Lit Coop's MARVELous Voyage

Yeah, I was lucky enough to get the chance to fill out Valance's story for WOTC. I love the Valance arc, and "Dark Encounter" is one of my favorite Star Wars stories from any period or medium. That said, since I read it as a kid when the EU was just Marvel and a couple of novels, I'll be really interested to hear the opinion of someone reading it for the first time with so much more EU to choose from....

 

Must be how Galen survived being jettisoned by Vader in TFU.

 

Fire extinguisher in ANH? Is this when he's repairing the X-Wing, or am I completely forgetting something?

Having just read his first appearance so far, honestly, I'm not terribly impressed yet. I could buy the Star-hoppers taking down some swoop jockeys and a big monster with Han and Chewie leading them, but they pretty much cut his team to shreds in #16. All I know about the rest of his story is that he fights Vader eventually (which makes it even more incongruous that Jaxxon et al manage to chase him off...though Jax has actually been pretty hardcore). It's hard not to jump the gun and go read the modern version of his story instead of reading the comics fresh, because then I wouldn't be as tempted to come up with my own backstory and retcons that I know will end up being superseded. But I'll manage.

Program note: taking a brief break to read today's new comics, and possibly Scott Pilgrim #2. #19-24 should be up by late tomorrow or so. Incidentally - god, I love Invincible.

 

Escape from the Death Star.

"Hear me, baby. Hold together."

 

INVINCIBLE is awesome, although it seemed to go on hiatus or something as I'd not seen new issues or trades in the shops. I've switched over to reading most everything in trades, so I think it'll be awhile before a new trade drops.

Then again, I think they actually took the time during that hiatus to do the Atom Eve series and maybe one other spin-off, so those will probably be up in trades soon.

 

Han, Leia and Chewie walking around outside the Falcon in the space slug in ESB? I'll give you the cold point, must be that Jack is too hardcore. He'd have to be to rock those speedos all the time.

 

I prefer to think that the slugs are pressurized or something, but even if they were within the "magnetic field" of the Falcon, we're talking about people floating a good bit away from the Star Destroyer; not just along the side or anything. It'd have to be a bubble, basically (which is sort of how magnetic fields work, I think, so I guess there's a little sense to it...just a little).

 

Vacuum's actually a very good insulator?thus vacuum thermoses and such. There's no matter to carry the heat away, so the only heat loss is through the very slow process of radiation.

 

Pressurized? With that big purdy mouth?

 

And the main danger to be worried about, IIRC, would be the cosmic radiation. Which, maybe coincidentally, can be deflected by a magnetic field...

 

Membranes. If a Vong ship can do it, why not them?

 

Yes, thank you, it's always bothered me that even supposedly "intelligent" sci-fi shows get this wrong. I know JMS prided himself on making B5 as close to real as possible for what it was, but the idea of spacing being the most horrific death imaginable because you instantly froze with the explodo eyeballs and all that was one point where I wasn't sure if he was just having characters parrot the common misunderstanding or if he honestly didn't know about it.

It's one of those myths that gets smacked down quite a bit but has wormed its way into the consciousness of the general public to a degree we'll probably never pry it out.

Hard radiation is indeed more of an immediate danger than the cold would be for the reasons that L_H mentioned. Without a medium to carry it away, heat will not radiate from the body as fast as people think, although I do wonder if there were enough atmosphere jettisoned with the body how much of the heat could be carried away, but the air would be long gone before the body hit space.

If anyone has some harder science on the issue it'd be interesting to see what heat waste rates are in space from a warm body.

 

It was my understanding that the pressure is what kills you - boiling your blood or some such.

 

There was a thread awhile ago talking about vacuum exposure in the context of TFU, but I forget the link. I think this was one of the pages I linked to. Basically, asphyxiation is the main killer. Blood doesn't boil because the walls of your veins give it a pressure (that is, blood pressure). Apparently you can (slowly) develop bubbles in the blood, but something as simple as an elastic suit can prevent that. Holding your breath causes extra problems, because the pressure in your lungs can rupture them, leading to embolisms, triggering of some nerve that does something bad I don't recall, and a few other nasty effects. The eye-popping and whatnot is a myth, though.

