“Children of the Jedi” (1995) is a long and challenging read that I wouldn’t recommend to casual “Star Wars” fans, but it has rewards and trivial curiosities for the die-hards. Barbara Hambly’s debut “Star Wars” novel launches the unofficial “Callista Trilogy” — to be followed by Kevin J. Anderson’s “Darksaber” and her own “Planet of Twilight” […]
I have an out-of-the-ordinary perspective on Troy Denning’s latest “Star Wars” novel, “Crucible” — I read it with an eye toward “Episode VII” and how it sets the stage for that movie in several areas. Most fans will read the novel with the notion that it’s part of a different timeline than the films, but until I […]
‘Star Wars’ flashback (Short story reviews): Here’s a rundown of Star Wars Insider’s initial foray into short fiction in Issues 62-88.
While it’s not as thematically rich as the brilliant immigration parody “Machete” — my No. 1 movie of 2010 — “Machete Kills” still delivers a lot of laughs and is worth seeing if you’re a fan of the franchise. This sequel is a nice mix of old and new gags. It’s cool to see Machete, even in his advanced […]
“Mara Jade: By the Emperor’s Hand” (1998-99) marked Timothy Zahn’s first foray into comics, but he apparently got good guidance from friend and collaborator Michael A. Stackpole. In this six-issue series, Zahn wrote the overall story, Stackpole wrote the scripts for issues 1-3, and Zahn wrote the scripts for 4-6. It reads very much like a […]
Thematically, “Tales from the New Republic” (1999) isn’t all that different from “Tales from the Empire” — both collections chronicle the little guy, either amid the galactic war or amid everyday life in the galaxy far, far away. It’s also about the little guy in “Star Wars” publishing. West End Games’ Star Wars Adventure Journal was canceled in 1997, but a […]
Just by paging through “The Essential Reader’s Companion,” it’s obvious that short stories make up a significant chunk of “Star Wars” fiction. Yet while the novels are easy to find, and 95 percent of the comics are collected in omnibus volumes, the short stories often have to be hunted down in magazine back issues or old web […]
Readers just getting into the “Star Wars” EU might be concerned about novels that have plot holes brought about by conflicting events in the prequels and “The Clone Wars.” Remarkably, K.W. Jeter’s “Bounty Hunter Wars” trilogy — which concludes with “Hard Merchandise,” which actually came out a bit after the release of “Episode I” in 1999 — holds together quite well […]
In the ’90s, in almost every lengthy interview in advance of “Episode I,” George Lucas and prequel movie producer Rick McCallum warned that these new movies would not be swashbuckling adventures like the original trilogy. They would be largely political thrillers. It was the most common Lucasian apologia outside of the warning that the films […]
While it doesn’t serve up groundbreaking (no fat joke intended) humor, “Super Fun Night” (8:30 p.m. Central Wednesdays on ABC) does have a sweet, somewhat understated vibe that makes it good enough to keep on my schedule for a little while.