We all know these people are toast.  Perhaps for some readers that might take the suspense and drama away.  Yet Reaves gets you to care enough about these guys so that you keep hoping that somehow, someway they escape after all.  I guess it was sort of like watching Titanic  or reading Anne Frank's diary.  Reaves also keeps up the suspense with Lorn's grudge against the Jedi.  You wonder what his beef is and when you find out, it's a reminder of how harsh the Jedi way can be sometimes.  Naturally this creates big time tension with Darsha, tempered with a growing attraction to her.  Darsha is no Chosen One; she's had to struggle to get to where she is.  Over the course of the story she wrestles with self-doubt and with what it means to be a Jedi.  My favorite character is I-Five.  We haven't seen a droid quite like him before and his relationship with Lorn is similar to Chewbacca's relationship with Han Solo.  He's Lorn's conscience, advisor, and best friend.  He's also pretty funny.  Reaves writes some great action sequences and his scenes with Maul on the prowl are a lot of fun.  They remind me a bit of the Terminator  flicks.  Another cool part is when our friends and villain encounter Coruscant's answer to CHUDs (cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers to you non-B movie/urban legend fans).  The whole book has a dark, gritty almost film-noir feel to it but still remains true to the SW universe.  I liked how Reaves tied the Darth Maul Journal and the recent set of Maul comics into the novel.  He gets a gold star for continuity.  But the story doesn't get into  Maul's background all that much or delve more into the Sith way of life.  There's still no explanation as to why he hates the Jedi so much (at least Lorn has a reason).  However, there is some insight into how the Sith view the Jedi and you have to admit, at times Reaves lets you see they have a point.  For all of the humility the Jedi profess, they still live on some posh real estate, cut off from the masses and a world away from the utter squalor of the Crimson Corridor.  Maul is instructed to keep things quiet and low-key, since after all, it isn't quite time to reveal himself to the Jedi.  But he winds up killing scores of people, often in ways that are really messy.  As you might guess, this attracts a lot of attention, but everyone, including Obi-Wan Kenobi, just blows it all off as some kind of gang rivalry within Black Sun.  A little too convenient, especially since Lorn and Darsha quickly recognize lightsaber wounds on Maul's other victims. And for the love of Pete, did we HAVE to see Nute Gunray naked?!  Aaagh!  How am I going to get that image out of my mind?!  But overall, the book is great reading and man, what an ending!  You'll be holding your breath the last 50 pages. ©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

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Inside the Worlds of Star Wars:  Episode I:  (etc).    By Kristin Lund
Illustrated by Hans Jenssen  & Richard Chasemore,   Dorling Kindersley, $19.95
Review:  Mary Jo Fox

Long title, short review.

Dorling Kindersley unleashes yet another lavishly-produced beautiful picture book, this time offering a detailed look at locations featured in TPM.

 Incredible Locations is technically for children, but the production quality puts it on par with coffee table fare.  Locales such as Theed, Otoh Gunga, the Galactic Senate building, and the Jedi Temple are wonderfully illustrated by the talented Jenssen and Chasemore, who have worked on two other SW books for DK.  Each illustration is so detailed, you could stare at it for hours.  Lund writes the general text and descriptions, but you still get most of your information from the pictures.

 The goodies include a complete map of the Boonta Eve race course, a map of inhabited Tatooine that reveals Mos Espa and Mos Eisley are not the same town, and an overview of the battle on Naboo's grass plains, complete with a timetable of events.  Ever wanted to know what's in that big spire on top of the Jedi Temple?  Look no further.  In fact, there's a small piece of that illustration that looks remarkably like something shown in one of the official web site's Episode II Selects.  I'll let you look for it...

 You can also get a pie-slice view of the Senate chambers.  Apparently each delegation's office is adjusted for their respective species' needs.  There's also a complete view of the Theed hangar/power generator and an inside look at the droid battle ship.

 Stills from the movie supplement the original artwork.  My only complaint is that on some pages, you get stills and little else.  But the other stuff is breathtakingly cool, with plenty for any obsessed fan to drool over.  Definitely pick up this one.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Ultimate Edition Soundtrack CD
Music by John Williams / released by Sony Classical
review: James Addams

In my initial review of the single-disc version of the Phantom Menace score CD (BH18 p.15-19), I wrote at length about why I thought the soundtrack was best released as a single disc, rather than a ‘complete score’ 2-CD set.  Apparently, I was alone in this opinion, because there was enough noise made by fans demanding a two disc set that Sony Classical went ahead and issued one in November of 2000.  In the eighteen months that separated the two issues, the fans who wanted the double-disc proclaimed loudly that they wanted the complete score, as presented in the film, not one of John Williams’ (usually skillful) re-arrangements, designed (as Williams has stated on many occasions) for a more enjoyable listening experience outside of the context of the film.

 This is exactly what we got.

 So why are so many fans unhappy?  I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.  There has been so much outrage over this reissue that one bunch of people who are inadvertently reminding us that ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’  have gone as far as to spend their time and money to create a domain name on the internet simply for the purpose of denouncing this recording.  The problem, it seems, is that what the fans asked for was delivered, but in promoting the item, Sony might have misworded a few things so as to give the impression that the reissue would be exactly what the fans asked for, and more.  When the ‘and more’ was not delivered, a certain group of fans went ballistic, and made quite a stir.

