Book Report> Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire

I have that big comic organizing project (or the next phase anyway) to start, but I have some unfinished business to complete first.

Going through my comics is relatively easy. I read two a day from my oversized collection, and if I see one I never want to read again, it goes into a pile until I can figure out how to get rid of them. Most comic shops don’t need comics from the 1980s and 1990s. Especially the 1990s. I review them on my other site. Novels on the other hand take longer to go thought. I read a chapter a week and post a “chapter by chapter” review of that book. And this one would long since been done, but you all know how last year went.

Well this year I finally finished a book I started reading when Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters and now it’s getting done as Star Wars: Rogue One is probably close to done with its theatrical release. So the question is whether or not this is the third book to potentially leave my library, joining Total Recall and The Black Stallion’s Ghost, or if it’s one I really want to read again. Well, you can read the reviews of each individual chapter and read along with my review, or you can just see the final review here. Your call.

Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire

Written by: Steve Perry

Published by: Bantam Books (paperback edition: April, 1997)

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Comic Report: Star Wars: A New Hope Adaptation

This week I had to see people about things and my dad is turning a room into an office and occasionally needed my help. So in order to have something this week I’m going back into the other site’s archives for a review.

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Considering I went a long time without a Scanning My Collection article I don’t mind that there have been three this month. They come out when I have something to review for it, while I’m trying to do the others at least once a month. And since this one is collected and I can only guess where the breaks should go I’m going to review the whole thing.

Said whole thing is the original adaptation of the first Star Wars movie, though at the time we thought it would be the only one. Marvel adapted the movie in the first issues of the Star Wars comic series, and the version I have is a collected trade by Dark Horse featuring the first three, half of the movie. I don’t know if any changes were done by Dark Horse and if they did (outside of brightening the color) that’s a shame. I have noticed that Chewbacca looks more on-model than he did in issue #23, which I reviewed earlier today. Threepio has stronger colors and I’m not sure if R2 looks different or not since I just flipped through it prior to this opening. I am curious about the changes between what we saw on screen and what was in the adaptation. Dark Horse would also do their own version for the Special Edition, although the other two comics were just the Marvel adaptation. I don’t get it, either.

Well, this party got out of control real quick.

Classic Star Wars: A New Hope #1

Dark Horse Comics (June, 1994)

reprinting Star Wars #s 1-3 (Marvel; July-September, 1977)

ADAPTATION: Roy Thomas

PENCILER: Howard Chaykin

INKER: Steve Leialoha

IDW RE-COLORIST: Pamela Rambo

IDW COVER ARTIST: Arthur Adams

IDW COVER COLORIST: Matthew Hollingsworth

LETTERER: Tom Orzechowski

ORIGINAL EDITORS: Roy Thomas & Archie Goodwin

IDW EDITORS: Bob Cooper & Edward Martin III

The fact that they redid Marie Severin, Steve Leialoha, and Carl Gafford’s colors instead of just brightening them up is already a bad sign, but I don’t have the originals to compare it to. Now I wish I did so I would know what other art changes were made.

Toy Report: Pokédex & Friends

Here’s a fad I bet nobody saw coming, although as far as I recall only Tiger Electronics made them so maybe it really wasn’t a fad. The “electronic index” or “E-Dex” (I’m not sure if either is an official term or spelling, but it’s what I call them) was an interesting way to patch in to Hasbro-licensed series. (Hasbro being the owner of Tiger.) The E-Dex’s birth began with the item on the left, the Pokédex, and would continue on to other licenses. Continuing left to right is the “Shepard’s Journal” (Atlantis: The Lost Empire), the Dino-Dex (Jurassic Park 3) and the Jedi Dex (Star Wars). Each contains information about the series or movie it was based on, and all but the Pokédex contains bonus features like a PDA-type method of storing phone numbers, websites, and whatever. These really don’t work very well, because the programmers didn’t bother to allow the date to be updated past 2009, thus making scheduling and alarm functions almost useless. That tells me they didn’t have high hopes for long-term use of their products.

The later three, as well as other E-Dexes, also include a game unique to the property and Dex. I’m not able to get a decent pic of the LCD screens but I can promise you it’s better than the old LCD games they produced all those years ago. The sounds are painful to listen to and these toys didn’t really age well. But let’s open them up and take a look at them in greater detail.