I imagine codystarbuck will beat us all in The Jamie Awards this year! His review threads are something else.

But yeah...to quote Loony Tunes, "That's all, folks!" Feels kinda like the end of an era.




Aww, bless you. Well, I hope to have my new Tintin review thread up in a week or so -- possibly with additional comments from my fiancée. She's wanted to read the Tintin books for a while now and we've been discussing her reading through them with me and perhaps contributing a paragraph of her own thoughts to each of my reviews, just as a fun thing for us to do together really. The bulk of the writing will be mine, but it might be fun to add her female perspective on the stories too.

Other than that, I might take on another series before Tintin is done with, because there's only 24 books in that series. I don't know what exactly, but I'm definitely burned out on space opera, so maybe a short run of something superhero-y like Amazing Spider-Man would be a good idea. The early '70s Gerry Conway era appeals, as does Len Wein's subsequent run in the late '70s. Alternatively, I notice that the final issues of J. Michael Strazyninski's run on ASM, which included the oh-so-controversial "Sins Past", are almost 10 years old now, so it might be fun to do something that modern.

In short, I don't really know what I'm doing next...other than Tintin.

Ah, right...no, I'm going right back to the start with Tintin. I had only reviewed the first 8 books anyway, when my computer went kaput and I lost the whole thing. Then, a while later, the CBR forums were rebooted and the reviews that I'd posted there were all lost. Well, those reviews do still exist, but they're entombed on a broken HD that is sat a few meters from me right now. But for all intents and purposes they are lost. I even contacted Jonah Weiland to see whether it was possible to salvage my reviews....figuring that they had to be on some disused server somewhere, but unsurprisingly I didn't hear back.

So yeah, I'll be starting from book 1, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, again.

Something I do know, I don't want to do another lengthy series of reviews like Star Wars again for a good long while. There were 160 separate reviews in that thread and it took almost exactly 2 years for me to complete. Now, while that number's not a huge amount compared to the number of reviews you do, it felt like a lot to me. If it wasn't for the fact that I absolutely love the series, I think I might have given up at some points. So, shorter runs are what appeal to me at the moment.

Well, that's not strictly true because your threads certainly have their loyal followers. Your Batman one in particular is a cornerstone of our community here. But I think ultimately you do have to do review threads for your own enjoyment, first and foremost. Of course, it's the other people who contribute to a thread that really make it, but still, review threads have to be their own reward for the author, I believe. I certainly don't think you should be giving review threads up because you clearly enjoy writing them a lot and they're very, very good. I mean, I follow your Teen Titans one and I really could care less about the Teen Titans. But your writing makes it fun to keep up with.

On an attendant note, the other thing to remember is that most review threads have silent lurkers who may be following them intently but rarely comment. I'm like that on your Teen Titans one to be honest because, not being a fan of the series, I have little of substance to contribute most of the time. It's like how I'd be surprised when someone like Rob Allen, Cei-U! or Slam Bradley suddenly commented on my SW thread; I hadn't thought of them as people who were following it, but the fact that they suddenly come out of the woodwork when something that they could contribute to came up proves that they were reading what I wrote, they just rarely showed it, which is perfectly fine.

As for my SW thread, it is gratifying to see that a number of people have joined the forum just to participate in it. It's even nicer when I see those same posters beginning to branch out and get involved in other parts of the forum too, like Tarkintino, rossn and rom have, just to name a few. But I really don't believe that the thread has attracted people because of what I've done especially; Star Wars is huge and its comics attract people who may not actually be that into comics per se. If the subject matter of my thread had been different, I seriously doubt that it would've attracted as many participants, no matter how well written or presented it was. I certainly don't expect my Tintin thread to pull in new members like the SW one has.

There's something very familiar about the title for Episode VIII!

Thanks for the look at the Ewok and Droids comics Confessor. I've never actually read them but I have seen the omnibus collections and I have a few very vague memories of the cartoons. Good to get an idea what sort of work they are. That 'retelling' of the saga from the droid point of view reminds me of the much later Tag and Bink comics!

Eagerly awaiting Tintin!

The Tag and Bink comics are affectionate parodies of the Original Trilogy (and later the prequels) about two semi-inept Rebel soldiers who bumble their way through the films while the real heroes do their thing in the background. The humour is a lot like the droid comic you posted there. The whole idea is based on Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead which retells Hamlet from the point of view of the two minor characters in the original play. It is a fun little story and worth checking out.

Interested in seeing what people make of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets - I don't think many people except ultrafans have read that one, at least in English.

Snow day today! Got out ye olde Star Wars epic collection, which I had sorta forgot I started

Some comments:

Movie conclusion (#5-#6)

I definitely felt like the internal thoughts of the crew on the Falcon were off...Luke was afraid rather than excited and confident, while Han seems more worried and heroic than he should.

Drove me nuts they got the squadron color wrong... is it so hard to have the right color?!?

While I agree with Confessor on some of the dialogue changes being pretty decent... Tarkin not saying 'Evacuate? In our moment of Triumph?' made me sad.

I definitely felt like the final battle didn't seem as epic as is should.. not sure if it was a lack of ships, or the pacing, or what.

Han does Samurai 7 (#7-#10)

I like Crimson Jack a lot, he's just the sort that Han Solo would know and have an on again, off again relationship with.

I agree with Confessor they did a good job making the Galaxy seem a big, varied place.

I thought Chewie was a bit to indestructible though.. the Green alien dude in the bar should have been able to give him a run for his money, at least, and I'm not sure about him heaving that very large heavy coffin up and just carrying it UP HILL.

The cantina scenes have a few good aliens in it, but I wouldn't have minded throwing in at least on we actually saw in the movies. Don Juan Kihotay drove me nuts.. I feel like the chances of Han running in to 2 crazy old men who think they were jedi (even if Ben really was one) in a galaxy where they are supposed to be long gone is too much.. I think it's just Thomas getting carried away with the references.

I would definitely like some back story on the Black Hole Gang, since that doesn't sound like the sort of thing Han would get into..perhaps that why it didn't come back up?

Jaxxon is really pretty cool... he deserved better than only 1 more appearance.

I had no idea the bad guy here was Sergio Aragones... again, just a few short years after writing himself into Batlash over in DC... and still a western bad guy, too.

In one of those 'only a nerd cares' moments, it drove me nuts that the village peasants that were recruiting were clearly Asian and wearing asian robes in the last panel of #7, then suddently were white, and wearing what looks like Tatooine garb in the very next panel at the start of #8

I appreciated the bits cut in with Luke looking for a new Rebel base, which, of course, ties in after the story... nice job of the traditional Roy Thomas starting story B while story A is goin on, while planting some seeds for the future (both with the Black Hole Gang, and Han wondering if he'll work with the others again).

Drexel is indeed a very good name for a Star Wars planet.

The art was definitely nicely Star Wars, and the fight for the town was really good, even if they skipped the part about having the peasants be able to fight for themeslves next time (missing the whole moral of the story, but that's OK).

I liked the monster more than Confessor did, I feel like the Star Wars universe is full of such creatures, and having one turn up here seems just right... my only complaint is it needs a good name 'Behemoth' is far too generic.

I was really happy 'the Starkiller kid' hooked up with the girl at the end...I had visions of an unwanted sidekick at first that other than the first scene Luke met him would have been painful.

I did think it was a little overly Heroic of Han to get involved in the first place, since they were trying hard at this point to not just have him be a hero, but it was a fun story anyway, so I'll forgive them.  

We're then all set up with Leia in Crimson Jack's clutches and off to rescue Luke for the next storyline or two..the just move from one to the next like that any more!