In Jack's case, though, he would be in a pressurized and oxygenated environment, so it's not like he's being exposed directly to space.

 

Yep, it's the massive pressure difference that kills you - not by your body rupturing like a balloon, but the air in your lungs will not only rush out, but your blood will do a nasty "reverse oxygenation", removing oxygen from the bloodstream and sending it back into the lungs. You die when your brain only gets de-oxygenated blood.

 

[image=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/8f/Mswc15cover.jpg]
That's exactly what it's like.

All it says is that they're protected by the ship's magnetic field - though they do have oxygen masks, at least.

 

That's what you keep me around for. ;-)

 

Excellent thread - I'm a huge fan of the Marvel SW comic series. I read many/most of these back when they first came out, and have great memories of the series - I actually think these are the best SW comics out there. Granted, they can be cheesy. And, in many cases the continuity doesn't fit in with the films (since they were being written between the movies) - but in my opinion, these qualities adds to the charm of the series.

Favorite issues/storylines include:

- The storyline taking place right after ANH, when Han and Chewie go to that lawless planet and get hired to fight a group of bandits that are attacking a small village/town. This was an obvious re-telling of the 1960's film "The Magnificent Seven", but was a great story nonetheless.

- The several issues with Vance (sp?), the cyborg bounty hunter. Great character, and I think he was eliminated too soon.

- The issues when Luke went back to Tattoine after ANH, and ran into his old "buddies" (Fixer, Camie, etc.)

- Annual #1 - this issue featured several winged aliens that the heroes had to fight - excellent story and artwork, some of the best in the series.

- "Droid World" - the issue where R2 and 3PO end up on a planet ruled by droids.

- Issue #50 - incredible story/art, with a flashback to a pre-ESB story.

- Any of the issues taking place between ESB and ROTJ. Though the continuity here was later contradicted by "Shadows of the Empire" (1996), these were still great stories. The search for Han Solo by the heroes brought them in contact with the other Bounty Hunters from ESB (Denger, IG-88, etc.) The high-point of these storylines was the two parter when Leia met Fenn Shysha, the Mandalorian warrior (whose armor was similar to Boba Fett's). Since Shysha has made his way into the new SW novel "LS and the Shadows of Mindor", I would have to consider the character at least semi-canon.

- Issue #81, which took place directly after ROTJ. Great issue, with the heroes going back to Tattoine again. B. Fett's escape from the Sarlaac Pit seemed to foreshadow his later escape in "Dark Empire" (1992).

Granted, the series did lose steam in the post-ROTJ stories, but, overall, I felt these issues were great and are an interesting look back at the early days of the SW EU.

 

Because the Vong ship was engineered to do so, while the space slug is just some critter that seems to be a giant, open tube? Where was this membrane when Han took off and flew out of the slug? *shrug* That the space slug can pressurize its tummy for the benefit of starship crews it has consumed stretches my disbelief more then the Falcon being able to extend some sort of field out a few meters to make it more comfortable for our heroes to walk around. Plus it ties in nicely with Han and Jack's duel.

 

You don't read KOTOR, I'm guessing - the slugs were engineered. And anyway, something that's evolved to survive in space, deliberately or otherwise, is hard to make bold declarations about, if you ask me. My sense is that there's a membrane or sphincter that closes around the stomach when it's digesting something, and it opened back up in response to Han's shot. Hell, maybe the ship punched a hole through the damn thing off-camera.

As for the Jack duel, if the Falcon is projecting anything, it's not doing so here - a crucial plot point is that they're stuck in the Destroyer's projection, with "vacuum" between him and the Falcon. And again, in the Destroyer's case, we're not talking about a few meters.

 

The whole series is canon.

 

I thought the Marvel series was designated S-canon.

 

Too bad I don't have my copies here at school with me otherwise I would follow along like I did with Trip.