Insider #87

A peine le site officiel annonce le contenu du nouveau Star Wars Insider #87 que les abonnés le reçoivent.



Au programme, le premier d’une série de trois articles sur le comics qui fait couler beaucoup d’encre alors qu’il n’est pas encore sorti : Legacy. Outre plusieurs informations sur le contexte de l’époque à laquelle se situe l’histoire – 140 ans après Episode IV: A New Hope, rappelons-le –, l’article en question comprend plusieurs illustrations, sur Cade Skywalker tout d’abord, mais surtout sur deux nouveaux personnages : Astraal Vao, la twi’lek Rutian, et Jeriah Syn, ami pirate de Cade dévoilé avant-hier dans l’édito du site de Dark Horse. On retrouvé également la twi’lek sith, présente lors de l’annonce du comics, ainsi qu’un personnage impérial. On sait que le prochain Insider contiendra une présentation de nouveaux héros, ainsi que du Nouvel Ordre Sith.

En ce qui concerne la traditionnelle nouvelle, Karen Travis signe ici Republic Commando : Odds, où elle fait évoluer les clones comme elle en a pris l’habitude. Elle fait d’ailleurs à ce propos gonfler une nouvelle fois son glossaire de Mando’a. Plus intéressant encore, l’article Destroy all Jedi de Daniel Wallace, qui explore les secrets de l’Ordre 66 et ses conséquences tragiques, article illustré par Joe Coroney.

Egalement dans ce numéro, les Galaxy Makers, ceux qui ont pu participer à la magie des films : le superviseur du maquillage, Nikki Gooley, nominé aux Oscars, et le superviseur des créatures, Dave Elsey, qui reviennent tous deux sur leur travail de Revenge of the Sith, alors que les responsables des mat-painting digitaux d’ILM – Jonathan Harb, Brett Northcutt, Yankck Dusseault et Hilmar Koch – expliquent quelle fut leur tâche sur le film.

Ensuite, Joe Coroney évoque sa carrière dans la nouvelle série « How can I get your job? » (Comment puis-je obtenir votre emploi ?), le "Skywalking's report", un rapport sur les nombreuses récompenses honorant l’Episode III, une pensée pour Phil Brown, l'acteur défunt du personnage d'Oncle Owen, et pour le premier assistant Réalisateur David Tomblin, une visite exclusive des nouveaux locaux de Lucasfilm au magnifique Centre des Arts Digitaux Letterman à San Francisco, ainsi qu’une interview exclusive de l'architecte paysagiste Lawrence Halprin.

Le collectionneur Steve Sansweet sert des Sushi Star Wars dans "Scouting the Galaxy". "Jedi Library" donne un rapide aperçu du nouveau livre Cinema by the Bay, "Drawn by the Force" parle des Tanks, "Technical Readout's" examine l'Ordre 66, des dessins envoyés par mails dans "Bantha Tracks" et bien plus ! Et ne manquez pas le meilleur de la section Hyperspace pour les entrées de blog des membres Ryan Kaufman, Dark Moose et ssgoilk. Et ne manquez pas le blog VIP pour voir celui de l'editeur de Star Wars Insider Frank Parisi.

Star Wars Insider #87 sera donc disponible dans les presses à partir du 17 avril.

En ce qui concerne les suppléments Hyperspace, une parti des informations concerna le making-of de la mise en scène de l’Ordre 66.

Le plus intéressant dans tout ça reste quand même la partie sur Legacy, même si New Force Rising, le supplément ONLINE, n'a pas apporté grand chose sur la série :s

Exact! Tu penses que ça vaut la peine de le mettre ici?

Leris a écrit:Exact! Tu penses que ça vaut la peine de le mettre ici?

