Lit What's This? More Droids from Handley and Peña?

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2013/06/13/the-droids-re-animated-part-1/

Edit: would a mod fix the typo in Handley's name in the title?

 

Looks to be a cannon-current synopsis of the entire series--or will be eventually. I've only seen bits and pieces of the cartoon so I'm not sure how much is new, but the source list suggests a good bit.

 

This made my day. It's been far too long since we've seen something from Abel. It's a little inelegant compared to some of their previous efforts, but great stuff nonetheless.

Notes:

I see at least some of the information Abel mentioned finding in an obscure Spanish children's book is referenced here.

Nice use of the Endor wormhole, and brilliant retconning of the hundred year time jump from the Star comics; not one line of the comic is disregarded. It plays on the fact that we never know what Artoo is saying, and that Threepio has a tendency to assume the worst. It's also vague enough that those who really, really want to maintain the original idea can do so.

I liked seeing the blanks filled in between the comics and the cartoon.

More homeworlds and backstories for obscure characters.

No mention of the prison escape on Aaron?

Given that Plagueis and Palpatine were already aware of Sise Fromm during the events of the Darth Maul comics, it seems a little odd that Boba Fett is credited as the assassin that made his rise possible...

TC

 

What's the info from the Spanish comics that was referenced?

 

This is amazing!

Here's all of the new canon I've found:

- Vik & Nikki Idd are explicitly identified as piloting an Intergalactic Droid Agency shuttle
- Tig Fromm has an older brother, Sonko
- A species name for Reddjakk's two-headed gunner: Dyclops.
- "The fascinated Ewoks helped the droids find the missing child, so awed by C-3PO’s shiny exterior that they assumed him to be a god. Thus, when he returned to Endor years later, they recognized him immediately and dropped to their knees in reverence." Brilliant.
- "As for the Endor Gate, years later, the mysterious wormhole was thought to have sucked up Darth Vader’s indestructible gauntlet after the destruction of the second Death Star and flung it to the far away Mon Calamari system…where that emblem of evil was claimed to anoint a new Galactic Emperor." Even MORE brilliant.
- some continuity between the issues of the Marvel Droids comics, indicating how the droids got from one master to another
- A name and identity for the refueling station owner who taught Artoo to play Dejarik! Holy crap! An obscure reference from Artoo's entry in The New Essential Guide to Characters.
- direct continuity between the Marvel comics and the animated series: Threepio and Artoo went from Prince Jagoda to the refueling station operator to Zevel Hortine.
- new backstories for several characters

- Abel... this is amazing. This is like cocaine to me. Thank you. I've been working on-and-off on Threepio and Artoo's wook articles for a few years, and this sort of stuff is what I thrive on.

If you're looking for another obscure reference to insert into a future update, check out here. In Aargau: For All Your Banking Needs, C-3PO claims "I once belonged to an expert in butterflies... Zorneth, or a new character altogether? You decide!

 

Loved this article! Would love to see more characters, droids and species finally be given an identity, especially some of the unusual astromech droids in The Great Heep and the alien merchants in The Frozen Citadel (see my avatar). Looking forward to what's next in the series! I'm hoping that eventually all of Rich and Abel's Droids work will be compiled in a book so we can always keep it on hand.

 

More new canon: The Lok Revenants are the pirates who attacked the Tantive IV when Threepio and Artoo entered an escape pod and began their long, zany series of adventures. And the droids were captured by the pirates, with whom they shared an adventure or two. Amazing.

One of my favourite lines: "Senator Organa ordered that C-3PO’s memory be erased before giving possession of the droids to Raymus Antilles and Jeremoch Colton, the at-times-conflated captains of the Corellian Corvettes Sundered Heart and Tantive IV."

I wonder if we'll get any new info on what the droids were up to in the nearly ten years between The Frozen Citadel and The Kalarba Adventures? We know that they go from Mungo to this guy, after which a "string of unremarkable and menial assignments" follow before they end up in the service of Governor Wena. 9.5 years is a lot of time to play with, though. LFL could make, like, ten more comic series set in that time if they wanted.

Tales of the Golden Droid also says that Threepio once spent a month as the personal caregiver of a Huttlet. Here's to hoping we find out more!

 

This was amazing. I loved the nod to the GoDV. Super stuff.

STILL wish I knew which Jedi left that lightsaber in that speeder for Thall to find...

 

". . . landing with a crash in the forbidding Vaj Desert."



Awesome article. It's great to see some of this old, underserved material getting more exposure and a thorough continuity tune-up.

 

I'm finding more new canon every time I take another look --- the planet Umax, where Sonko Fromm was imprisoned, seems to be a new one.

It'll take me a while to shut up about how much I love this article.

 

Here's hoping Doodnik is in the next part, and gets made a Besalisk.

Well, doesn't making the GODV wormhole the Endor Gate pretty directly contradict what's stated in GODV itself? As well as kind of not mesh with what a black hole actually is?

 

I dunno. Never read GODV. Ask Instantdeath.

As for Doodnik, I say he's a better fit as a Jillsarian.

