Comics Obscure Droids and Ewoks comics -- translated by Abel Peña

And that's a story which has to be told!!! Definitely!!!! I also cherish the Polyhedron article, and wish we would get more like these insightful views...

 

Yes, this is all excellent news. And, this is just my opinion (so take it with a grain of salt), but I believe that all of this attention on these obscure Ewoks & Droids comics may have a lot to do with the excellent Star Wars reprint program @ Dark Horse comics: Last year they reprinted the old Marvel Star Comics Ewoks & Droids series (which had never been reprinted before, ever), and this year they'll be reprinting the old-skool UK, 3D, and other obscure comics in the Wild Space Omni, which will hopefully be 1 of 2 (most of this material has never been reprinted before, either). In other words, DH has brought a lot of attention to these obscure comics/series that most fans would otherwise never have gotten a chance to see/read (unless we hunted down the back issues, something I personally don't have the time/patience/money to do...)

This is one of the many reasons the Star Wars comic license should stay at Dark Horse forever, and never be re-instated at Marvel...

 

I was thinking, if LFL can't find evidence that these comics were ever licensed, couldn't they just license them now? I'm guessing that they wouldn't have to do a whole lot to acquire the rights to them. If LFL or Darkhorse would like to make printed copies of these, hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to do. I don't know how many pages these comics amount to, but it would be nice to have a Droids and Ewoks Omnibus volume 2. If these were collected together with the Droids and Ewoks children's book adaptations (which I feel contain some of the best Droids art ever seen), then a second omnibus should be doable.

 

Given the state of affairs with LFL/Disney, I doubt it would be top of the list..

 

The timing on this project is great -- we've sort of needed something to lift our spirits after the onslaught of "canceled/suspended/delayed" announcements we've been hearing about over these last few months. The fact that this originates from the depths of old-school EU makes it that much better.

Although it's unlikely, I like the way you think! And it's somewhat unfortunate how few people even remember that those children's book even existed.

 

I hope Rich's starwars.com blog will be up after Easter...

 

Me too. I've been checking every day!

 

Man, let me tell you. First off, I want to thank Abel, Rich, Rodlofo, and Eddie. Without Eddie's persistance, this may have never come to light. And as he said in his guest blog, even I have been guilty of assuming that I knew everything. But on to the news, this for me represents the best news in the last several months concerning star wars. As of late, all these changes, teasers, updates, and news have been negative. The cancellation of the clone wars, the incompletion of the Force Unleashed series, the postponement of the 3-D movie re-releases, the cancellation of 1313 video game, the curbasure of Detours. It's been one dissapointing news after the other, and to read something like this really brighten my day and mood concerning the franchise.

A personal thanks to all of you that were involved in bringing this to light.

If a lesson is to be learned is that while GL might have moved on, the fans yes us the fans are the ones that will keep the star wars light burning for generations to come regardless of the hands that they may end up being.

Happy Easter everyone!

 

Hopefully starwars.com doesn't put this off for too much longer!

 

any news on this stuff yet?

 

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/in...pains-lost-star-wars-comic-strips/#more-21177

 

Rich's article is finally posted!

 

Downloaded my pdfs of the comics and I'll check them out later this week. Great work to everyone who was involved in this collaborative effort.

 

Just downloaded them. Can't wait to give them a full read. From a cursory glance, Professor Broom is my new favorite character.

 

Oh God. Now I'm sure I had these comics when I was a kid. Blast from the past!

 

awesome pdfs, great translations! big thx for making it happen!

now.. on to translate those obscure french WEG style rpg articles... and other foreign only stuff like some german, some french stuff as well as others.

 

Some of the characters really look different in the Droids strips, but in 'The Secret Disk' it almost seems like the artist was looking at issue 2 of the Star Comics Droids series when he was drawing Tig Fromm. Pretty cool stuff guys! Thanks for doing this!

 

Hey folks!

We're happy everyone's enjoying these. The project came together very serendipitously. After and Adolfo Rodriguez and Eddie van der Heijden got the comics to us, I immediately began translating the Spanish text while Rich took it upon himself to re-letter the comics. He then approached StarWars.com about writing an article while Jean-Francois Boivin tracked down a physical copy for extra details and confirmation this was real. Meanwhile, I was able to help with the research in tracking down a direct connection between the illustrators of these comics and Nelvana (who animated the Droids and Ewoks television series) and Mike Beidler compiled the translated and re-lettered comics into convenient PDFs.

So please check out Rich's in-depth article, then download these suckers at Hasslein Books or my star wars page, pause just a moment at the credits page ... and please enjoy our efforts.

Some thoughts and observations on these comics:

• There’s some question here as to whether the events depicted in the first two Spanish Droids comics must be considered alternate retellings of events in Droids series TV episodes (in the tradition of the children's book adaptation Escape From the Monster Ship: A Droid Adventure) or if they are simply similar but distinct events. In the cartoon, both Jord and Kea are captured by the Fromms and the Trigon is destroyed, while here only Kea is captured and the Trigon is put out of commission, but not destroyed. (And while it may be splitting hairs, the Trigon One vs. Trigon I distinction may be useful.)

• What and who the !@#$ is the Secret Lair of the Guardians of the Cosmic Treasure that Vlix is after???

• From the writing to the art, “Sabotaged Droid” clearly is the most bizarre story in the bunch. As Rich noted in the StarWars.com article, Koong here is referred to as General rather than Governor, and is implied to be the green monster that taunts the good guys. Note, however, that this green villain’s identity is only inferred, and may or may not be “Koong”—General or otherwise. (And don’t forget, of course, the existence of the title Governor-General from The Corellian Trilogy.)

