Lit Mara Jade, what did she look like in people's minds ?

She does actually look pretty good and I could see her as Mara.

LelalMekha true but balanced against that fact though, isn't that the comic where they started the Lightside experiment idea though ? One would cancel out the other

 

Not to mention that there were an opera and a museum too!

 

She's fading out of existence like photos of Marty McFly's family.

 

The first visual image of Mara I saw was from the second edition of the Guide to the Star Wars Universe (from 1994, maybe?) which had a picture of her (possibly originally from some WEG source?) that gave her one main braid, but a number of smaller braids in her hair. I always pictured that as Mara from then on, even after her standard black catsuit.

 

Ah, yes, I remember that picture very well. It was also one of my first SW books. They did reuse that look once or twice, on the American cover of Vision of the Future and the Japanese cover of Specter of the Past.

 

I'm a big Spider-Man fan, and I don't exactly see the how Mara is like MJ Watson, beyond the fact they have the same hair color and are married to the lead of their respective franchise. Out of curiosity, what am I missing?

Actually, you're right; the people who made the movie gave MJ a few of comic book Gwen Stacy's traits (and then gave Gwen a few of comic book MJ's in Spider-Man 3). Although (and I'm sure this was an accident), Raimi movie MJ is a lot like her counterpart in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series. And for further irony, the Amazing Spider-Man movie series took Ultimate comics MJ, added a few new traits, and passed her off as Gwen Stacy! (So, you've got whole generations of fans who're thinking of the "girl-next-door" MJ as the "real" version of the character and wouldn't recognize the original Gwen. Kind of funny, if you think about it.)

 

Unless her look has been exaggerated over the years to resemble the hot bodied red head that we see in pictures (and that wasn't how she was physically described in the original Thrawn trilogy) I don't think there is any doubt Zahn fully intended Mara Jade to be Mary Jane Watson in Star Wars. If he didn't intend her to be that he should have given her a different name and look.

Yeah I never followed the comics all that closely and was for the most part introduced to the story in those movies and figured that they were being faithful to the story in the comics. Was shocked to find out that the Kirsten Dunst MJ was basically an entirely different character from the MJ in the original Spiderman comic.

 

A mix of this and By the Emperor's Hand, at least for Empire era

 

I'm not sure if Mara Jade has any connection to MJ Watson. I recall that Timothy Zahn described the process that lead to Mara's creation in the 20th anniversary edition of Heir to the Empire, and all he mentioned was the needs of the story and the idea of giving more balance to the gender of the cast by creating a well-written female character. Nothing about basing her on comics (and considering that he references the Disney Aladdin TV show in the footnotes, it doesn't seem like he'd not mention it there was a comic book connection).

The "Mara Jade" name was specifically made to describe her character in the original novel. On top of that, red hair and green eyes are a pretty common combination for characters (such as Marvel's own Dr. Jean Grey). Besides, personality-wise, Mara and MJ don't have that much in common; Mara tends toward sarcasm and being prickly, where MJ pretended to be a lot shallower than she was.

In actuality, I think the Kirsten Dunst MJ is recognizably the character from the comics. I'll grant that she did replace Gwen Stacy as Peter's first serious girlfriend (although it is worth noting that MJ is the primary love interest for Spider-Man, anyways), the "party girl' mask wasn't used outside of a couple of instances in the first movie, but her abused childhood background and interest in acting are pretty spot on. I will concede that the character feels more like the MJ from the marriage years, given that movie MJ was comfortable with being herself a lot sooner than her teenage/young adult version in the comics. (However, my original Spider-Man material was the Raimi movies and the Ultimate comics, which basically used the girl-next-door MJ over the popular party girl iteration, so I may be biased. But I did read the Renew Your Vows graphic novel -- a stand-alone story involving the 616-style Peter and MJ Parker raising a young daughter -- and that MJ didn't seem that out of line with the movie version.)

 

Actually Peter/Spiderman had loads of love interests starting with Betty Brant but 3 major love interests of his life have always been Gwen/Mary Jane and Black Cat

 

We don't need to imagine, they already had a woman play her on trading cards.

 

Speaking for myself though, this isn't how pictured Mara in my head. Is it for you ?

http://m.tradecardsonline.com/img/cards/starwars/59/big/004.jpg

 

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Can you post a screenshot, friend, my thingamajig is on the frits.

 

I think my first image of Mara Jade was from the Vision of the Future cover. Technically, I think she's on the Last Command cover too, but that's not exactly a good angle. After that, probably the New Essential Guide to Characters is the next major Mara image I can think of.

Mary Jane... now that's a character with a long history, though her portrayal has shifted over the years. What with movies, cartoons, alternate universes (and of course the main comic occasionally shifting to match up with whatever Spiderman movie was out that year). Though her recent history hasn't been that great, but that's a whole other disaster, er, discussion.

 

Access forbidden is on mine too. Just type in Mara Jade trading cards on google then go to images. It brings it up

Nobody145 it's not just MJ, look what's happened to Felicia lately, hell look what's happened to Spider-Man himself ,they have all had the short end of the straw lately it's not good but that's a discussion for another board.

Back to Mara, Zahn had her importance to Palpatine and her powers change from book to book. In the early books her Jedi powers were limited and which only developed through Luke but by the later books she pretty much has full Jedi skills already. She also goes from an Assassin to a Policewoman as the Emperors Hand. So I wondered what readers preferred both in terms of her powers and backstory .?

 

My first impression is unique. In her introduction, Zahn described her as entering, cat-like, into the room. I misread it and imagined her to be a Togorian or Cathar. This colored my perception of her character for a long time until I reluctantly accepted that she is human.

 

I could just never figure out what "red-gold hair" looked like.

 

I figured red-gold meant strawberry blonde, but none of the illustrations I've seen looked like that.

 

Yeah, most pictures tend to go full bright-red redhead. A few illustrations have managed the red-gold strawberry blonde look, though. By the Emperor's Hand, the comic Zahn himself wrote, got it right.



VOTF's cover leaned red-gold.



But, yeah, most stuff went full, deep-red redhead.

 

That's still my favourite Mara look on the Vision cover

 

I also started with Mara from that book (donated it a long time ago when I bought the 3rd edition) but quickly grew to love the Shannon Baska/McRandle look.

 

Didn't Stackpole write it with Zahn's assistance, rather than vice versa?

 

Could some of that be chalked up to artistic license? Most comic book characters (even in issues set in the same continuity) often differ in exact appearance, but have the generals right so we know who they are.

 

Maybe, but it's been rather consistent among various sources- toys, ccg, statues, some covers, art from reference books, ect.

Kind of like how the depictions of the K-wing are consistent, but wrong compared to the original text, but unlike that, I like the red-head version of Mara.