So let’s go back a step.  The suits at Sony got wind of the many requests for two discs of TPM score, and decided to release such a version of the soundtrack.  This set would contain every note of the TPM score, presented in the same order as presented in the film.  Essentially, the discs would sound like what you would hear if you went to see TPM at the theatre, but someone took all of the voices and sound effects away, and then cut out the silent bits.  Every scrap of music is there.  There are even scenes where the music is jarring and unpleasant to listen to, due to sharp cuts, which have been left intact.  One example is the final battle.  As the action moves back and forth between the space battle, the lightsaber battle, and the storming of the castle, the music changes abruptly and is not easy to listen to.  In watching the film we don’t really notice this, because the picture, dialogue, and sound effects are changing too.  In short, it works in that context.  However, to listen to just this music by itself is grating.  That is why Wiliams chooses to rearrange the music for the soundtrack albums, and this is a decision I agree with enthusiastically.  Nevertheless, certain fans wanted the complete un-edited score, and that is what they got.  So why are they complaining?  Well, Sony’s advertising stated that “every note of music composed for The Phantom Menace” would be on the new set.  The key word here is ‘composed’.  When the fans who had petitioned for the complete score as heard in the film read the word ‘composed’, they immediately started imagining that all of the snips of music that Williams scored for the film, but were later unused, would also  be included.  It would be very unusual for a soundtrack CD to include unused music under regular circumstances, and it would usually be considered a cool bonus for unused music to be included in some sort of deluxe reissue of the soundtrack of a film that is considered a classic (such as the original trilogy’s soundtrack reissues in 1997).  But spoiled by the increasingly more common practice of adding such material from the vaults to these reissues, many people took the phrase “every note of music composed for The Phantom Menace” to heart, and expected some (no - ALL) of the unused cues to make it onto to the new CDs.  I must admit, this would have been a nice addition on Sony’s part, but let’s look at this from their perspective.  They originally issued the single CD, thinking that’s what the market would bear.  There was a cry for more, specifically for the complete score as heard in the film, not a Williams re-edit.  So Sony issued exactly what they were being asked for.  It is so rare that a company as big as Sony will listen to and respond to the wishes of music fans so quickly (yes eighteen months is lightning quick in industry as big as the music biz).  It was their bad luck that a few uptight fans would take one word in their advertising in an all too literal sense and create a stink as big as they did.  So how about the discs themselves?  Well, there are some nice pieces of music here that are heard in the film but not on the original single disc.  For anyone who has more than a casual interest in the score to TPM, you’ll want to pick this set up.  However, as stated above, the edits can be abrupt and jarring.  Once caveat that I mentioned in my BH18 article is that certain themes repeat many times in the film, and as underscore they work well, but they do get tiresome when heard in this context.  My prediction holds true.  Perhaps in 2005, or sometime after Episode III, we’ll get a third reissue of the TPM score.  Ultimately, it will contain essentially what we hear on the old single-disc version of TPM, plus those studio outtakes that the curious among us do want to hear, and another twenty or thirty minutes or so of music that had to be left off of the single disc (no room), but in Williams-approved edited versions, rather than the jagged and abrupt straight-from-the-film context we have here. In this configuration, it would be very similar to the very successful ANH and ROJ reissues from 1997 (the ESB reissue suffered from a few problems; see previous BH issues for details). ©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

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Tribute to Sir Alec Guinness and Shelagh Fraser
Nothing Compares 2 U - editorial by Mary Jo Fox
Wizard World Con Report - Episode I - by Maikel Das
Wizard WorldCon Report - Episode II - by James Addams
Book Review - Balance Point (Kathy Tyers)  - by James Addams
Book Review - Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (Michael Reaves) by Mary Jo Fox
Inside The Worlds of Episode I... (etc) - by Mary Jo Fox
The Phantom Menaace - Ultimate Edition Soundtrack (Sony Classical) - review James Addams
Jedi Appentice #11 and #12 - review by Mary Jo Fox
New Toys reviewed - by James Addams
Darth Malts - Star Wars cookbook - review by Mary Jo Fox
Recent Star Wars Comics by Dark Horse


Jedi Apprentice #11:  The Deadly Hunter    By Jude Watson
Jedi Apprentice #12:  The Evil Experiment  By Jude Watson
Scholastic, $5.99 a pop
review:  Mary Jo Fox

More than a year has passed since Qui-Gon Jinn took young Obi-Wan Kenobi on as his Padawan.  Over the course of 12 books, the two have learned to trust one another, to bond, and to become a force to be reckoned with.  But have their lives become any easier?  Of course not!  Otherwise we wouldn't have this still-fabulous series to read.

