Great discussion guys! With the year wait this one truly captures the Star War essence of us fans back in the day and waiting ever so impatiently for the next movie while devouring every comic book Marvel produced and talking about them. As Goodwin and Williamson deliver Empire it marks a big change in the Marvel series style and tone. Everything up to this point really has the old licensing ideas behind it: that a company "buys" the rights to using the characters and names and settings without much caring if the comic actually looks, feels, tastes like what it is based upon. Kind of how Hollywood used to do when buying novels and comics: they would use the names and change everything else to "what they think it should be like" while ignoring the real product. Marvel was simply keeping the name Star Wars alive with a fan following of the original movie and many times the characters were not really acting or sounding like they properly should.

Then Empire comes along, a 2nd movie that has so much more depth and characterization and totally changing the movie and comics tone and setting up so much more "history" (along with changes and additions from the original ideas) and providing more in terms of what the comic should deliver. Everything in the comic before Empire is rather atypical science fiction/fantasy tropes given the Star Wars name and now the game changer of Empire has the writing and art make a sudden turn towards becoming part of the Star Wars world. The characterizations and ideas are much tighter, more in line with what is being seen on the big screen. Whether this is from Lucas people beginning to "protect" their product and monitoring what others were doing with it or from Marvel paying attention to the ever evolving comic readers tastes I cannot say. What is noticeable during this time is we the fans are being delivered a much more interesting and superior comic book reading experience.

Always interesting to hear your thoughts and insights Confessor on Star Wars comics as your real love, respect and enthusiasm for Luke and the gang is highly visible (does that make sense that we can "see" from hearing your talks?). That this is turning into a 5 part episode with such passion over a comic book of a movie series is reflective of just how much Star Wars has touched so many people's lives and become such an icon. 

And for whatever reason it may be, your dulcet and sultry Brit voice sounds like Neil Gaiman to me and now whenever I see Gaiman in my mind, I cannot help but envision him wearing a pair of green bunny ears! 

Yes, let's go with that! That's exactly why. 

This was a good episode. I've really enjoyed these. I was surprised to see it available in my feed since it had been so long. Regardless, they've all been an insightful discussion. I've never read the Marvel Star Wars series, but this is making me want to get started. Making it past the first 50 or so issues though seems like a tall order. 

Another great interview, Crimebuster and Confessor!

Aaah, those were the days of the real Star Wars for me (before the cartoons, the prequels, sequels and in-betweenquels, before every extra in the background of every scene had their own action figure and devoted following). The days of Vader in his prime as a villain and the days of Shira Brie. (Shee-ra Bree  )

Regarding Luke's lightsaber post-Empire Strikes Back, I wasn't bothered by it... while the idea that he might have recovered his own sabre while tumbling down Cloud City's ventilation system was silly, I just assumed that he had purchased another sabre somewhere the same way someone today could buy a WWII gun in a specialized store. Nothing in the first two movies suggested lightsabers were that rare (even though they were clearly seen as dated), and even an amateur like Baron Tagge could get one.

They can't have been that difficult to make anyway, since Luke built a new one in time for Return of the Jedi.

(By the way, have you folks looked at the Youtube videos where people build their own lightsaber props? It's quite amazing).

It was a long time ago! When I finish editing episode 5, I'll add a bit during my outtro mentioning the story in #108. It seems pretty likely that someone at Marvel listened to the podcast and got the idea from us. 

If this isn't enough Star Wars for you, Comics at RIT is putting on an event on May 4: