Does anyone else have trouble accepting Marvel as EU?

Ok before I state my thoughts I know Ghengis will proubly get in this and outsmart me as usual. But this is definitly a opinion question so theres no way I can be wrong, k?,good.

Anyway the old Marvel comics just seem so cheesie for lack of a better word.

I mean, if the marvel comics were so good why dident any eu authors work them in more? Ok I know their are some references, but not enough to make them a factor. Also they were made in a differnt sw point of veiw. The way the Nagai reminds me of cheap Japenese cartoons springs to mind in that area.

Mainly I see it approched mainly as a comic should be, without much continuity to the sorounding material.If they were so greatly of a part to the EU we'ed be reading them today.

Ok your thoughts(go easy on me Ghengis)

 

I've never read any Marvel either, but it's hard to imagine how the stories could be worse than Crystal Star

 

I've never read them, but I accept them as a part of the SW universe nonetheless.

 

"Anyway the old Marvel comics just seem so cheesie for lack of a better word."

I suppose some of them are, but they're written in a way that's very similar in tone to the original trilogy of films. Very Flash Gordany.


"I mean, if the marvel comics were so good why dident any eu authors work them in more? Ok I know their are some references, but not enough to make them a factor."

No, I wouldn't agree with you there. There are a ton of references in the EU, with many more being made every day (especially in the WOTC RPG books). Check out Tales # 3 for the return appearance of an actual character from the Marvel series.




"Also they were made in a differnt sw point of veiw. The way the Nagai reminds me of cheap Japenese cartoons springs to mind in that area."

There are references to that sort of thing (Lando's Drebble disguise is a sendup to a Japanese cartoon that was popular at the time) but it doesn't make it less canonical.

"Mainly I see it approched mainly as a comic should be, without much continuity to the sorounding material.If they were so greatly of a part to the EU we'ed be reading them today."

In actuallity, you will be soon enough. Dark Horse starts reprinting them in several volumes in the spring. So they're here to stay.

 

Ok before I state my thoughts I know Ghengis will proubly get in this and outsmart me as usual. But this is definitly a opinion question so theres no way I can be wrong, k?,good.

Admitting probably defeat is always a good way to open a presentation or debate.

Anyway the old Marvel comics just seem so cheesie for lack of a better word.

Some of them are very cheesy, but there's been some very cheesy post-1990 stuff as well.

I mean, if the marvel comics were so good why dident any eu authors work them in more? Ok I know their are some references, but not enough to make them a factor. Also they were made in a differnt sw point of veiw. The way the Nagai reminds me of cheap Japenese cartoons springs to mind in that area.

Several reasons. For one, there was often no reason to reference that time period much. For another, why tie in a bunch of stuff to a bunch of comics that aren't readily available to the general public? For a third, why tie in to old plot points instead of letting the authors write their own books?

Mainly I see it approched mainly as a comic should be, without much continuity to the sorounding material.If they were so greatly of a part to the EU we'ed be reading them today.

Well, we'll be reading them again next year . And I don't know what your first comment means exactly...

 

For all it's faults, Marvel is closer to the spirit of Star Wars than anything the post 1991 EU can manage.

 

Hmmm Ghengis isn't here yet?


I'll wait for his overly elaborate post ending with a condemnation of Zahn.

 

Actually I must also admitt I do not own any of them but have read a few. And I do agree that gamer has been bringing reference to them but I was refering to the leading authors.

 

We all know each other and each others opinions waaaay too well.

I dislike the Marvel stories simply because they?re comic books. I don?t like reading comics. It?s that simple. I accept the Marvel comics as every bit as important as the Zahn trilogy, though I also have no problem with retroactive ?fixes? made to them (like saying the Nagai lied about the location of their homeworld).

 

For all it's faults, Marvel is closer to the spirit of Star Wars than anything the post 1991 EU can manage.

Hoojibs are both clean and warm
And most afar above the norm
Hoojibs! Hoojibs!

My numbers are a little off...

Issues 11-36 (Mostly by Carmine Infantino can burn in hell)
36-42 (Empire Strikes Back)
43-to the start of the Nakai (or whatever those skinny aliens were called) foolishness were pretty good.

Plif - Good
Shira Elan Colla Brie - VERY good

Dark Horse, bring 'em on!

 

YAY Chissdude! The Buffalo Bills DO rule!!


Just not this year

 

Personally, I feel the comics, with the exception of the Crimson Empire comics, are just a bunch of crappy pictures, with idiotic dialouges. Comics=Crap

 

I high disagree with Yvette on both accounts. Not only do I think the comics are great, I think Crimson Empire was awful. So there.

 

::sticking tongue out::
Obviously you don't reconize the finer arts

 

Which ones have you read, just out of curiosity? There are a number of comics that aren't very good, but there are a hell of a lot of great ones.

 

CRIMSON EMPIRE 1 & 2, Dark Empire ::shudders::, Rouge Squadron (Not horrible, just lacking), and Union ::runs screaming::

 

no, i dont accept them as anything but sheer crap.

 

I just wanted to be petty and LOL at all the Marvel Haters (most of whom have never read a Marvel SW comic and just hate it on princible) over what a BIG moot point this thread and all the whining about Marvel is.

 

BTW I have bigger trouble accepting such badly written crap as:

The Bounty Hunters Was Trilogy
The Hand of Thrawn Dualogy
Children of the Jedi
Planet of twilight
The Black Fleet Crisis
Shadows of the Empire: Evolution
Crimson Empire 2
Empires End
Golden Age of the Sith
Fall of the Sith Empire

I have much bigger trouble accepting these as EU than I do Marvel.

