- Droid Geonosians

OK, so like, droids with the shape of a Geonosian? Or Geonosians that have droid bodies? Either way, sounds cool!

Battle Droids in the Shape of Geonosians. The explanation for it was fairly simple too. At some point the Geonosian Queens where sterilized.

STAR WARS #4

VOICE-ACTIVATED, SMART-TARGETING SCATTERBLASTER.

One word to any of my players who may be reading this: NO. I don't care if they're all the rage on Nar Shadaa.

I'm both looking forward to and dreading the new Lando comics they announced. On one hand Lando is awesome and this could be a great way to give us an incredible canon Battle of Tanaab since IMO the EU Battle of Tanaab was a huge letdown, On The other hand The Lando Calrissian Adventures novels are among my ten least favorite Star Wars novels and I'm worried I'll be disappointed again.

Good point, I guess it really depends who's writing. Leia's story post ANH is ripe or some really good character development, but they've dropped the ball on it so far (imo).

Lando is a similar case, could be awesome could be terrible. I hope for the former, natch

I disagree about Leia, I'm really digging the "I want to fight the entire Empire" attitude we saw in Star Wars #4. I've only read the Princess Leia #1 though

I agree Rortharr she's handled pretty well in the main SW title. I won't spoil the standalone for you, but there are some really cool moments, as well as some really bizarre moments.

DARTH VADER #5

Where's the Ark Angel? Vader and Aphra start the issue buzzing around in a good old J-type 327 Nubian. Vader feeling nostalgic? I haven't got #4 in front of me, so there might be something I'm forgetting.

Space Whales. Don't know what these are called, but they are pretty tooled up. I wonder if this is new or ancient. There are a few of them though. They'd make a great and interesting Shadowport location.

Cyclo-IV, now Cyclo-V. Human Replica Droid, Clone, or something else? He activates a new body when the old one is killed, a la the Emperor reborn from Dark Empire.

We have a couple of (weak) force users, one with a yellow lightsaber. Then three more new characters, all of which seem to have cyber-enhancements of some kind. There's a droid controller, with a swarm of floating balls similar to training remotes, but some of these appear to have multiple mini lightsaber blades on them. A probe droid, a trandoshan with wolverine claws and a lightsaber wielding mon calamari. And of course the Emperor to boot. Interesting group, should make for a cool scrap next issue!

I'm not doing whole entries for Princess Leia now by the way, unless something really interesting crops up, which seems doubtful at this point.

I don't think it's coincidence that the floating space whale bases look a LOT like the big turtle-whale troop carrier things from the first Avengers movie

I don't think it's coincidence that the floating space whale bases look a LOT like the big turtle-whale troop carrier things from the first Avengers movie

Sshhh.... next thing you know we'll be getting Chewie's head on a robot spider and the X-Men in a Quinjet...

STAR WARS #5

Sigh.

Some good stuff here, but some (imo) amateurish mis-steps that I wouldn't expect from a writer of Aaron's calibre. Anyway...

The Cantina. Do we really need every single alien from ANH crammed into one panel? It just smacks so hard of "hey, I totally saw the movie too you guys!". Is it meant tone "cute" or "fan service"? I guess by the use of "hammerhead" this is the case. Some people will like it no doubt

Not sure what the six-armed guy is. Have they appeared before?

Is this meant to be Fixer?

The Ganath Cloud (Dark Empire II), Trindello System and the Ovise System are now canon, as is the Imperial Base in the Blackfel System from Blood Ties: Boba Fett is Dead. Also the Moddell Sector and the Monsua Nebula. Many of these featured in Star Wars Adventure Gamer 9.

Solo's behaviour here is pretty unbelievable for an experienced smuggler. I think it's meant to be a foreshadowing of "fly casual" at Endor, but it comes across as a clumsy plot point.

Hold on a second....

"How far to the Monsua Nebula?"

"A few light years"

"Then we're in luck. I know a place."

Are we supposed to think they travelled "a few light years", sublight, while being pursued by TIEs? If not, and the planet was just around the corner, why the light years mention in the first place? Makes no sense. In fact, a couple of panels later we find out that the tracking device they set off IS in the Monsua Nebula. Which is ridiculous, unless I'm missing something fundamental?

The mysterious character from #4 (of the Scattergun fame) is flying some kind of YT freighter, which I don't recognise. Is it new, or can anyone identify it?

The end is the part I have the biggest problem with.

<<<SPOILER SPACE>>>

Scroll down...

<<<SPOILER SPACE>>>

Ok.

So in #1 we have Luke facing Vader and surviving. Now we have him facing Boba Fett. Obviously both survive, but was it really necessary to shoehorn this encounter in at this point in the timeline? I get the feeling it's meant to elicit an "oh cool!" reaction. I just rolled my eyes and put it down.

Marvel is doing so much good with some of their titles (Vader, Kanaan) and the first few issues of this were pretty good. It's a shame that this title keeps seeming to go for the heavy handed movie references, and the forced shock values of these kind of encounters. It really does diminish the meetings later on in the movies to me.

Of course, I may be completely wrong about all this I'd be interested to hear some other thoughts.

I'm kinda happy that some of the new canon is as bad as some of the Legends stuff. The Canonistas love to trash the old Legends, so now they can eat a little crow.

I could see Han's jumpy nature as maybe being because of his recent experiences on Cymoon 1. But I agree that it was kinda dumb, and I bet existed just to set up his "oh, just an engine malfunction" line to throw back to ANH.