The Deadly Hunter begins a new story arc involving murder and a mysterious bounty hunter.  Qui-Gon has a buddy named Didi, who runs a greasy spoon with his daughter Astri.  Didi one day asks Qui-Gon for help; a female bounty hunter with the unusual ability to contort herself to fit into any kind of opening or space has been after him.  Apparently Didi knows too much about the death of a Senator's son.  Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan pursue the bounty hunter, who turns out to be quite the pill.  By the end of the book, she has poisoned Didi and captured Qui-Gon.  We find in The Evil Experiment  who employed the bounty hunter and why.  Qui-Gon is the prisoner of Dr. Jenna Zan Arbor, a mad scientist who is basically Elisabeth Bathory in a lab coat.  She is trying to study the Force and part of her experiments involve extracting blood from Force-sensitive subjects.  So far all of them have died.  She wants Qui-Gon to cooperate with her attempts to monitor Quiggy's biological signs as he uses the Force, but to her frustration, he refuses.  Can you blame him?  Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Astri pursue the bounty hunter.  Obi-Wan is desperate to find his missing Master and Astri is desperate to find an antitoxin for her dying father.  The two are led to Zan Arbor's laboratory, but Obi-Wan is faced with a difficult and heartwrenching decision with the lives of both Didi and Qui-Gon in the balance.  So far these two books are off to a good start.  Fans of Jedi angst will find plenty to love here.  Watson also provides some life lessons for Obi-Wan.  Here he displays some of the arrogance toward less-than-worthy beings he showed in TPM, though he learns not to be so quick to judge.  He also learns non-Jedi can contribute in tough situations.  But what's truly interesting is Watson's exploration of the Force.  Is it something purely spiritual or something science can measure?  It's an issue that has been a hot topic among SW fans since the midichlorian thing popped up.  Dr. Jenna apparently sees it as a matter of biology and the Force can then be scientifically replicated and manipulated.  But Qui-Gon says using the Force requires more than a scientific mind; it requires wisdom and an open heart.  Actually, Qui-Gon and Dr. Jenna have a pretty unusual relationship.  She tortures him in sensory deprivation tanks and frequently threatens to kill him if he does not cooperate, but the subtext suggests she also has the hots for him.  Her lab assistant Nil is described as jealous of Qui-Gon.  Maybe she thinks she'll learn even more about the Force in the sack.  Oh yeah, I forgot, these are children's books!  Silly me!  Stay tuned for more fun and games in the upcoming  The Dangerous Rescue,  co-starring Adi Gallia and her Buffy-lookalike Padawan, Siri. ©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

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New Toys
rant: James Addams

I am somewhat pleased to be able to review the new line of Power of the Jedi toys for you.  But first, you must suffer through a bit of ranting on the state of the collecting hobby (again).

 As you probably know, 2000 was possibly the most miserable year to date for Star Wars toy collectors.  In past years there were constant outcries from collectors about short packs, scalpers, and scarcity issues.  To a large extent these were valid issues - new POTF2 toys were often very difficult to get, and certain waves from the 1995-1997 lines took quite a while to get to the shelves after their initial release.  The scalper problem was a real one, and I can list dozens of occasions where fans were unable to get the toys they wanted because people with inside connections were buying them up and reselling them for two to five times retail value.

 The problem grew worse in 1998 and 1999, as Star Wars collecting hit an all time peak, and Hasbro’s distribution efforts hit a new low.  Certain waves of figures never even made it to stores at all in many parts of the country.  The Expanded Universe wave and the 1998 ‘Luke blast shield’ wave spring to mind.
 The turning point (or so we thought) occurred in Spring of 1999 when Hasbro (and every other company on the planet) unleashed their Episode I line.  For a while, it was great - everything we wanted was readily available.  But then things took a big turn for the worse, and plunged the SW collecting hobby into a black pit of misery.

 Here’s what happened.

 In anticipation of the unprecedented success predicted for the film, Episode I product was manufactured, ordered, and shipped in such quantity that stores were clogged with unsold product for eighteen months - right through the end of 2000.

 The reason for this was not that Episode I and it’s marketing were failures (as the media said so often) but rather the problem was pure and simple greed.  Every licensee who could afford to pay the Lucasfilm price tag to manufacture Episode I product did so with enthusiasm and glee, visions of dollars dancing in their heads.  Unfortunately, no matter how popular The Phantom Menace proved to be, there were just too many different products competing for the limited consumer dollar.  Let’s put it this way - for every $500 million the collective public had ready to spend on Star Wars stuff, they had $2 billion worth of stuff to choose from - so 3/4 of the people making this stuff were destined to lose.

 Giant clearance sales helped - and certainly made collectors happy - but the dregs of May 1999 can still be seen sitting in the ‘please take me home, we’ll pay you’ isles in stores across the world.  Given that they are stuck with unsold merchandise, these retailers aren’t going to be in a hurry to order more.  Unfortunately, the production schedules for the companies making all of this stuff are planned well in advance - sometimes years in advance.  So even though your local Toys R Us had plenty of Chancellor Valorum figures on the shelves, and therefore had no intention of ordering more figures, Hasbro was still cranking out new designs.  These are the figures and other toys that most of us never saw.

