Lit Star Wars #20: A Shattered Hope, part 2 (of 2) - The End Of Star Wood & Of Our Suffering

And so huge was the interest in this comic book that the discussion almost immediately gets derailed by Independence Day.

 

ID2: This Time They Have Firewalls

 

Remember when this comic was supposed to be building exclusively off ANH so that new readers could enter without feeling like they had to know stuff about the rest of the EU?

 

Remember when the Rakata were environmental conservationists?

 

Ok, I'm curious, is there some subtle EU-that-was ref I'm missing in the above panel?

 

To be honest, I can't wait for ID4-2. I think that movie will kick arse and not only that but when they start the franchise building...comic books, novels etc, this universe has a lot of potential. Now back to this, my chief complaint was that I wanted Luke to use his lightsaber. Instead we got this hippy dippy space action that was off. By the way, what color was those lasers that IG-88 fired? Is it green? Teal? Blue/green? Sea foam? Does it have any real blue tint? Lesson for Marvel green is green, blue is blue, red is red. No dipsy create a color here. It driving me nuts.

 

Uh, all the exposition about the Rakata, Gree, and Kwa?

 

I can't entirely tell if Ben's being sarcastic or if he's actually questioning whether it really prevents new readers from understanding it?

For my part, if I think back to the original Marvel comics (or even the films themselves!), you got tons of similar exposition (what is this Clone Wars Obi-Wan speaks of?), and it never made new audiences/readers feel like they had to know stuff about the rest of the EU (obviously because back then there wasn't any EU to know).

But does that matter...?

It kinda bothers me that readers have felt "put off" reading stories because "they don't know about these weird alien races" even though it's just an inconsequential namedrop with no affect on the story which they don't need to know about, anymore than it was ever necessary to know the evolutionary history of Hoojibs the first time one appeared in STAR WARS: 55. But if readers today are such precious souls that they can't follow a story that tries to introduce some background, well... NEU had better stick to Darth Vader if the kiddies today are to understand things.

 

No. I wasn't being sarcastic about it, quite simply I didn't tag the Kwa, Rakata etc stuff as EU references! Reading Steve's post I got this sense maybe there was some obscure story where Leia had visited the planet, an easter egg as it were, but clearly Steve's post was subtle humour that I missed!

 

Personally, I just find it kind of jarring that a series that was advertised as basically a proto-EU reboot would wind up shoehorning (and it is shoehorning, I think) references to some relatively obscure* ancient civilizations from the EU. Not a problem for new readers, no, but kind of going against the original spirit of the thing.

* By which I mean the Gree and, especially, the Kwa. The Rakata are fairly well-known at this point.

 

The mention of those ancient species is not really much different than the relatively offhand mention of the Clone Wars in ANH, so I don't know what all of the fuss is about.

 

Well, that's pretty much the same as I expect we'll see from the NEU now, and it is a reboot, yet is pretty much assured to feature countless namedrops shoehorned in for the sake of it.

 

Well would you prefer that or would you prefer them to just scrap every ounce of the EU instead of turning certain small sections of it into canon?

 

I'd rather see some creativity than, like Quest pointed out, them just taking an existing name and applying it to something entirely different. That wouldn't be keeping small sections canon; it'd simply be laziness.

I'd far rather see exciting new ideas, with new characters and new stories, than somebody thinking I need a character to repeatedly be called Peter Parker. If something like the Rakata weren't going to be the Rakata? Then don't call them Rakata, engage creativity and (gasp!) invent a new name.

It's actually quite apt that the Rakata sparked this discussion, because they're a prime example of doing exactly what I'm talking about. BioWare could have just slapped the name "Sith" on them. But they didn't. They were creative. KOTOR was enjoyable and exciting, featuring new worlds, new races, new experiences. In contrast, TOR did the opposite, showing a dearth of creative ideas, and just shoehorned its antagonist into Sith history... and it was boring and cliche.

Which is why I want more KOTORs, and less TORs. But sadly, from the NEU, I'm seeing more TORs.

 

It was explicitly stated and heavily promoted when announced that the comic was only going to be building off of ANH. That's about as close to advertising it as an essential reboot without actually saying it. As I recall it took a long time for someone official to even confirm that it wasn't going to be a reboot or its own continuity.

 

I thought this is what everyone is expecting from Luceno's Tarkin anyway.

 

Yeah, but Luceno will make it look good!

 

There's a real difference though. Luke asks Obi-Wan "You fought in the Clone Wars?" and Old Ben saying "Yes." It's a line of conversation that we can follow regardless, because it means something without knowing the reference. And it's a very naturalistic way of speaking. Ben does not go on to explain to Luke the intricate history of his time in the war. He just says, "Yes, I fought. So did your dad. We were friends. It was great."

This? This is someone talking to herself for a whole page about nothing. Like, her droid either already knows all this, or has no interest. She's talking for the reader's sake, and that's annoying as hell.

She's reciting narration, when there could just BE narration. You're allowed to have narration in a comic book; it's still a book after all.

It's not that people are put off by the references. It's that they're put off by references for references sake.