Oui, je pense que vu le peu d'intérêt que ça représente, on peut le mettre effectivement. Je te laisse t'en charger

New Force Rising: Expanded Edition
April 13, 2006
By Frank Parisi

Having made his indelible mark on the comic book industry as the co-creator and writer of Grimjack for First Comics, John Ostrander helped kick start the 80's independent comics boom. The series, set in a bombed out post-apocalyptic American dystopia, blended hard-boiled detective fiction and high adventure with sci-fi., which -- combined with the fierce artwork of co-creator Timothy Truman -- heralded the age of the "grim and gritty" hero which would become an industry subgenre unto itself. Over the years Ostrander wrote extensively for Marvel and DC and explored the concepts of good and evil in such titles as The Spectre, Justice League, Wasteland, Suicide Squad, X-Men, and Punisher. Ostrander regularly penned Star Wars Republic since 2000, and now he and frequent collaborator, artist Jan Duursema, are about to release their most ambitious project yet: Star Wars Legacy.

Taking place decades after the events of the upcoming Legacy of the Force series of novels, Legacy ushers in a brand new continuity -- one that until now has been completely untouched and uncharted. Though all of the familiar archetypes and accoutrements fans have come to expect from Star Wars -- Jedi, Sith, Imperials, underworld rogues, Skywalkers -- will be present and accounted for, all will be re-examined and reinterpreted in ways fans have never seen. We had a chance to talk to John about the upcoming series, working with Jan Duursema, the power of myth and storytelling, and making a certain galaxy far, far away dangerous once again.

What can you tell us about Star Wars Legacy?
We're basically kicking everything about a hundred years down the timeline past the events of Legacy of the Force. It's a new Empire, new Sith, new Skywalker. It's taking us into turf that fans haven't seen before.

How did the idea come about?
As we were winding up Republic, Randy [Stradley] was interested in our doing something else and we got to talking as to where it would be. I know a lot of fans want to see things between Episodes III and IV, but I wanted to avoid that because, first of all, I think that there's going to be a lot of things that you aren't allowed to do there, and we've just been coping with that for a couple of years with Clone Wars. I wanted to have a little more freedom.

Also, with all the prequels, we've been caught in a cycle where you know the outcome of the story. It really hasn't been since the original series that you didn't really know what was going to happen next. You didn't know in Episode IV that Vader was Luke's father. You didn't know at the end of Episode V whether or not Han was going to come back alive or not. That was the big debate of the time. How was thing going to work out? We were interested in recapturing some of that initial excitement. The idea that you didn't know what was going to be happening next, that was new and fresh and alive and we wanted to get some of that back into Star Wars, get some of that excitement back in there. And we felt that the the best way to do that is to go out beyond any time frame that we've been in and deal with characters that we haven't seen before.

Is that a risk? Sure is. And isn't that interesting? Isn't it more interesting that Star Wars at this stage after all these years can be risky again? Dangerous? Will it work? Who knows? To me that's part of the interest of it.

How driven is this story by the events of the films?
Not a whole lot. Certainly none of this exists without the films, and certainly there's no Skywalker Legacy unless there were Skywalkers to begin with. But that said, we also draw upon the expanded universe continuity as well as including stuff that will be happening in Legacy of the Force.

Can you talk a bit about the new Sith Lords?
What we're saying is that the rule of two is no more. It's now the rule of one, and the one is the Sith Order itself. Which means that there are a lot of Sith in it, but all are responsible to, and obey, the top Sith Lord who has founded the group, who has brought it together, and who's going under the name Darth Krayt.

This is a whole new Sith Order. It's not tied to the other Sith. Basically according to Krayt's view, the galaxy is in chaos, as has been shown by the Vong war. If it had been unified, if it had been strong, the Vong wouldn't have been as successful as they were. As a result, it needs a single mind, a single force, a single will which is the Sith -- they are going to bring order to it. They see the Jedi as agents of chaos. While they're founded upon Sith principles -- he grew his new Sith Order on the planet Korriban -- they are not in fact the same as the other Sith. They have a slightly different reason for what they want to do which is the old Pinky and the Brain thing -- today we take over the world, tomorrow we take over the galaxy.

Is Cade Skywalker aware of his family's history, especially Anakin's atrocities?
He sure is. He knows Anakin, he knows Luke, and on down. Cade himself was trained as a Jedi. We'll show in the first issue the incidents that caused him to walk away. In addition to the Jedi background he was also apprenticed to a pirate, [though] he's not a pirate. As an adult, he'll actually be a bounty hunter. He's alienated. He's a tough fighter. He's got a real rough side to him.