 Hasbro released an all time-low number of figures in 2000.  This is good, because in light of the poor to non-existent distribution, that’s fewer figures that most of us are missing from our collections.  By my count it was thirteen Episode I figures (that’s everything after the Adi Gallia/Panaka wave until the TPM line officially ended and was replaced by POTJ).  The POTF comm-tech line for 2000 contained only five figures: R2-D2, Motti, Leia, Vader and Stormtrooper.  Of these eighteen figures, I saw exactly zero of them in stores between December 1999 and February 2001.  Bigger toys and accessories fared no better: The Watto’s Box cinema scene was MIA, as was the Federation Tank, the Falumpaset with Ammo Wagon, the Invasion Force toys (essentially new ‘mini rigs’ with figures included), and Jabba with Fode and Beed.  The Eopie toy didn’t even get released in the USA at all, making it’s way straight to Europe and Japan.  And don’t even get me started on the Target exclusive Y-wing and Skiff toys - you can get those on-line these days for the ‘bargain’ price of about $50 each.

 There have been some efforts to get this stuff into our hands, but these efforts are feeble and even insulting at times.  For example, the Fan Club offerings are a joke.  You’d think that a ‘fan club’ would be a place where fans could go to get treated with respect, form a sense of community, and get good deals.  Nope.  Rather, it is a place we get gouged if we want their exclusive merchandise.  No better than the scalpers, really.  Raise your hand if you resent their charging $10 per figure plus $4 shipping for the Expanded Universe offerings they dangled in front of our faces last year.  I could do better ordering from a scalper... but I won’t.

 But check it out - there is salvation!

 As I write this, in February of 2001, the Toys R Us near my house have finally cleared out all of the May, 1999 line from their shelves, and are ordering new stuff.  And what are they being shipped?  The January, 2000 figures!  Not only that, but they are still on clearance for $1.97.  Those of us who heeded the advice of our Jedi Masters to be patient are rejoicing, because last week I got five figures (each more than a year old), that I had never seen in stores before.  These were the so called ‘soft goods’ wave: Darth Maul (Sith Lord), Obi Wan (Jedi Knight), Anakin (Naboo Pilot), plus comm-tech Vader with Interrogation droid, and the comm-tech Stormtrooper.  All five of ‘em for ten bucks total!  Very cool.

 Now, the implication here is that perhaps when these are all bought up, the additional waves of 2000 figures will follow.  I would very much like to see R2-D2 with Leia Hologram, TC-14, and Naboo Battle Amidala in the stores this spring, especially for $1.97!  I am glad I didn’t pay those nasty scalpers, although I admit I did begin keeping my eyes open for a (relative) bargain...

 So we might have that to look forward to.  Even more exciting is that the new Power of the Jedi line seems to be shipping in quantity, everywhere.

 Released beginning in Autumn of 2000, the POTJ line replaces both the TPM line and the five year old POTF2 line.  As of this writing, there are already 31 figures in the line, which is enough to make one’s head spin.  Given that the line is less than six months old, this is a pretty impressive number of figures to introduce so quickly.  Fortunately, the figures are making their way into stores in reasonable quantity.  We are seeing far less of them than we did the 1999 figures, but far more than the 2000 figures.  Which is perfect.

 Gone also are gimmicks like the comm-tech chip that drove the already pricey figures up by a buck.  In their place are Jedi Force Files, or little 8-page booklets.  We were supposed to get a price drop with the phasing out of the comm-tech chips, but so far most of the retailers around me are still charging about $7 for new figures.  Considering what you get for your money, something really needs to be done about this.  I have said this before and I will say it again: compare what you get for your $7 in a Star Wars figure to what you get for $10 or so in many of the other figure lines out there (such as the McFarlane toys lines) and you’ll feel a bit cheated.  Star Wars figures really need to drop back into the $5-$6 range.

