Are the NJO books *that* bad?

I'm sorry, Ghengis, gut you're wrong, and nothing I or anyone else says will make you realize that. You're too entrenched in your delusion that Marvel has always been included, when, seriously, it has only recently been squeezed into there. I wish I could find the article that proves it, where it says only comics published (and republished) by Dark Horse are part of the official Star Wars Timeline. Marvel had been considered a curiousity, a bit of an alternate universe thing, then Marvel was considered a "legends" thing. Like the various stories about the Knights of the Round Table, there were various contradicting stories about the Star Wars characters that were considered "local legends" seperate from the rest of the timeline.
Now because of likeminded Marvel Crusaders, Marvel has been shoehorned into regular continuity... and in my opinion taking Marvel wholesale was a mistake.

 

DL, what difference does it make whether Marvel comics are or are not these days part of the canon? I mean no one I know has them - they are a collectors item, and too expensive for normal people to own! While I would love to get my hands on them if only to see what the fuss is about, I can not afford them (or rather I need the money for other things). Not unless anyone is prepared to do high quality (at least 300 dpi at 24 bit colour) scans of them for me, and post the thing on the net slowly over a year or two, or record the files to CD and post them to me. Is anyone interested in scanning the Marvel comics properly?

I really think both sides here are arguing ove irrelevant things. I do not care when something was brought into the continuity. I only care whether it fits there and of what quality it is. Thus can anyone of you explain for the rest of us what is the quality of the Marvel comics story wise, and whether they actually fit in the existing continuity, or whether they contradict too many things to be taken seriously as part of the current canon?
You can leave your current discussion because:

*you are clearly not convincing each other, and are not going to

*no one besides you cares about it

*you have taken over a thread with an off-topic pissing contest

*people are much more intersted in things you are not covering with these rants

 

Genghis & DL, I found the interview/article I was looking for. It's from the August 1995 Issue of "Previews" and Genghis isn't gonna be too happy with what it says. Give me a bit to type it up ...

 

This is from the August 1995 issue of ?Previews? which is essentially an advance order catalog for comic books. Michael A. Martin is interviewing Ryder Windham who worked on some of the Dark Horse Star Wars comic projects including Dark Empire II, The Zahn comic adaptations, and many of the one-shots featuring Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt:

Mike Martin: ?Can we digress for a moment into the continuity between these various series??

Ryder Windham: ?Lucasfilm doesn?t acknowledge certain older stories because of continuity problems. They weren?t so concerned in the past about licensees doing stories and adventures, like Marvel?s Star Wars comics, which took place in times that might conflict with the Star Wars newspaper comic strip. No one knew how big Star Wars was going to be or that the fans would be looking to see whether somebody was actually supervising all of the continuities.?

Mike Martin: ?So nobody would care that Jabba the Hutt was once portrayed by Marvel as a two-legged humanoid??

Ryder Windham: ?Exactly. In the Marvel comic, you see that?s how he was drawn.?

Windham goes on to say how important continuity is and this just stresses that they intended to let the Marvel series fade into obscurity. I?ve seen other comments to this effect but this is the only one I saved and was able to quote directly.

 

Thank you Bror.

 

Actually, Bror I'm not disappointed a bit as it doesn't prove anything one way or the other. There's no question people have considered the older stuff marginal - not just Marvel, but nearly everything else as well. I would say that the article (the parts you reproduced at least) does reinforce it's marginality, but not in any way it's lack of being a piece of Star Wars continuity.

 

Bror, that was 1995. This is 2001. From the reference books, such as EC, it is clearly seen that when it can be fit in, everything, up to and including the Marvel comics, is considered part of continuity.

 

Mastage, our argument isn't that marvel isn't continuity ow, but that it wasn't contiuity throughout the whole revival of the 90s

 

Must've lost that somewhere, I haven't had the patience to read through all these repetitive point-by-point posts. I must ask, why does it matter?

 

DL...
"Mastage, our argument isn't that marvel isn't continuity ow, but that it wasn't contiuity throughout the whole revival of the 90s"

Which is why I of course point to the official track record...
1. The one who determines such things are _NOT_ Ryder Windham and Dark Horse Comics, they are Allan Kausch and Lucasfilm Ltd. (Licensing). The official stance, including Marvel by name as well as other "marginal" items were a part of continuity as far back as 1995 when the book "Secrets of Shadows of the Empire" was released. In actuality, it mentions such things as the timeline, etc. in past tense. That is, the book had accounts of past interviews, so therefore the policy extended even older than 1995. So, Dark Horse is on the same level as West End Games as a co-licensee. West End Games incorporated the continuity. But, more importantly, so did Dark Horse.