I actually like the confrontation with Vader, because now all of the lines Vader spouts on Bespin about how Luke has improved ("you have controlled your fear" comes to mind) make a bit more sense, otherwise Vader is telling someone he's never encountered before how much he's improved as an opponent.

I'm worried they're canonizing some of the frankly ridiculous level of "Boba Fett is THE BEST EVER" **** that the EU loved, though tracking down Luke now explains why he's on Vader's ship in ESB getting hired to find the Falcon.

My question is, if Vader doesn't find out that Luke is his son until ESB, how will they deal with Fett knowing his full name? Unless Skywalker is just one of those common last names in the galaxy?

The "light years" comment is just more proof that every time anyone uses a unit of measurement in Star Wars it is completely useless as a metric and entirely contextual, which I don't mind because the exact amount of time/space that a "light year" represents in Star Wars has never been an issue, it's always just been a way to say "really far away/really close/really impressive (RE: the Kessel Run in a few parsecs).

I think and have said previously it's going to be more of the same. Give it a few years and we will once again have a mix of great and horrible stuff all with a new gravy of contradictions poured over the top of it all.

Nothing so far has gotten near the worst EU materials though and I hope it stays that way.

Nothing so far has gotten near the worst EU materials though and I hope it stays that way.

I suppose we can hope, but we just got started and the posts above already have me thinking that's a false hope.

Then add that the EU was never considered canon. Anything that was crap was easily discarded. I fear new garbage coming our way with a canon stamp of approval upon it.

Are we going to end up with varying levels of canon? Such as "comic book canon", "movie canon", etc? That sounds very familiar. A reset with a serious moderation group to keep the new canon sane was what we were promised. This may just end up being a reset starting a new round of what old fans already experienced - greatness + garbage with contradictions all over the place.

So, now, per canon, story book approved, a trip that would take years at light speed takes a short bit of time when moving LESS then light speed? I hope the post above got that wrong.

Is it ever stated anywhere what the exact measurement of the Star Wars light year is?

It's a weak defense, but it's really possible that the Story Group or whoever is in charge of canon now came to the decision that light years in Star Wars just don't mean the same thing as they do in our universe. It's like the RPG - distances are more narrative than exact measurements.

(And I think the existence of the Story Group represents the opposite: this is a permanent fixture designed to regulate canon and insure Star Wars stories across media types interact without issue. It's not the hasty retcon jobs of the EU, this is planning before hand.)

Is it ever stated anywhere what the exact measurement of the Star Wars light year is?

I'm serious. Yes, light year is "how far light goes in a year" in OUR universe, but a Star Wars light year could be "a few miles." A parsec could actually be a unit of time. It's space opera technobabble.

I appreciate the spirited optimism Rortharr, but in issue #1 of this very title, Han Solo says "wait until we're in the Falcon, a few light years away from here. Then you can thank me in style, Princess"

In that instance the impression is that a few light years is a safe distance from imperial pursuit from Cymoon-1. Sorry, but it's sloppy writing and/or editing.

Is it ever stated anywhere what the exact measurement of the Star Wars light year is?

And space is not a vacuum, time can pass more quickly on one planet versus another, detailed memories don't last more then 2 decades, but pre-birth memories can spontaneously occur in adult life, all to retcon other plot issues?

This is the kind of retconning I was hoping to avoid with the Disney reset.

Is it ever stated anywhere what the exact measurement of the Star Wars light year is?

Do you mean "what planet's orbit are we measuring a year by"?

If the author's didn't mean for a lightyear to be a lightyear why call it a lightyear? Why not call it a Quatloo or something? Is there really a point to debating time/distance in regards to space travel in sci fi? Is sci fi sci fi, or is it sci speculation since a lot of it comes true? Are we all real or constructs in the laboratory of a mad scientist??!?!...Egads.

Let me start by saying that I do think it is actually sloppy writing at work...

However, I am generally able to enhance my calm about such things by deciding in my head that some such instances are, actually "slang" of sorts and the speakers generally understand the context.

Similar to how we might say "wait just one minute" or refer to another town as "a hop skip and a jump" away, the term "light year" is both a set measure of distance based on time (functionally similar enough to our usage) and a colloquialism used by a FTL culture meaning "not that far away" in space.

Thus "a few light years away" could simply mean "we can get there quickly and/or easily" even when the actual distance is far less than an actual light year.

All of which is unnecessary mental gymnastics, but there it is.

Wookieepedia has a rather interesting article about light years:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Light_year

Obviously, this is Legends.

The following is also informative and partly Canon:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Parsec

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Parsec/Canon

The number of miles which make up a light year is so high, though, that it is kind of meaningless in RPG terms.

I assume that Marvel indicated the distance in light years rather than in "parsecs" in order to avoid confusion with the readers.

Let me start by saying that I do think it is actually sloppy writing at work...

However, I am generally able to enhance my calm about such things by deciding in my head that some such instances are, actually "slang" of sorts and the speakers generally understand the context.

Similar to how we might say "wait just one minute" or refer to another town as "a hop skip and a jump" away, the term "light year" is both a set measure of distance based on time (functionally similar enough to our usage) and a colloquialism used by a FTL culture meaning "not that far away" in space.

Thus "a few light years away" could simply mean "we can get there quickly and/or easily" even when the actual distance is far less than an actual light year.

All of which is unnecessary mental gymnastics, but there it is.

This, however, is my kind of retconning. (no thumbs up smiley?)