EUbits: Maul and Savage and the open road

Of course. There’s a Darth Maul comic coming. Darth Maul: Death Sentence #1 will launch July 25 and feature Maul and his brother Savage Opress roaming the galaxy in a beat-up light freighter and solving mysteries. Well, I made up the bit about the freighter. And the mysteries. Everything else is true! Sort of.

Confirmation, non-fiction. It’s not available yet, but Rancho Obi-wan has added the new Steve Sansweet book, Star Wars: The Ultimate Action Figure Collection: 35 Years of Characters. It’s co-authored by Anne Neumann and noted fan photographer Dan Curto.

Confirmation, fiction. Looks like they’re moving ahead with a third character guide. Expect a totally new different-looking Ben Skywalker!

Street date shuffle. Feel like some super minor schedule news? Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories has moved up a week, from July 31 to the 24th. Exciting!

Pretty. Knights Archive spotted the cover for Star Wars Art: Illustration on Amazon. There’s a Yoda on it: Bitches love Yoda.

Kids. Snark aside, Darth Vader and Son looks kind of cute. Sadly, we will never see a ‘Mommy and Me’ version of this, unless you count The Phantom Menace, and I wouldn’t. It’ll be out any minute now.

Guest post: Fan fiction is more than smut

The internet is for porn.

We all know the song (from the Broadway musical Avenue Q), and it’s funny because, in a way, it is true.  And hose of us who have been around the internet for a while are familiar with the infamous Rule 34: if it exists, there’s porn of it.  It’s nothing incredibly shocking but, if you listen to the media hubbub surrounding the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Grey, you would think otherwise.

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Unsung heroes of the Rebellion: Best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets for the past week

The more I do these posts, the more it seems almost like a recap of the week in question… Holidays, Dancing Han angst, James Cameron snarking and more beneath the cut!

Continue reading “Unsung heroes of the Rebellion: Best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets for the past week”

Director Gary Ross out of Hunger Games sequel

Word emerged today that Gary Ross won’t be returning to direct Catching Fire, the adaption of the second book. UPDATE: Deadline Hollywood says, not so fast. UPDATE: Yup, he’s out.

The internet is eager to speculate on who should fill his shoes, and one name that’s been popping up a lot in my feeds is Kathryn Bigelow, who won the directing Oscar a few years back for The Hurt Locker. She’s no stranger to action (Point Break) or sci-fi (Strange Days) so she might be good fit. The Washington Post’s Jen Chaney has a few other suggestions, including Debra Granik, who directed Jennifer Lawrence in the film that nabbed her an Oscar nomination, Winter’s Bone.

In happier news, one potential conflict to the film has been cleared up. The sequel to X-Men: First Class will begin filming in January, freeing up Lawrence to shoot Catching Fire in the fall as scheduled – assuming a director is on board by then!

Star Wars Books passes Facebook milestone, celebrates with teases for Scoundrels, Reader’s Companion

To celebrate passing 30,00 fans, the Star Wars Books Facebook page gave us three previews today.

The first is four sketches for Pablo Hidalgo’s Essential Reader’s Companion, our first look at the interior artwork. I suspect they’re all from early on: One is from Darth Bane: Path of Destruction and the rest are from various books set in the prequel era.

The second is a lengthy (well, for Facebook, meaning it’s bigger than the usual ‘mini-excerpts’) bit from Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels featuring Han, Chewbacca, and an (apparently) brand-new character.

The third and final gift is a three-page excerpt of Jeff Grubb’s Scourge, which will be out later this month.

EUbits: Apocalypse reverb continues with Denning chat

Chat season. Troy Denning will be chatting Apocalypse tomorrow afternoon on the Star Wars Books Facebook page. (He’ll also be at San Diego Comic Con in July… A behind-the-scenes FOTJ panel, perhaps?) Also chatting, on the 11th, will be Essential Guide to Warfare author Jason Fry. We’ll likely be recapping both.

Scoundrels. Del Rey editor Frank Parisi was on last week’s ForceCast where he revealed two of the established characters that will be on the team. (If you want the fairly minor spoilers, highlight this: Kell Tainer and Winter. If Kell means nothing to you, he’s in the X-Wing series.)

Upcoming. We can expect news on something post-Fate of the Jedi what’s next “sometime this summer, if not sooner,” Erich Schoeneweiss said in response to a fan question. Not at SDCC, I hope.

Blurbs. Knights Archive spotted a longer summary for Pablo Hidalgo’s Essential Reader’s Companion in the Random House online catalog.

Interviews. Roqoo Depot talks to Matt Stover – mostly about his new book, Caine’s Law, which was out in stores yesterday – but they also touch on Star Wars. Meanwhile, Angela Slatter interviews Karen Miller and Sean Williams about working in franchises.