Anyway, enough speculation and complaining from me.  Why do I still collect Star Wars toys with all of the hurdles and hassles described in the last two pages?  Because they rock!  I gotta have my little plastic men (and ladies, and droids, and aliens), and I always have!  So let’s get down to some actual discussion of the toys themselves, a rather than the politics and economics surrounding them.  Here’s what rocks about the POTJ line to date:  Dagobah Vader.  Really nice version of Vader, but they should have had his face plate off when he’s in the package so you can see Luke’s face underneath.  Plo Koon and Saesee Tiin: two more cool looking dudes from the Jedi Council.  Along with Mace, Yoda, Adi, and Ki, the Jedi Council is now half complete.  But the half that is complete is the bad-ass and cool-looking half.  Can we get enthusiastic about inevitable upcoming figures of Yaddle and Oppo Rancis?  No, not really.  Maybe Depa Billaba and Eeth Koth, but an Even Peill figure?  Sorry, can’t go there. I hear Yarael Poof is next, but every time I see that guy, I just think of a Sith lightsaber cleanly bisecting that long neck of his.  Nothing against the character, but he just seems to have been built for decapitation.  K-3PO: I made my own K-3PO figure when I was a kid by coating a C-3PO with white-out and making two little red dots on his chest with a Sharpie.  Using a Bic lighter, I tried to add a scorch mark on his chest as a final touch, and the whole thing went up in flames.  Glad to have a real one now.  Mon Cal officer: man, we are really getting into some obscure characters here, but this guy looks cool, and Ackbar has been lonely lately, so this guy gets a thumbs up.  Chewbacca-a-go-go: Two Chewie figures in the new line already!  That’s some respect for the Wook indeed.  The ‘Dejarik Champion’ figure is funny, even if his arms are fixed in a behind-the-neck pose.  Try moving them around front and he just looks silly.  The newer ‘Mechanic’ version is more universally ‘useful’, if you happen to be a kid (or adult) who actually plays with his toys.  Darth Maul - Sith Apprentice: This is the 12th Darth Maul 3 3/4”  figure in less than two years.  And it is the ONLY one that is significantly different from the other 11.  More a part of the Expanded Universe “Concept Art” line than anything else, this one features Maul in training garb as seen in production art.  James sez: buy this one and your pick of any one of the 11 others - you only need two Mauls.  The version with a Sith Speeder is on sale everywhere for less than five bucks.  Obi Wan Kenobi and Obi Wan Kenobi: with a ‘young’ Obi Wan and an ‘old’ Obi Wan in the same line for the first time, things can get confusing.  Both are fairly redundant anyway...  Queen Amidala - Theed Invasion:  About time!  Considering that there are 12 Darth Maul figures out there, and the guy went through exactly no  costume changes in the movie, and that this is only the fifth Amidala/Padme figure (and she went through about 12 costume changes in the movie) methinks that Hasbro has some catching up to do on the Amidala figures.  She is just about the only character in the entire Star Wars saga who really needs to have multiple new figures made of her in the future.  Let’s retire Qui Gon, Obi Wan, R2-D2, and a few of the other characters who have been done to death, and do a few more Amidalas!  Leia Bespin Escape: The similar Leia Hoth was one of those overpriced Fan Club thingies that I mentioned above, so it is good to see this version of Leia widely available.  The Force File contains at least two pics of Leia that I have never seen before (and I’ve seen a LOT), and the figure comes with not one but two (identical) blasters.  My only real concern about this line of figures (aside from the price) is that since they are being released so fast, some of the figures from the early waves are already out of circulation.  This means that collectors really have to be on the ball when a new wave comes out.  Some figures, like Coruscant Guard, came and went so fast that they made the 2000 figures look like the proverbial and dreaded  peg-warmers.  I am not sure what inspired Hasbro to release 31 figures in less than six months, particularly after the blow they took with the glut of 1999 product languishing on pegs everywhere.  I am glad to see new stuff being released and actually hitting the stores, so I shouldn’t complain (I’ve done enough of that already).  Rather I will just leave you all with an advisory that if you want to collect these new toys, be prepared to move quickly when a new wave comes out (which is about every other week, or so it seems).  ©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

The Star Wars Cookbook II:  Darth Malt and More Galactic Recipes
By Frankie Frankeny and Wesley Martin   /   Chronicle Books, $15.95
Review:  Mary Jo Fox

 This book almost caused my house to burn to the ground.

 You see, I wanted to test out the recipes as part of my review of this book.  I tried the Forceful Frittata.  I had to put this concoction into the oven to bake and I set the oven to heat.  After a few minutes I could smell something acrid.  I turned and saw smoke coming from the oven.  Freaking out, I turned off the oven, opened it and saw that my mom had stored something plastic inside. The plastic had melted into
something out of Dali painting, with some of it bubbling on the oven surface.

 So much for that frittata!

 Darth Malt takes the same concept as Wookiee Cookies, the first SW cookbook, and kicks it up a notch with new recipes.  There are breakfast dishes, snacks and sides, entrees, drinks, and desserts.  As with its predecessor, Darth Malt features lots of healthy and simple kid-friendly fare but this time around there are also some "ethnic" recipes.  Here you can learn to make pad thai (a yummy Thai noodle dish), tabouli (a Middle Eastern couscous salad), and challah (a delicious bread of Jewish/Eastern European origin). Everything of course has some kind of SW-esque name, like "Watto-melon Cubes" and "Panakacakes."

 But what's truly cool about the cookbook is the abundance of clever photographs by Wesley Martin.  Action figures and food are used to make funny recreations of scenes from TPM.  My favorite is the Qui-Gon Jinn figure using his lightsaber to cut through a fruit-filled cookie.

 Some of the recipes are very time consuming and if you live in a town where banh pho is readily available in stores, chances are you'll be able to find restaurant pad thai way better than any version you can make yourself.  But the book is as much fun as "Wookiee Cookies," and who can resist making those SW pretzels or that Darth Maul dip for your next fan gathering?

 Well, given my kitchen disaster, maybe I should stick to only making reservations.