2. Thus far, the hardest of evidence to the contrary is Bror's Windham comments. And even these do not say what Darth_Ludicrous has been saying - that Marvel is some sort of alternate universe which didn't exist in the '90's. In fact, Windham's statements merely reinforce the comments made by Kausch that some works are marginal. Since the Continuity Editor of Star Wars trumps all below him, even marginal works are part of the story.

3. The various references - beyond mere aliens, etc. In fact, one of Marvel's main antagonists, Baron Tagge was given the dubious honor of having "created" the Corporate Sector in the form its in today. This was done in 1993, clearly at the beginning of the revival. However, the RPG isn't the only source to include Marvel.

4. Dark Horse Comics - Dark Horse went out of their way to include main characters from Marvel's later stories. In "Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction," specific mention is given to the _OTHER_ supercommandos, Fenn Shysha and Tobbi Dala. That is, Dark Horse certainly included the Marvel continuity in its own. The novels also included ties to Marvel continuity. In fact, the "non-fiction" resources like the "Essential Guide to Characters" also included Marvel as well as other older continuity among other things.

The official track record of products, interviews, etc. is contrary to what DL has suggested. It's not a new policy by any means. In fact, the whole policy of a unified Star Wars continuity extends back a number of years.

 

"Lucasfilm doesn?t acknowledge certain older stories because of continuity problems ..."

That pretty much says it all. It's obvious that LFL wanted these books to be forgotten, for the most part. When they decided to revive the SW franchise for sale to a mainstream audience they did not make any attempt to include the Marvel stories. If they had any confidence in them at all being good-quality material, why not use them as a starting point? It's obvious.

It's pretty obvious that LFL did not think highly of them and wanted them to languish in obscurity. They only recently changed their tune a bit when they could make a quick buck off of the recently-released reprints.

Sorry Genghis, but I've been talking to hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of SW fans on-line and I think you are the ONLY defender of that series I've ever come across. For most folks, they are a dead issue.

 

Bror,
for most folks, Latin is a dead language. Yet it is still the basis for many other western languages, it is still acknowledged.

What's "obvious" to you may not be so obvious to others.

Why not use them as a starting point? Because they'd already been published, and LFL was starting a whole new thing, not to discredit the old stuff but to bring in new fans, in the same way that Del Rey isn't trying to forget the Bantam stuff, but they've started a whole new program for their stuff. The difference is that the Marvel series was already old and hard to obtain by the time the 90s rolled around.

 

So much hot wind blowing off the steppes of Mongol...yet absolutely NOT ONE shred of any concrete evidence.

You call Bror's quote unspecific, and then you trot out something that is so vague as to be foglike?! Sugarpants, I hate to break it to you, but that doesn't say ANYTHING. It can be referring to the movies, for that matter.

Score one for Bror and DL. Who else feels like having Mongolian BBQ for dinner tonight? :-D

Mastadge -- today is not in question. You're completely right from that viewpoint. It's what was the policy in 1991 that is being discussed, and whether the attitude then can be compared to the attitude today. Therefore, Bror's post was right in keeping with the current discussion.

But I agree with you that it is a completely ridiculous discussion, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing. And I know I am just as much to blame by keeping the thread going and even posting this, but I am just fascinated by certain Pavlovian responses. It's like having your very own marionette - jerk a few strings and man! does the puppet dance! I so loved telling certain people "I told you so" in another thread where this happened. But I do agree with you and Stilgar so from now on I'll stay out of this thread. Hopefully it will die when only s/he who yells loudest yet says nothing can think that s/he "won" - as if this were some contest. Oh well, I guess some people need to get their personal validation any way they can...

DL - First time I can ever say that I agree with you wholeheartedly!

 

I'm in over my head! I renege! I'm sorry, I don't have the fancy debating skills of my esteemed colleagues...
::breaks down in tears::

 

To wrap things up...
"Lucasfilm doesn?t acknowledge certain older stories because of continuity problems ..."