This may be an overgeneralization, part of the thing we considered when we first talked about Cade, is "What if Han Solo had a lightsaber?" But he isn't Han, and is a rogue as we would define it by today's standards. Han was a rogue by 1970s standards. These are different times, and some of the things he does, particular in the early issues, readers are not going to like. There's some places where I don't like him, but that's because we're starting him off somewhere. He's not the character that he will eventually become. But I think he will be a compelling character. You won't always like him but I think you'll find him compelling.

Some of your most popular heroes, like Quinlan Vos, tend to dwell in the gray areas and harbor both conflicting and yet complimentary characteristics. Is this conscious way of approaching characters?
Not always. There are other characters, like Tholme, like Aayla, who very much are not like that and I'm just as fond of them as I was of Quin. Some people may say Cade is like Quin, and I suppose in some aspects maybe that is true, but in very specifics, no he's not. If anything I think Cade is a darker character than Quin is. He never completed his training, he doesn't have the same abilities or the same background as Quin does. If anything he has this burden of a legacy, which is the legacy of the Skywalker name.

What do you look forward to exploring the most in this series?
Oh lord...when I say the fans only have the barest glimmering of the tip of the iceberg, I am not making that up. We have so many characters in this that we are working with in all areas, from Jedi to Sith to Imperials, to underworld characters, all of whom are really interesting and have their own stories to tell. Boy it's going to be hard. We're really going to work hard to keep ourselves focused, but there's so many interesting characters here to play with and to throw curve balls with who's going to be what, and who's gonna be this, and who's gonna wind up with who.

What are some of the cinematic and literary influences on Legacy?
Certainly the Star Wars films themselves are the principal thing we're drawing from. We're trying to get both the feel particularly of the original trilogy. We want to throw you into the middle of things with a whole bunch of characters that you find out about as you go. We're going to take situations that are not dissimilar to the original trilogy in terms of the basic situation -- there's a large war, there's been a war -- but at the same time the Jedi are not together at this point. They're scattered, but they're not unknown, and that's different, so there's a touch of the prequels as well.

Narratively I've read widely in a number of different places. I like particularly genre fiction which ranges from pulp fiction through histories, I've read a lot of history and I use a lot of history in terms of real world situations, analogs and stuff like that. There's also writers like Robert E. Howard who knew how to tell a kick-ass story and I like that. There's a touch of Stan Lee. Stan was great at starting a story and throwing you into the middle of it and then telling you "don't worry, we'll catch you up as we go." And he always did.

It is designed to be accessible to those who have been into, say the New Jedi Order. You don't have to have read the NJO to get into Legacy. I have this technique which I call "layering" and the basic way I approach it is: everything that you should need to enjoy the story should be there in the story, in the plot. The more you know about Star Wars the more that you'll find touches and bits and pieces in there that will connect up for you, and so your pleasure will be deepened, but if you don't know them you won't miss them. So the goal here is to be a terrific place for people to come in. And if you already know this stuff it will fit into existing Star Wars continuity, guaranteed. We won't step on other people's toes. We don't interfere with anything that is being done in the Legacy of the Force novels, but we are aiming to make this as accessible as we can.

Can you talk about some of these real world analogs?
Certainly in terms of the politics I draw on everything from local politics. I was raised in Chicago during the time of Mayor Daley (Chicago's longest-running mayor) so I know something about how down and dirty politics can work.

We'll be drawing on different wars, different battles, and what happens after wars. How things fall apart. What has the galaxy been like in past hundred years? How well has it pulled together? From the time of the Clone Wars up to Legacy of the Force there's rarely been more than a few years of peace in the galaxy. So what has this done to the galaxy? And that too leaves a legacy. The title refers not just to Cade but legacy is a theme as well as the title and we're looking at a lot of different legacies -- the legacy of the Empire, the legacy of the Sith, the legacy of the Jedi, the legacies left by all this war.