©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

Recent Comics by Dark Horse, avg. $2.95
review: James Addams

Dark Horse has been fairly successful with their Star Wars comics for the past few years, delivering many more great comics than they have duds.  Unfortunately, in the last few months they seem to have faltered a bit, releasing a few sub par titles in a row.  Even the normally awesome Star Wars Tales has dipped a bit in quality.  Star Wars Tales #5  begins with Yaddle’s back story.  Although drawn well, the tale didn’t do much for me.  After Yaddle’s Master -  Kut  - is killed on the moon of Koba by a warlord named Tulok, Yaddle is captured and imprisoned for more than a century.  She eventually confronts her captor’s son, wins her freedom, and joins the Jedi Council.  I find it tough to swallow that Yaddle would submit as easily as she does to capture however, not to mention that she seemed to have little problem with being left in a pit for 100 years.  Why not just use the Force to levitate the rock sealing her into the pit?  Or use a Jedi Mind trick on one of Tulak’s guards?  Why didn’t the other Jedi come looking for her and Master Kut when they didn’t return from Koba’s moon?  The monsters that attacked her in the pit had to have come from somewhere; why not look for an exit by heading into whatever subterranean tunnels the creatures came from?  I am sure that spending a century in a pit is good for meditation, and for finding one’s place in the Force, but there are just too many plot holes (no pun intended) in this story for me to have really liked it.  Craig Thompson’s What They Called Me is a brief and lighthearted story that not-so-subtly sticks it to the Missionaries and tourists from our own culture who have wreaked havoc on primitive societies right here on Earth.  Having visited a pre-industrial culture just last year (Easter Island in the South Pacific), I certainly have empathy for Thompson’s point of view, and found the message within story to be particularly important.  Unfortunately, this short vignette leads us back into a longish story of little merit, A Summer’s Dream.  What could have been a sweet and touching tale centered around Amidala’s younger years ends up sappy, shallow, and cliché-riddled.  There’s nothing here we haven’t seen in a thousand teen romance movies and prime-time family drama episodes.  Next.  Hoth  is a funny 2-pager with a good punch line. Good art too.  Lando’s Commandos is an overly long action tale without much in the way of a story to recommend it.  The angular artwork doesn’t really float my Bongo either.  So what we have here is two good stories that total six pages, and three lame ones that total fifty-eight pages.  Hopefully, I thought to myself upon finishing this book, the next one will be better...  Unfortunately, Star Wars Tales #6 is no better.  The Hovel on Terk Street is a story about Greedo hunting a bounty.  There are requisite plot twists, double crosses and action scenes.  Been there, done that.  A Hot Time in the Cold Town Tonight features the return of the Max Rebo band as drawn by Mark Martin and Rick Nielson, with a script by Ian Eddington.  Too bad the charm and humor of the last Rebo Band yarn is missing from this one.  Yawn.  ...The Natural History of the Sarlacc is a mildly interesting story in which we learn where baby Sarlaccs come from.  The art by Kellie Strom is nice, and reminds me of something one would see in late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s issues of Heavy Metal magazine.  Mad Magazine favorite Sergio Aragones is back, this time scripted by Mark Evanier.  In this story, R2-D2 is the target of Vader’s minions, and C-3PO runs off to get help from Luke. Farmboy comes up with a plan, and R2 is saved.  This story is pretty dull too, but the ending (in which C-3PO, unaware of Lukes’s duplicity, is left behind looking for R2-D2 in a junk heap), is amusing.  The Hidden deals with Yoda encountering a probe droid on Dagobah.  Nice art by Scott Morse is the high point of this short story, which features Yoda using his purple lightsaber.  This is the first time (that I am aware of) that we have seen Yoda’s lightsaber.  Time will tell if purple is the official color of Yoda’s weapon.  We will see for sure in Episode II, but my thinking is that since Lucasfilm are so concerned with continuity, secrecy, and details these days, they would not have let this story be printed unless there was word from one of George’s main men that purple was the real deal.  The issue ends with Thank The Maker, a story by Ryder Wyndham that could have been great, but just misses the mark.  On Cloud City, during the events of ESB, Darth Vader encounters the head of C-3PO, and gets a little nostalgic for his past life as Anakin Skywalker.  Shmi has some funny lines (“Maybe he talked too much”), and some really clumsy ones that feel like they were badly lifted from a discarded draft of TPM: “You were meant to help this droid.  You’re his second chance”.  I am not sure that showing Darth Vader to be compassionate and heavily sentimental at this point in the saga is a good thing.  I could almost swallow his reaction after his first encounter with C-3PO’s bits, but after the second one I felt it had gone too far.  Still, it is the strongest story in an otherwise weak issue.  Let’s tackle the Darth Maul mini series next.  I enjoyed the art in this series (by Jan Duursema and Rick Magyar), which is bold, clean, graphic, and efficient... not unlike Maul himself.  My problem with this series was in the script.  It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Dart Maul was going to wade through four issues of dark side mayhem, hacking everyone who got in his way into cauterized little pieces.  And that is exactly what he does.  The idea that Maul is such a perfect killing machine that no other being in the galaxy can take him out has the effect of relieving the series of any dramatic tension that might otherwise have existed.  Additionally, the character is not developed a whit beyond the already feeble amount of real personality he exhibited on screen in The Phantom Menace.  As Darth Sidious points out in issue 1, Maul is his tool, and nothing else.  As a cold, efficient, and visually interesting weapon, Maul rocks.  But as a character with any discernible personality traits beyond a cold and ruthless hatred for the Jedi and an unwavering obedience to his master, Maul fails in his comics series for exactly the same reasons he failed on screen.  This is a shame, because writer Ron Marz seems to have opted out of a golden opportunity to further develop a character who already has an overwhelming popularity within Star Wars fandom.  Given Maul’s death in Phantom Menace, it would seem that writers might now have free reign to give Maul an interesting backstory, but I guess Marz just wasn’t the guy chosen for the job.  Hopefully, the author of the upcoming Maul novel will do something more interesting.

