Trade Tales! - Serenity: A Shepard's Tale

Next up for the month is a return to the Firefly franchise. Outside of the TV show and movie, I haven’t ingested other Firefly material. I think part of it just has to do with the fact that I got other stuff to do. It is out there if you look. There are novels, Dark Horse Comics has had the license to do stories with most of Joss Whedon’s properties and Firefly is one of them. Whedon’s even been involved with a few. I ended up coming across this somewhere and something about it really struck my fancy: Shepard Book.

Derrial Book (played by the late Ron Glass) was the Serenity’s holy man. He’s a Shepard which is a priest or pastor in the Firefly universe. While he was a man of God, he seemed to do well with the pretty shady crew of the Serenity. Even he had some shades himself especially if you remember his little moment with “kneecaps.” We never found out more since the show got cancelled. When he was brought back for a bit in the movie, he met an unfortunate end. Since he was pretty popular, the Whedons (Joss and Zack) decided to do a graphic novel surrounding his origins.

Serenity: A Shepard’s Tale was released in 2010. Joss provided the plot while Zack handled the story and dialogue. Chris Samnee, who I know from his run on Daredevil, handled the artwork. The colors were done by Dave Stewart. The letterer was Michael Haesler. Finally, the awesome cover art was done by Steve Morris. So, what did this Shepard get up to in his youth?

Random Thoughts On... Star Wars: The Dark Empire Trilogy

So, Solo: A Star Wars Story was released this weekend. Some of my favorite movie reviewers (Jeremy Jahns, Chris Stuckmann) didn’t have great things to say about the movie. Since I'm off work for the weekend, I thought I'd take a bite and go see it for myself. It was okay for the most part and surprising in a couple of places. Today’s post isn’t about the nerf-herding pilot with a nice smile, though. It’s time to, once again, jump back into the original Expanded Universe, aka “Legends.” Today, it’s Tom Veitch’s Dark Empire Trilogy.

Star Wars: Dark Empire, a six-issue miniseries, was released by Dark Horse in 1991. It was originally supposed to be released by Marvel, but things didn’t work out. Also, the writer, Tom Veitch, had to work things out with other writers like Timothy Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson because they were also doing things in the Expanded Universe. Its sequel, Dark Empire II, was released in 1994. The final story, Empire’s End, was released a year later. Tom Veitch wrote all three books. The artwork for the first two was provided by Cam Kennedy while Empire’s End had artwork done by Jim Balkie.

For some reason, this image of Luke in the Vader mask has stuck with me for years.

 It was around 2004 or 2005 when I first heard about Dark Empire. I actually found Dark Empire II at MTSU’s library. I was searching for something Star Wars-related and I found it in the young section. A few years later, I again ran into the Dark Empire Trilogy (which collected Dark Empire, Dark Empire II, and Empire’s End) at Pulaski’s public library. I didn’t finish reading it, though. Over the years, I’ve added the first two entries to my collection. Since Marvel has Star Wars now, all of their Expanded Universe series is on Marvel Unlimited. I was able to finally finish off the trilogy there. Since Empire’s End was only two issues, that was easy to do… a little too easy.

Trade Tales! - Star Wars: Legacy Vol. 1 - Broken

I didn’t realize that I haven’t talked about Star Wars in a while. Since I’ve touched on the movies and most of the TV shows, I haven’t felt the need to. So, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is coming out this week. I’m “whelmed” for the most part since I know it could be good. I may be overwhelmed with joy when I see it. I’m not talking about that today, though. Tonight, I thought it was finally time to talk about another continuation of the Star Wars saga: Star Wars – Legacy.

Star Wars: Legacy was a new series published by Dark Horse and it started in 2006. It was a part of the now-defunct Expanded Universe, aka “Legends.” The idea was to basically pull a Next Generation move on the universe. The series takes place over 120 years after the end of Return of the Jedi. It also included all of the stuff that happened with the New Jedi Order and the Yuzhon Vong… whoever those guys are. Yeah, I’m not a big expert on many things from the former Expanded Universe, so check out Wookiepedia for more info.

The first volume was Broken and it contained the first six issues of the series. I picked this up a few years ago and did consider talking about it here. The story was done by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema. Ostrander was the main reason I even checked this out since I really liked his run on Suicide Squad. Duursema also handled the pencils for the issue. Dan Parsons did the inks while Brad Anderson did the colors. So, how is the Star Wars universe 100 years after Galactic Empire fell? It’s the same stuff, yo!

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 1 – Legacy

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Pencils: Jan Durrsema

Inks: Dan Parsons

Colors: Brad Anderson

Letters: David Michael Thomas

Trade Tales! - The Star Wars

Next up for the month is a weird return to the Star Wars universe. Actually, I don’t even know if you can call it that. I guess it’s the “Earth-2” of the Star Wars multiverse or something.

For those who don’t know, George Lucas had an original draft to Star Wars called “The Star Wars.” It was similar to what he put into the original trilogy but a lot of crap was different. Some names and characters are similar but there are a lot of things different about it. For example, Luke Skywalker is older and is in Obi-Wan’s role. Annikin Starkiller is more or less of the main protagonist and basically has Luke’s role from the movie. There’s a Darth Vader who’s only a scarred general, R2-D2 (spelled differently) actually talks, and Han Solo looks like Swamp Thing. Those are just some changes.

I actually found the trade at a comic convention last year. I got it along with the adaptation to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The 8-part miniseries came out through Dark Horse. I think this mini was one of the last ones done before Marvel got the rights for the comics. J.W. Rinzler is the writer of the adaptation. He’s done a few things for the Star Wars universe. He even had to get permission from George Lucas to adapt the script. The artwork is done by Mike Mayhew and I’ve seen some of his stuff with DC. So, how does this original draft hold up?

The Star Wars

Writer: J.W. Rinzler

Art: Mike Mayhew

Colors: Rain Beredo

Letters: Michael Heisler

Cover Art: Nick Runge

Random Thoughts On… Mass Effect: Redemption and Mass Effect: Evolution

Wow, it’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything! Maybe I’ll let it last a month… or not.

While I’ve been on my sabbatical, I’ve been in a bit of a Mass Effect fix. Mass Effect: Andromeda is right around the corner, so a revisit was needed. Heck, since the beginning of year, Bioware has been my go-to developer for a bit.  I played through Mass Effect again and it is still really good. I played some of Jade Empire last month and decided to face the Collectors again with Mass Effect 2. Somehow, I lost Mordin again. A tear was shed for the cool salarian. Right now, I’m finishing off the trilogy with Mass Effect 3.

While playing the games, I started to think about a couple of Mass Effect trade paperbacks I picked up some time ago. I think it was at McKay’s but I really don’t remember. It was a while before I really read them. They were tie-ins done by Dark Horse around the time of the Mass Effect sequels and they center on certain characters from the series. Today, I thought I’d give a bit of an overview of these two trades.

Mass Effect: Redemption was released around 2010. It contains one storyline. The next trade, Mass Effect: Evolution, was released in 2012. It not only contains a four-part storyline but two short stories. Mac Walters, the creative director for the games, handled the story for these two trades and later ones that I won’t be talking about today. John Jackson Miller handles the script and dialogue. The artwork for Redemption and Evolution was done by Omar Francia. Incursion’s artwork is done by Eduardo Francisco while Inquisition’s artwork is done by Jean Diaz. The colors and letters for all the stories were handled by Michael Atiyeh and Michael Heisler.