First off, even in a worst-case least favorable interpretation to the older continuity, there is absolutely no way one can construe "certain older stories because of continuity problems" to mean _ALL_ stories by a publisher. But, there's even more problems with the the Windham statement. One which you have yet to realize, it seems...

"That pretty much says it all. It's obvious that LFL wanted these books to be forgotten, for the most part."

A statement by an editor of one company (Dark Horse) can by no means be taken to apply across the board to anyone else. You know the only ones who can give that decre - LFL. They have done so by way of its Continuity Editor, Allan Kausch. His words are record in "Secrets of Shadows of the Empire" given earlier. They are in direct contradiction to your interpretation that "it's obvious that LFL wanted these books to be forgotten." I will also go on to say that it's the fact that Windham's statement wasn't even meant to apply _WITHIN_ Dark Horse, let alone outside of it. Shortly after he made that statement, Dark Horse Comics published their serialized comic, "Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction" within Star Wars Galaxy Magazine. In it, there is a rather direct tie into Marvel's series with the "You're not Shysha" revelation by Boba Fett. The comic was edited by Peet Janes, who went on to oversee the entire Star Wars line for Dark Horse. Dark Horse later collected the serial into a one-shot and released in 1997.

"When they decided to revive the SW franchise for sale to a mainstream audience they did not make any attempt to include the Marvel stories."

Wrong. Assuming "they" means Dark Horse and not LFL...They opened their whole Star Wars line with a creation which Marvel Star Wars fans had been waiting for for about three years - Marvel fans couldn't have asked for a better opening. Now, if you assume LFL, then clearly that's incorrect as well, as Marvel links began appearing as early as 1993 throughout various works I've listed earlier.

"If they had any confidence in them at all being good-quality material, why not use them as a starting point? It's obvious."

Because all of these companies had their _own_ stories to tell. Simple as that. I should note that the people calling for reprints of the older stuff are legion, however.

"It's pretty obvious that LFL did not think highly of them and wanted them to languish in obscurity."

Complete the opposite, George Lucas thought very highly of Stan Lee and Marvel, seeking them out to do the continuation of his saga. In fact, Marvel brought in the best sci-fi/fantasy people involved in comics at he time - Archie Goodwin, etc. Do not assume that anyone at LFL doesn't think Archie Goodwin's material is anything other than classic.

"They only recently changed their tune a bit when they could make a quick buck off of the recently-released reprints."

The tune hasn't been recently changed. Cross-linking items into a continuous saga has always been the case.

"Sorry Genghis, but I've been talking to hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of SW fans on-line and I think you are the ONLY defender of that series I've ever come across."

I should hope you realize how ridiculous that statement makes you look. Even limiting "online" fans to this limited TF.N forum, there are many many more people than me here who defend the series. In fact, I'm not even the most extreme - some have stated that Marvel is the last time the expanded stories were any fun.

However, I have also spoken with literally _THOSUANDS_ of SW fans online as well, and I should note that the first time I ever encountered such an extreme view of the older stuff was in Darth_Ludicrous when I got here. Star Wars has a large fan base, and I'm certain that our "circle of fans" don't overlap, since you're not interested in the same

Now, Aleja...
Aleja, thank you for your masterful "pigeon" imitation - I have never seen anyone fly

 

They're some of the best SW books in the galaxy!!!

 

I come in looking for a little NJO discussion of horror and gore and WW II versus post-Vietnam sensibilities and see a little "cannon" war going on instead. I'll stay out of this one, knowing as one poor soul conceded, this Sith is way out of her depth. In all seriousness, if I argued half this well with my insurance agent, I'd have lower premiums.

For those who do have a sense of humor about canon discussions I recommend tracking down an old parody on the humor section of the Club Jade page roughly titled, Cannon or Canon.

The story's way dated now, but its point remains. Mara Jade visits Yavin IV with an antique cannon. With the cannon, she blows up all "canon" and Luke is left waking up the morning after the Battle of Endor, a bit hung over and wondering what all that fuss was about blob races anyway.

As Mara disappears into the mists and mud, she says, "I am returning your life to you, Luke Skywalker. Maybe, this time, fate will be kinder to us."

 

For what it's worth, I'm one of those willing to defend the Marvel Series, and I've done so in this forum.

Personally, after reading all the negative comments about Marvel in this forum and not really expecting to like the comics at all, I was surprised both that I enjoyed the series thorougly (most of what I've read, anyway), and that I could see relatively few major continuity problems (Jabba excepted).