&

 

In the comics series, Sidious charges Maul with the task of throwing the Black Sun criminal organization into chaos, so that they will be too busy getting their pudu back together to interfere with the Sith plans for the Invasion of Naboo.  Besides watching Maul work out for eight pages, this is all that happens in issue 1.  There was one scene that I thought is was a scream: when Sidious is giving Maul his Infiltrator starship, and describing the features of it, it struck me as a funny homage to ‘Q’ giving James Bond a new Aston Martin, loaded with gadgets.   I wonder if this was intentional?

 By the second ish, Maul has infiltrated and destroyed the space station of the first of Black Sun’s nine Vigos, leaving one guy alive to tell the tale.  Issue three finds the remaining Vigos having a meeting in the impenetrable citadel of the head of Black Sun, a fella named Lex.  Lex has a Dathomir Nightsister for a bodyguard.  Maul easily slays about a million Black Sun lackeys, and penetrates the inner sanctum of this impenetrable fortress.  The series wraps up with Maul having a big fight with the Nightsister, and then dispatching Lex, who was once a wanna-be Jedi, but who didn’t make the grade.  Lex does manage to cut Maul across the stomach, and this is the only injury that the Tool of Sidious sustains in the entire series.

 A complete absence of any real tension, zero character development, and a story that could be summarized thoroughly in two paragraphs (see above) make this one a complete loser.  Even the fights are boring, because you know that Darth Maul is going to win them all with minimal effort.  Only the dramatic and very graphic art redeems this series on any level.

 Speaking of great art, Jedi Council: Acts of War wrapped up a few months back.  The Yinchorri are soundly defeated, but not without cost to the Jedi: Master Giiett takes a blaster shot, making room on the council for Ki-Adi-Mundi.  Oh, come on, this isn’t a spoiler, we saw it coming from the get-go!  Turns out the whole process of getting the Yinchorri out of the way was yet another of Sidious’s devious manipulations, designed to get the Jedi to do the Sith’s dirty work for them.

 The latest Boba Fett one-shot (Agent of Doom) has ol’ Bob taking on a bunch of evil mad scientists for the paltry sum of 100 credits, so that he may regain his recently lost reputation as a serious bad ass.  Cam Kennedy surpasses himself on this one, with some of his very best artwork to date, and Fett’s character is spot-on.  Buy this one immediately!

 Star Wars (ongoing) is indeed going on (and on), with an ever-evolving series of tales of the Jedi.  We began with Ki-Adi-Mundi in the spotlight, and then moved on to the Jedi Council as a whole.  The recent Twilight story arc has shifted the focus to Quinlan Vos and his hangover.  Oops, I mean his complete loss of memory due to unidentified forces.  Quin enlists the aid of the semi-ubiquitous Ville (he was in every single Star Wars comic last summer and autumn, but now he seems to have retired), gets off Nar Shaddaa, and makes for Ryloth, the homeworld of his missing apprentice, Aayla.  Villie meets up with his cousin, as Quin meets up with his ex-girlfriend, and several betrayals occur as Quin gets closer to figuring out who wiped his memory and stole his Padawan.

 Turns out that Aayla’s uncle has something to do with all of this, but upon confronting him, Vos is strongly tempted by a dark side that his memory loss doesn’t fully let him understand.  Moving on to Coruscant and a quadruple-and-counting-cross from Villie, Vos faces the man behind the whole conspiracy, and finally gives in to the dark side - just as Mace Windu arrives to help.

 Twilight contains a fairly dense storyline, and one of the more interesting portrayals to date of a Jedi struggling between the light and the dark, in the twilight, so to speak, as he attempts to find his identity.  Vos, who reminds me of a Native American shaman as much as he does a Jedi, is a fairly interesting character, and the brief glimpse we see of Aayla - yet another sexy blue Twi’lek - leads me to believe that they could be quite an interesting pair.  We won’t see them as Master and Padawan anytime soon, since Vos has to undergo re-training himself.  Perhaps we’ll see a flashback story featuring these two, and maybe in the future they’ll be reunited.

 The saga of Quinlan Vos continues in the next arc, Infinity’s End.  Some time seems to have passed since Twilight; enough time for Vos to be partially re-trained, and for his hair to dreadlock.  He is sent on a mission to Dathomir, still without having found Aayla, and still troubled with a fascination for the dark side.  Masters Windu and Tiin seem to disagree on whether or not he’s ready for the challenge, but off he is to purposely crash-land and allow himself to be captured by the Nightsisters (aka Witches of Dathomir).  The witches are portrayed (both in this book and in the Darth Maul series) as wearing elaborate and yet skimpy costumes, and lots of goofy makeup that makes them look like refugees from a Star Wars galaxy version of a Kiss concert.  While working as their slave, Quin befriends a Givin named Yag, and becomes intrigued by an ugly, troll-like Nightsister outcast called Ros Lai, who happens to be the daughter of the chief witch.

