Club Jade

Why was the Riptide cover changed? Sue Rostoni answered a reader question on this the other day, saying “The sales folks at Random House weren’t sure it was strong enough — not as dynamic as they’d like.” Not sure I see it, but okay. (Personally, I’d rather they change up the Choices of One cover.) Compare them for yourself by clicking on the thumbnails at right.

In the future… J.W. Rinzler tweeted and then deleted about prepping for “a sequel of sorts” to The Jedi Path. Not a huge surprise in any case, though we all eagerly await details.

Canon, continuity, and The Clone Wars. A certain controversial event happened on last week’s Clone Wars. Leland Chee explains. (Spoilers for ‘Citadel Rescue.’)

Atlasery. Behold the sectors of the Mid Rim in the latest Essential Atlas extra.

Statistics 101. EU Cantina has a new staffer, Andrew, and for his first column he’s taken a look at the complaints that we’re getting less EU product lately.

Comics. Dark Horse’s solicitations for June include Lost Suns #1, Jedi: The Dark Side #2 and trades for Knight Errant: Aflame and the fourth A Long Time Ago omnibus.

On that note… John Jackson Miller’s Knight Errant novel answers, part the second.

Comics. Writer Scott Allie talks about the Qui-Gon Jinn comic Jedi: The Dark Side with CBR. He reveals that the series will take place 20 years prior to The Phantom Menace, that the focus of Dark Side will be a personal story, and talks a bit about Xanatos. Yoda, Mace Windu and even Dooku will make appearances in the mini-series.

Releases. Del Rey will be reissuing The Phantom Menace novelization and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter next year to tie-into the first 3-D release. Both books will feature new original short stories for the occasion.

Events. Authors John Jackson Miller and Paul S. Kemp and Del Rey’s Erich Schoeneweiss will talk about Star Wars books at a panel at Chicago’s C2E2. The schedule isn’t up yet, but the panel will be Friday, March 18. (Question: Is C2E2 worth a vacation day and a 4-hour drive in the days of social media? I’ll have to think about it.)

History lesson. Tor.com’s Emily Asher-Perrin takes a slightly snarky (yay!) look back at the evolution of Star Wars galaxy maps. In retrospect, that first one was probably the only reason at all to be excited about Vector Prime. I must admit I do still like the old-timey calligraphy look it has.

The blogside. Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff reveals that one of the locations for Shadow Games (née Holostar) is Bannistar Station.

Kids. The folks behind The Strange Case of Origami Yoda will be back with Darth Paper Strikes Back in the fall.

Great things on the Wookieepedia: Gizmodo has blogged the Wookieepedia’s galaxy map (originally appeared in Star Wars Insider #65) thus making it legitimately cool on the internet. Or something. Not that I’m saying you kids still don’t have some work to do.

• Comics: Randy Stradley has an update at Dark Horse’s Star Wars Zone. Big news is that The Clone Wars comic will go on (monthly!) for six more issues. And there will be two big announcements at New York Comic-Con.
  
• The Force Unleashed: The game is a nominee for the WGA’s award for 2008′s best videogame writing. (via)

• Magazines: Could the Star Wars Insider be on the road to improvement with a new editor?
• Authors: Karen Traviss is up for the Philip K. Dick award for the final book in her Wess’har series, Judge.

Using the web to its fullest potential, an online poster for the upcoming Terminator: Salvation has appeared on aintitcool.com.

Appearing at this past weekend’s Firefly con in Burbank, QMX has released a double-sided map of the ‘Verse for Firefly/Serenity fans: Where in the ‘Verse is (Carmen) Miranda?

And some British archaeologists search for the facts while watching the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DVD.

• Diesel Sweeties is here to praise Chewbacca, not to mourn him. (Though it’s probably best we don’t tell them about Vector Prime.)

• io9 discovers Mon Calamari. So 1983.
• Yesterday, the other Star Wars turned 25.

Oh his starwars.com blog, Wallace takes a look at another underappreciated Star Wars writer of the WEG era, Paul Sudlow; while LJ’s LadyElaine pointed towards an article on his personal site on the making of the GFFA map, from the Beyond the Magic CD to the New Jedi Order.

Stars in Science Fiction collects star locations and starmaps from several different fictional galaxies, including those of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Dune, Heinlein, Asimov and more.

Also found a map of Tatooine at Strange Maps. Looks fairly vintage, but it’s the same one linked at Wookieepedia so I assume it’s still considered (somewhat) up-to-date.