• Jeffrey, Professor Broom was my favorite new character from these comics as well. I’d very much like to see him again. The antics of both Broom and Morag are completely over-the-top evil here.

• The strange reference to a nuclear warhead in “The Secret Disk” is one of the earliest in Star Wars, and rare for being a major plot point.

• The phantom menace of “The Cloud” anticipated Episode I by 13 years. Checkmate.

• “Insects and Duloks—from the village neighboring the Ewoks—are inseparable by virtue of the latter’s habit of never bathing.” Hands down the most difficult sentence to translate in this whole enterprise.

• “Perfect Antidote” (as well as “Painting Exposition”) feature Morag the Tulgah Witch as the principal villain. Oddly, though, the Spanish adjectives and pronouns used to refer to her imply she was male. Perhaps the Spanish writers knew something we don’t. In any case, I kept her traditional gender intact. Wicket’s emphatic declaration “Without berries we can’t survive!” also made me wonder if this was the point at which Ewoks decided eating human flesh was fair game. Finally, as I mentioned in my translation analysis, I switched out Morag’s reference here to her “mucosae” for “sinuses,” though it was a painful decision.

• The inclusion of the Quorks in “The Princess in a Predicament” (and whose only other appearance was in the Star Comics Ewoks series) was easily the most unexpected thing about these stories, and made it one of the most continuity rich, with a reference to shadowroot soap as well. The Quorks’ primitive speech was also the funnest stuff to translate.

• “The Balloon” had a lot of interesting elements. First of all, what did Wicket and the others do with that poor dead dude? Just shove him off the cliff and vow to never speak of it again?

• A hint also emerges in this story that there were multiple writers on these comics. In “The Balloon,” Wicket refers to his glider as a “planeador”. However, in “Princess in a Predicament” he calls it a “deslizador.” Both words mean the same thing, but I decided to subtly distinguish them by translating the former as “hang glider” and the latter as simply "glider." Finally, Wicket yells out “Yipeee!” in the second panel of this story, again getting a good decade’s jump on young Anakin and Episode I.

• Rhyme is just about the toughest thing to do in translation. The line, “Magic, magic walking stick … Wrap me up in an exquisite stench!” in “Logray’s Staff” was a translation of a mock incantation by King Gorneesh. I went with slant rhyme.

• The insult “inútil” seemed to be a crutch word for the writers of these Droids and Ewoks comics. The only problem for me was that the word, which literally means “useless one” isn’t easily translatable into English. I rendered it many different ways, including “incompetents!” and “you’re perfectly useless!” But “Logray’s Staff” upped the contextual difficulty by having King Gorneesh level the insult at a random alligator as part of a magic chant in what’s clearly a petty show of his new powers. While it actually works in Spanish, I thought a straight translation of “inútil” here would not. So I opted for the Ewokese insult “lurdo,” which I thought better captured the absurdity.

• “Painting Exposition” was maybe the silliest story of the bunch. No translation could save it from references to “The Gods of Color” and Morag’s outright c*ntishness. She did produce the best line in all these comics, though: “Ha, ha! I am so evil!”

Hope you guys enjoy these! I certainly did.

Abel

 

A big thanks to all parties involved

 

Once again, a big thanks to everyone. I have not only downloaded these, but also printed them at work. Haha used the company's color printer and it is awesome. Like I said, this is some damn good news. Eddie you are the best. Did I ever tell you that I use and ..........well............truly depend on your site for all the stuff thats coming out. This is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yep, you've told me! And thanks for that!

 

Nothing brings joy to my EU-loving heart like long-lost obscure sources. Major kudos for the incredibly fast and top-notch translation and re-lettering work--Abel and Rich deserve some kind of award for that.

Now to start adding them to the timeline...do the Droids comics indicate that the droids actually went to Roon before they did in the cartoon?

TC

 

It sure looks that way. If I'm remembering right, Roon was difficult to find for Mungo Baobab, as it's hidden in the Cloak of the Sith. But somehow Jann Tosh was able to find his way there just for a visit. I'm wondering, can these be added to the official timeline since it's not confirmed that they were licensed? For me, it seems that since they were featured on the official site, that's pretty close to being a stamp of approval.

 

So here's the Droids cartoon/Star Comic/Mycomyc timeline as best as I can figure it...does this look right?

18 BBY
DROIDS #1: THE DESTROYER
DROIDS #2: THE ULTIMATE WEAPON!
17 BBY
DROIDS #3: THE SCARLET PIRATE!
DROIDS #4: LOST IN TIME (Pages 1-9)
EWOKS #10: THE DEMONS OF ENDOR (Pages 17-23)
DROIDS: #5 SEPARATED
15 BBY
DROIDS: THE WHITE WITCH
DROIDS: ESCAPE INTO TERROR
DROIDS: THE TRIGON UNLEASHED
Droids: Neutralizing Trigon One
Droids: Kea Kidnapped
DROIDS: ESCAPE FROM AARON
DROIDS: THE STOLEN SHIP
DROIDS: THE SECRET DISK
DROIDS: THE CLOUD
DROIDS: A RACE TO THE FINISH
DROIDS: THE PIRATES AND THE PRINCE
Droids: The Lost Prince
Droids: The New King
Droids: The Pirates of Tarnoonga
Droids: The Revenge of Kybo Ren
DROIDS: CODY AND THE STARHUNTERS
DROIDS: SABOTAGED DROID
DROIDS: TROUBLESOME OUTING
DROIDS: THE GREAT HEEP
DROIDS: TREASURE OF THE HIDDEN PLANET
Droids: Tail of the Roon Comets
Droids: The Roon Games
Droids: Across the Roon Sea
Droids: The Frozen Citadel

TC