and Ewoks animated series, which didn't last too long, and a couple fo Ewoks TV movies...but, anyway, who has time to watch TV anymore? I certainly don't!).
So, anyway, what do I actually think of this new ongoing Star Wars comic book? Well... uh... hmmm... There's the rub... I've essentially used a comic book I didn't really enjoy all that much as an excuse to waffle on about Star Wars... sorry! The comic introduces us to a completely new character, Ki-adi-mundi, a Jedi Knight living at the time of the end of the Old Republic. He's...well...a bit of a boring old git really. Hopefully the book will get a bit more interesting as it goes on...but there's none of the action, adventure and excitement you'd usually associate with Star Wars. You can do ANYTHING in a comic book...the special effects are only limited by your own imagination and the artists ability to draw. Of course, that's the other problem. The book's pencilled by Anthony Winn, who singularly failed to impress during his run on Wolverine for Marvel Comics, and Robert Jones' sketchy inks only serve to make things worse. The painted cover, by Ken Kelly, looks great...although it's not in the class of the likes of Dave Dorman. All in all...I've come to expect better from Star Wars.Still, I don't want to end on a negative note. The 1990's have proved to be an excellent decade as far as Star Wars fandom is concerned, and the start of the next century looks set to be even greater. Now, we Star Wars loving comic book fans have an ongoing series to sink our teeth into...and in time, hopefully, Dark Horse can get the book on track (or they'll have some 'splaining to do!).
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