 

I don't dislike the Marvel Star Wars comics any more than I dislike Spiderman or Batman or Superman comics. It's the format I dislike, not the stories themselves.

 

I don't have trouble accepting them as part of the EU...by definition anything not from the movies is part of the EU. I just don't like them. The art, especially the earliest issues, is incredibly ugly. The stories range from decent to outright stupid, but that's the same for the books, too. (Crystal Star, anyone? Ugh.)

I also have trouble accepting the argument that certain authors have both ignored the comic books *and* stolen from them. Make up your mind. And I don't see it's a problem if they ignore them. Some people like comics, but a lot of people don't. The only ones I've ever liked were Eclipse's adaptation of Dragonflight, and then because they didn't tamper with anything and most of the artwork was passable.

 

When I worked as a freelancer for WEG many years ago there was a great desire among the writers of that company to reincorporate the Marvel line into the new timeline. Editor Bill Smith (author of the guide to vehicles and vessels) was an especially strong supporter. Unfortunately there were a lot of behind the scenes stuff that kept the Marvel comics out. Here were just a few factors:

1)LFL: I always felt that LFL itself was generally against the idea. I don't know why or why they have recentlly relented on this, but it was a noticible attitude. My guess was when star wars first started to take off again, LFL tried to keep the continuity tight (much to their credit) and there were just too many problems with some of the Marvel line (the death of Wes Janson, Wedge was from Tatooine and grew up with Luke, that kind of thing). This attitude, I think, was the right one to take at the time because it kept Star Wars from becoming the mixed-up universe that the Star Trek pocket book empire has become.

2) BANTAM BOOKS - There were some Bantam authors (I'm talking novelists here) that wanted to tell a story and were determined to tell them no matter what had been written before. Most of the time LFL gave them the go ahead to do so, but it always seemed to come back and bite them in the end. This attitude wasn't exclusive to the Marvel line. It also included other authors' books.

In the early days, there were plenty of backdoor battles, authors teaming together in sort of a united front against one another, trying to make their interpretation of the EU the official one. Most of the time, it was just the party that screamed the loudest.

Leaving the Marvel comics aside for the moment, look at the disagreement between Zahn and Veitch. Zahn pretty much hated where Veitch took the universe in the Dark Empire comic books and later did his best to have the last laugh in his follow up Hand of Thrawn trilogy. I can tell you that there were some alliances formed among the licenses with some siding with Zahn and others with Veitch/Anderson (though Anderson later tried to take a more moderate position which is why he lasted longer then Veitch). In short, authors in many cases had enough to worry about with the current authors. They were much less worried about what was written years ago by people they didn't have to deal with.

The best example of this was the original format of the Bounty Hunter anthology. In the original draft of Dave Wolverton's story, it is Dengar that brings together the bounty hunter group that goes after Han Solo. However, this pretty much flew in the face of the Star Wars newspaper strips that Dark Horse comics had just recently republished. In the discussions that followed, there were many authors who just didn't care and pushed to have their stories published as is. Fortunately Dave Wolverton wasn't one of them. He changed his story to conform to the comics and in doing so forced others in that anthology to have to do the same. Thanks Dave.


3) WORK - The authors who were brought in at first were not Star Wars fanboys. They enjoyed the films, sure, but some just weren't into Star Wars lore. Zahn may have been willing to incorporate West End Games stuff into his novels (actually go so far as to have WEG help craft the clone making chamber on Mount Tantiss for him), but other authors just weren't willing to do the research to make the whole EU work. Does Crystal Star look a little like a Star Trek adventure to you? Well Vonda Macintire was a Star Trek author. She used what she knew and didn't care to add what she didn't. Book sucked didn't it?

In these authors' defense, however, LFL did ask them to read and know crates of background information (and the amount only grew as the EU itself grew). Including the Marvel line would have been perhaps asking just a little too much.

-----
All these problems aside, West End Games and some others (like Star Wars Galaxy Magazine) did their best to include what they could.
You will notice that throughout their products there are several indirect refe

 

>Anyway the old Marvel comics just seem so cheesie for lack of a better word.

That is true, (Jaxxon the giant bunny rabbit, anyone?) but all of Star Wars needs a certain cheesiness to work well. It's far from the rock bottom of the EU (GODV), and that needs to be kept in mind.

>I mean, if the marvel comics were so good why dident any eu authors work them in more?

LFL ignored the Marvel comics (with the exception of the later newspaper strips) for quite a while. (See the Shadows of the Empire Guide)

>Also they were made in a differnt sw point of veiw.

I think that's one of the best things about the EU. You've got the old style Sci-Fi novels, (HSA, SOTME) new style Sci-Fi novels, (X-Wing, NJO) Tolkienish fantasy (Ewok movies), etc.

>they were so greatly of a part to the EU we'ed be reading them today.

Dark Horse will be reprinting them next year.

TC

 

Leaving the Marvel comics aside for the moment, look at the disagreement between Zahn and Veitch. Zahn pretty much hated where Veitch took the universe in the Dark Empire comic books and later did his best to have the last laugh in his follow up Hand of Thrawn trilogy.

Okay, I had heard of this elsewhere, but wasn't exactly sure what Zahn had done to undo what Veitch had done. Stackpole I know worked the Dark Empire story into the X-Wing books, I think he mentioned it in "I, Jedi" as well.

Welcome to the boards, that was an excellent post.

 

Hey, does anyone know if the Dark Horse's run of the Marvel Star Wars comics will be re-inked, or will they simply reprint the original color schemes. I know there were some issues, like #50 "The Crimson Forever" that could only benefit from being re-inked, especially with the new technologies.