So I regard Marvel as about as official as anything else, and the few continuity problems either ignorable or easily explained. I've read about half the series--basically, what's available online, plus Annual #1.

And I don't enjoy "everything" Star Wars. I finally picked up Planet of Twilight last month. I'm still about 1/4 of the way into the book. Crystal Star was a disaster. And I disliked Black Fleet Crisis for destroying the characters of Luke and Leia both, and for not tying together the three plot lines well. I have no plans to touch the Bounty Hunter Wars (no interest in subject matter whatsoever). I've liked most of the other novels (some are strong, some weaker; I agree that the Lando series is underrated--it's a pure joyride, nothing great, just fun), and I've had a mix of reactions to various comic series, juvenile novels, and short stories.

Regarding NJO: I'm predisposed to like these books simply because I like the approach DR and LFL have taken. I enjoy the Vong as a fresh take on Star Wars, and the partial generational shift in focus. I enjoy the darker tone (my favorite film is ESB) and the length of the saga (like Dark Tower, Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings...some of my favorite series are long, multi-book epics). The fact that, in my opinion, the books have been well-written only adds to the pleasure of reading them.

 

"But I do agree with you and Stilgar so from now on I'll stay out of this thread. Hopefully it will die when only s/he who yells loudest yet says nothing can think that s/he "won" - as if this were some contest."

Maybe if you were less disingenuous about your "staying out of "pissing contest" threads," some of these threads may actually be deterred. You've given that line paraphrased tens of times, and you keep coming back as if you had a pathological fascination with these "car wreck" threads. If you promise to stay out, do it for once.

And why is canonity all of importance again this last year? You live, you mature, you die. This won't make a difference.

 

Where's your proof, Ghengis? I've posted mine, but you ignore it.
oh, and the name is Darth Ludicrous, not Darth_Ludicrous. I have no silly "_" in my name.

 

I am delurking b/c this is one of the funniest conversations I have seen here in a long time.

Ghenghis my man I think i'm putting you on my watchied users list. Everywhere you go flames wars start out. Aljea can be annoying but you don't have to take the bait and make it worse. All she siad was that didn't want to restart an old converstaion and you just blew up - just liek you did in the Mara jade Fan club thread, which was pretty damn funny too. You might want to watch your own logic however because you putdown Darth Ludricrous's claim of talking to fans online and then you counter with how many fans you talk to online. That's a pissing contest neither one of you is going to win. If you don't like his claims then don't counter with the exact same example. And you always say many people feel like you but people here on the forum obviously dont feel that way so relaly what do you expect people here to say? Maybe you should point people to these other forums where you hang out like the soul of the jedi people do so people here can read other forums and see for themselves. As for crapping all over threads man that's what some people think you do whenever someone brings up mara by bringing up Shira brei so you really need to make sure your not throwing bricks in a glass house, know what I mean.

unless you can provide some specific quote pertaining to the marvel stuff or have Alan Karaush appear in the thread be prepared to be hammered by others because it all a matter of what people read into things written years and years ago and who really cares now anyway?

Peace out, bro.

 

DL...
"Where's your proof, Ghengis? I've posted mine, but you ignore it."

And thus we're at an impasse. I've posted mine and you ignore it. Bror posted something which I assume is "your proof" and fully acknowledge that it doesn't prove anything near what your interpretation is.

"oh, and the name is Darth Ludicrous, not Darth_Ludicrous. I have no silly "_" in my name"

Well, technically it depends on if your name hyperlink has been "hit" or not, if it has then your name appears underlined with a "_" between Darth and Ludicrous.

 

Darth Ludicrous Darth Ludicrous Darth Ludicrous

Nope, I cut and paste, and there's no "_" in it. No more than there is in mine. Having registered while this was still UBB does have it's advantages.

 

LOL! Amazing where things head...

At least the discussion has...ummmm... "evolved" into something less emotional for people. However, the point remains that from a CPOV, Darth Ludicrous _DOES_ in fact appear (I know, ASCII text doesn't do it justice.):

"Darth Ludicrous"
---------------

Ignoring the other underlined letters and concentrating on the underline below the space, the hyperlinked name indeed appears like: "...h_L..." whether one cuts it, pastes it, traces over it, takes a photograph of it - whatever floats your boat.

Now, I'll also admit that not all browsers may appear the same way either.

 

It's underscored and underlined on mine as well.