Club Jade

After going through practically every holiday since 1999 with some sort of “coffee table book” from the Star Wars franchise, you would think that I’d be mentally prepared for the weight associated with it.  Well, I was fooled again with the latest edition of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.  I nearly dropped the blasted thing (all 12 pounds of it — I weighed it) when I tried to pick it up.

Still, this baby’s beautiful! Three hardcover volumes in a shell.  (Which is making it resemble, more and more The Encyclopedia Brittanica.)  That beautiful Empire red and black coloring.  Images subtly glowing out.  Each hardcover has its own different cover design. Each book has its own quote for the dedication page.  A lot of fun! (more…)

This is a big week (literally) for Star Wars stuff: The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia finally arrives in bookstores tomorrow, along with Karen Miller’s The Clone Wars: Wild Space. And on Wednesday, comic fans can pick up The Clone Wars #3, aka ‘the one where Anakin thinks a eyepatch is an effective disguise.’ If that’s what they teach in those fancy Jedi disguise classes, why bother with Order 66?

StarWars.com features The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, including several sample pages that the more keen-eyed among us might actually even be able to read. The book, written by Steve Sansweet, Pablo Hidalgo and Dan Wallace, Bob Vitas, Chris Cassidy, Mary Franklin and Josh Kushins, will be in stores next week. (Santa Maul would no doubt encourage you to consider it for your holiday lists.)

Also on the official site tonight are the March 2009 comics, including upcoming issues of Legacy and Knights of the Old Republic, along with a new Clone Wars digest, The Wind Raiders of Taloraan.

A mockup of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia was on display at SDCC so little of this is really a surprise, But: Three volumes! Full-color artwork! November release! Signed copies! A timeline!

Okay, maybe the signed thing. And the timeline. Try and resist, Wookieepedians…

I try to only listen to about one podcast a year – life, or rather, the amount of it I allot to blogging, is far too short – but I couldn’t avoid the latest Force-Cast since it’s basically an extended interview with Lucasfilm’s Head of Fan Relations, Steve Sansweet. (Yes, it was worth it, though the intro… I need to paraphrase Lorelei Gilmore: Shorten it, decute it.) Anyway, here’s what I learned:

• A bit about about Celebration Japan – and C5. (Listen for yourself, or see previous entry.)

• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is a project of not just Steve and Pablo, but an entire team – containing such luminaries as Dan Wallace, Bob Vitas, Mary Franklin and… Chris Cassidy!
• The Encyclopedia will contain “close to a million words” and their intention is not to create new canon (at least not on purpose) but to “take advantage of what’s out there.”
• Steve has another collecting book in the pipeline… Not a price guide, there’s one of those coming from Gus Lopez and Duncan Jenkins.
• There’s no Grievous in The Clone Wars movie – his presence in the trailer is due to tv show footage.
• Host Jimmy Mac sings Steve a song. It’s mildly amusing.

The podcast on the whole is a manageable 23 minutes, so I would recommend you listen to it yourself – at least if you want to hear more about Celebration Japan or the Encyclopedia.

‘Precipice,’ the second brand new Hyperspace short story, is up on StarWars.com – and it’s by our own Chris Cassidy! She tells me that it takes place while Obi-Wan is held prisoner on Geonosis during Attack of the Clones.