To me a way of understanding Cade is to look at veterans of wars who come back who are disaffected. I know a number of them. Certainly not all of them are disaffected the same way Cade is. A lot of it depends on their experience in the war. But as often is the case they don't like to talk about it. And in some cases their experiences were so bitter that is puts them in a very strange place. Cade has witnessed a number of things that puts him in the place that he is. There's always the question of what are you willing to trade for a sense of security? How important is freedom to you?

(Suite)

What is it about Star Wars that is so compelling to you as a writer?
It's a myth. I love myths. It's not science fiction. Star Trek is science fiction, and good at what it does, but this is myth and myth to me is fascinating. The power of myth as Joseph Campbell talked and wrote about resonates and continues to resonate through us and I think that's the real secret of Star Wars. I think George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing with it because he made use of mythic elements as he was creating the characters.

I want to explore some of those mythic aspects as well, [such as] the hero who carries around a wound. Originally we thought the story was about Luke, and it turned out to be about Anakin/Vader. While the three original movies seemed to turn around Luke and his efforts to define himself as a hero, the addition of the prequels then defines all six movies as really about questions of good and evil and redemption -- can you come back? And what choices do you make and what are the ramifications of those choices? So much of what I've written has revolved over the years around those very questions.

Why is myth relevant now?
Myth is relevant in every era. It reminds us of things that are enduring and yet at the same times it helps embody whole questions it's a great place for exploring issues and questions. It doesn't necessarily have to give us a special answer but it does offer viewpoints.

In what ways did the prequels enhance your views of the Star Wars universe?
They certainly expanded the notion of the Jedi for good and bad, I think. It expanded the notion of the Republic itself. We thought the Republic fell. Well, the Republic didn't fall. It was transformed because people chose it. That was chilling, That's something that remains a threat. We've seen it through history and it can be true at any time, in any era, that people choose something that seems right to them and is so hideously wrong. It deepens and enhances our understanding of Anakin. I don't know if it excuses him. In some ways it makes him a worse monster than we had originally thought. But in terms of giving the backdrop for how the Republic became the Empire, then that becomes the fitting counterpoint to how the Empire is later thrown down.

Do you feel creatively liberated now that the prequels are done?
There were things we certainly could not do while the movies were being planned. But even afterwards there's some questions about what freedom that you have to play with. It's George Lucas' sandbox. If we do something with this era that proves to be popular I'm sure others will come in and play with it as well and that's fine, but for right now, we have a tremendous amount of freedom. But that also has a lot of responsibility with it as well.

There are people who claim because the galaxy is not at peace that it makes everything Luke did meaningless, which I don't subscribe to at all. Luke and company did what they did at their time. It never means that the galaxy or our world is going to stay static or at peace, it means that they do what they have to do at that time. New times bring new challenges. This is a new era we get to usher it in, we get to play with it, but there is a responsibility to make sure that it is Star Wars that has links to the past and then we keep it in tone and feel Star Wars.

It's like when a painter decides to use a limited palate, sometimes that can be very freeing. So when you decide what the parameters are and choose to see it not as something that is inhibiting but as something that is freeing, so long as you know where the parameters are, there's a lot you can do. Star Wars itself has a lot of parameters but if you know what you're doing, you can play with them. I think William Goldman said something along the lines of "give the readers what they want in a way they didn't expect it."

What makes a Star Wars comic Star Wars?
The fact that it is myth. There's a certain amount of good vs. evil but we also get to play around and look at the definitions of those. On a sheer pragmatic level, you need Jedi, you need lightsabers, you need blasters, you need the grungy underdogs, you need Imperials, you need Sith. The Vong were okay, but we need Sith!

Is continuity hard to deal with?
It's not that hard in Legacy as it was in Clone Wars. In fact one of the reasons we invented Quinlan is so we wouldn't keep tripping over the continuity, until the continuity caught up with us and all of the sudden Aayla was in the movies and Quin was too, in the early draft of the script, and we were not entirely free anymore either. So we got caught into continuity.
But at the start the reason was to have characters whose stories you could only find in the comics, whose ending you did not know, and who we weren't constantly having to refer to continuity with. The same thing basically applies to Legacy. It will tie-in, and there will be tie-ins to past things. I can't tell you how and why yet, but you'll see them.

Speaking of Aayla Secura, how did it feel watching her shot from behind in Revenge of the Sith?
That was nasty! Okay, they shot her, but then they kept on shooting her. Jeez! On the one hand it was sort of like "Ooh..." but on the other hand she's a part of it. To realize that a character that you had created actually went into the movies, particularly when I saw her for the first time in Attack of the Clones -- that's amazing! I'm sorry that she died like that, but on the other hand, it's cool to see her up there. So yeah, it was real mixed. On one hand you're a papa who goes "My baby!" On the other hand you're a creator who goes "How much more could I have done? How much more successful could I be?" The one thing I'm proud of is that Aayla was the first character who, instead of coming from the movie into the comics, reversed it. George saw her, liked her. I'm really honored by how much the fans took to Quinlan and Aayla and Tholme and Villie.

Have you ever had story ideas rejected by Lucasfilm?
Oh, sure. We had a whole cycles of stories that just didn't work for them so we wound up canning it. By and large our stories go through. Our track record and the fact we tend to write Star Wars stories that get okayed fairly quickly and on a regular basis has created a good working relationship that permitted Legacy to go forward. If we didn't have that already in place would they have let us do something like Legacy? I don't know. I tend to think not. I think we've earned their trust and I think Legacy is going to continue that. As proud as I am of everything I've done in Republic I think just with what's coming out on Legacy so far, you're gonna go "Quin-who?"

Can you talk a bit about your working relationship with Jan Duursema?
First of all, I sit down with Jan and we talk everything through from the start. From the story idea on out through the characters through the plot overview, to the script, Jan wants a lot of input and I give it to her. I run everything past her first. First of all, she knows whether this is going to work visually or not, and secondly she has a great sense of Star Wars and she knows details better than I do.
We'll talk and we'll spend time and she'll run the sketches past me and ask me what I think and we'll look at pages. After the script is written she may show me something and say "Well, I felt I needed an extra panel here or I felt I could drop that panel," and basically I understand it's a visual medium and so the collaboration is the most key point. The stuff I'm seeing now is making my jaw drop. She's talented, dedicated, ferociously dedicated, committed, she loves Star Wars. There isn't a fan out there who loves Star Wars more than Jan.

How do you develop characters together?
We'll talk about the characters. The amount of hours of development we've spent on Legacy alone is staggering. She might say "That dialogue doesn't strike me as right for that character," and I'll take another look for it. She'll offer me suggestions, and sometimes I'll have suggestions for her. Sometimes she says "That's easy for you to suggest, you only have to write three words and I have to draw it." By and large we have a very good working relationship.

Voilà, comme je le disais, il n'y a pas grand chose d'intéressant On apprend juste que le perso de Cade sera plus sombre que Quinlan (qui, quoi qu'il arrive, restait dans une optique Jedi, ce qu'a renié Cade...

Sinon on y apprenait donc juste le nom de Darth Krayt et le but des Sith... Rien d'affolant.

Apres avoir fais le tour des blogs SW ce matin, j'ai decouvert que le nouvel Insider proposait une photo de Roan Shryne, qui apparait vraisemblablement dans l'Episode II.



EDIT:
De meme pour le Jedi Tra'avis, de CW Adventures

Est-ce que Odds vaut la lecture ? Et Targets tant qu'on y est ?

Targets je l'ai si tu veux. Pour Odds, il faudra attendra la semaine prochaine: les Insiders paraissent en France une semaine apres leurs sorties aux USA

Targets c'est pas la peine...
Je vais bientôt relire la traduction de Lélilah (SWU)...

Salutations, dans cette grande ville qu'est censée ête Nice, aucune trace de l'insider? Si quelqu'un pouvait me numériser un bulletin d'abonnement pour le mag et me l'envoyer par mp, ce serait sympa

Helas, c'est la qu'est l'os, comme dirait De Funes
Les bulletins d'abonnements ne sont valables que pour les Etats Unis