 

Good find! I hadn't heard of Jillsarians before, but I agree that Doodnik looks like he could be one of them. He looks way more like this guy than he does like Dexter Jettster.

 

Full credit for that find goes to the Wookieepedian named Bosda Di'Chi, who pointed it out here.

 

Droids articles like this are just what's needed to highlight and hopefully bring more exposure to the stories, characters, alien races, planets and events of the world of Star Wars Droids. I seriously would love it if Abel, Rich, Jeff Carlisle and Daniel Wallace could put together some kind of ultimate guide to Droids. Given the chance to go all out on such a project, I'm sure they could turn out a pretty amazing book!

 

Thanks, TC, and you’re very welcome. Some of that inelegance may be owed to the fact that we had to put together the revision for this pretty quickly, and the years of accumulated continuity since we last revised it was considerable. For instance, the chronology required major shuffling (hence, as is obvious now, some of our conversations on the Spanish Droids & Ewoks comics thread). But we are proud of the final product, and happy as handmaidens it’s finally published after a decade of marinating.

That’s right. There’s another tidbit that, though less obvious, should make it into Part 2.

Your analysis is spot on. The key to a good retcon is to spot the structural weak point of traditional interpretation and then push there and see how far it will bend. From that point of view, Artoo’s unknowable blatts and raspberries were the clear weakness.

Circumstances forced us to keep this to a minimum, but the rearrangements in chronology certainly forced our hand in spots like these.

Likewise, Rich and I were pretty much forced into that, due to what we’d published in Polyhedron back in 2004. But sometimes it’s best not to tie everything into too neat a bow.

Ultimately, after all, everything is the will of the Force.

TC’s referring to an exclusive Droids children’s book published in Spain (which I mentioned here), rather than the exclusive Castilian comics.

This is where I give Rich a Ricky Ricardo stare and say, “Jaaaandley…!”

Abel

 

Here's hoping that some of this research goes into the REBELS animated series... think of it as a pre-ANH storylines primer for Filoni &co (one can dream, can't one)

 

Ah, right, Sonko is from that children's book. I forgot about that.

Abel, if I'm reading your post correctly, it seems like our nitpicking forced you to move the Star Comics to a pre-cartoon position in the timeline. And to hurriedly do it in only a month's time, too! ... Sorry. But hey, nitpicking is what we do, right?

 

I liked the older brother idea because it dovetailed two obscure sources nicely and lent real credibility to Sise's ruthlessness. Just look at his pic in the article after that anecdote.

Would've been nice if it/they could've been a Troig, but it just wasn't matching up. I've learned through trial and error not to make the galaxy unnecessarily small.

That was Rich's doing, and I felt the same way.

Probably my favorite moment of serendipity in this piece. Glad you liked it.

Stuff long overdue, IMO.

Jeff, you're very kind. Thanks very much, in kind, for helping to workout the Droids chronology!

Thanks, Kez! There was only so deep we could delve into the series. But there are some surprises yet.

See, you guys have gotten too good at this, you're gonna put me out of a job.

But, luckily ... I've known my West End Games for a long, long time.

From your lips to the Maker's ears, my friend.

 

Excellent, excellent, excellent... Could it be that starwars.com is turning back to its old days of marvelous articles? Man, I certainly do hope so... Regarding a book with all of Abel and Rich's works, I would buy that in an instant!!!

As usual, I already printed out the article, as well as the comments from this thread for safekeeping into the next millennium!!!! This thread makes a nice 'behind-the-scenes' article!!!!! Thanks for all the thoughtful insight-questions and remarks everyone!!

 

The number of links to Abel's posts on this forum in Wookieepedia "Behind the scenes" sections is probably pretty staggering.

I feel like a fool for asking, but one is the Spanish children's book... what's the other one?

 

Halagad_Ventor I was wondering, Abel, whether you came up with the Consular III- class denomination to explain a discrepancy. I remember that the Blood Brother had been called a Consular-class cruiser (without the III) in the "Dawn of Defiance" RPG campaign. Obviously, that pirate ship looked nothing like, say, the Radiant VII. Which is why, I suppose, you added the "III." Did you intend that Consular III-class to belong to the same line as the former Consular-class seen in the prequels? In that case, I suppose that would make it a product of the Corellian Engineering Corporation. Oh, and another thing... we known that Reddjak has been in possession of the Blood Brother since 19 BBY. Do you think that the Consular III-class was quite ancient at the time, or something brand new that was launched with the Clone Wars? That makes a lot of questions, all right, but anything to fuel the "behind the scenes" section is always good.

 

Random musing: Will we finally find out where C-3PO worked programming binary loadlifters?

 

Good question. I guess he may have done that with the Lars family when Cliegg was still alive, but it would still be good to explain it properly. We could also be told why Unca Owen did not turn to C-3PO and said: "Y'know, it's funny, some twenty years ago, I had a droid who spoke just like you. He was also called C-3PO, by the way. And he was just as obsequious as you are."

 

Threepio's loadlifter work would have to be post-memory wipe, though. I guess it's most likely that he did it during his early service aboard the Tantive IV.