 The witches have captured a race called the Kwi, who (as Mace tells us) “appear to be the degenerate descendants of the Kwa, an elder species who traveled the universe through Infinity Gates”.  These gates are basically a rip-off of the StarGate (from the movie StarGate).  It is a big pyramid that has the means to send you to another planet.  The Kwi seem to hold the secret to operating the mysterious StarGate... oops, the InfinityGate... so they can end their exile on Dathomir.  After liberating some of the Kwi and entering the pyramid, Quinlan finds out that Ros Lai is really not an ugly troll, but in fact a cute pixie-like hottie who has been secretly plotting to: (a) kill off her mom, (b) figure out how to work the Infintygate, and (c) rule the galaxy.  Sure.

 Quinlan offers to team up with Ros, but she refuses his offer.  She teaches a few of her sisters a lesson (their last lesson, ever) and then runs off, leaving Quinlan to be captured.  Ros has a change of heart, and with Yag’s help, they rescue Quinlan, and head off to the gate, with the witches in hot pursuit.

 Another tight story with good art, and Quin’s ongoing struggle with the dark side make this series another good one - but not a great one.  Although neither of the Quinlan Vos stories have rocked my world, they were both entertaining, were told with some degree of skill in both art and writing, and didn’t insult my intelligence.  I could do without the Nightsisters costumes (not designed by the art team of Bachs and Fernandez, however), and the lame StarGate rip-off, but compared to Darth Maul, recent Star Wars Tales, and some of the Aurra Sing stories that have surfaced in the past year, these stories look pretty darned good.  If nothing else, Quinlan Vos has a distinct personality, a story to tell, and goals to work towards.

 Finally, we have two new series that have made their debut since the last BH comics review.  Qui-Gon
and Obi-Wan: Last Stand on Ord Mantell  is slated for three issues, and after the first, it looks like a real winner.  The incredibly dense first issue (scripted by Ryder Windham and drawn by the same busy art team who have been working on Infinity’s End) is packed tight with an already intricate story that will surely become even better as the next two issues unfold.

 Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika is a more whimsical title in which three Hutts each send three agents, in teams or individuals, to retrieve a rare and mystical object.  The idea is planted in the minds of the bickering crime lords by one of their dancing girls, one Jozzel.  She seems to have duped the Hutts into going after this prize for her own (as yet undisclosed) reasons.  We later learn that Jozzel’s manipulations are on behalf of a higher authority.  Of course, the Bossk/IG-88/Dengar team runs across the Han and Chewie team just as Lando, Jozzel, Greedo, and Boba Fett make the scene, and madness therefore ensues.

 We’re two issues into the five-episode series, and while there are some interesting concepts and a few good laughs, this story is plagued with problems.  I don’t happen to be crazy about the art in this series, but it does suit the less serious nature of the story.  However, the story suffers a bit, since it does become extremely confusing due to a major lack of clarity in the overly stylized work of Carlos Meglia.

 Also, this story takes place after (or during) the Ann C. Crispin Han Solo books, but before A New Hope.  I found this bothersome in that while reference is made to Han’s unwitting betrayal of the smuggler community and his losing Jabba’s spice (both events are portrayed in Crispin’s Rebel Dawn), Jabba is still willing to hire Han, and Lando is still willing to catch a ride with him.  Placing this tale where it is within the Star Wars timeline seems to open up a lot of shaky continuity issues that could have been solved by putting it sometime before Han’s departure for the Corporate Sector, or immediately after his return.

 So to recap, Star Wars Tales #5 and #6 had a few moments, but not as many as #1-#4.  Darth Maul had nice art but a lack of story and no character development.  Acts of War  wrapped up nicely, if predictably.  Agent of Doom had gorgeous art, and Fett was well-written.  Twilight and Infinity’s End weren’t the best story lines to appear in Star Wars (ongoing), but they are at least better than the Maul series, and are redeemed by an interesting lead character in Quinlan Vos. Last Stand on Ord Mantell shows a lot of promise, but Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika  doesn’t.  See you next time!

©2001 Blue Harvest / Tydirium Multimedia

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Tribute to Sir Alec Guinness and Shelagh Fraser
Nothing Compares 2 U - editorial by Mary Jo Fox
Wizard World Con Report - Episode I - by Maikel Das
Wizard WorldCon Report - Episode II - by James Addams
Book Review - Balance Point (Kathy Tyers)  - by James Addams
Book Review - Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (Michael Reaves) by Mary Jo Fox
Inside The Worlds of Episode I... (etc) - by Mary Jo Fox
The Phantom Menaace - Ultimate Edition Soundtrack (Sony Classical) - review James Addams
Jedi Appentice #11 and #12 - review by Mary Jo Fox
New Toys reviewed - by James Addams
Darth Malts - Star Wars cookbook - review by Mary Jo Fox
Recent Star Wars Comics by Dark Horse

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