Author: jawajames

San Diego-based Jawa.
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Free Comic Book Day – go get your comics!

May the Fifth be with you! May the Thors be with you? Or something.. But get out to your local comics book shop to get your free comics for this annual celebration of sequential art. As previously mentioned, Dark Horse has a few different offerings, including a Han Solo and Chewbacca Star Wars story, ‘The Art of the Bad Deal’, in a flip-cover comic that also has a Zack Whedon-penned Serenity comic. Both stories have a common theme – a man and his ship. Dark Horse’s second freebie is a flip cover for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Guild. Combine both free comics together, and you will also have a two part story of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Alabaster.

From other publishers for Free Comic Book Day: The Avengers, The New 52, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Simpsons, Mouse Guard, Transformers, Peanuts, and a whole lot more!

To find a comic shop near you, call 1-888-comicbook or visit ComicShopLocator.com.

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Star Wars Miniland at Legoland California adds a few more bricks

Boba Fett and LEGO Boba FettHoping to bring in more visitors, Legoland California has made some minor updates to their Star Wars miniland area, as well as hosting a series of Star Wars Days over the past few weekends to hype up the fun over the Spring Break period. Costumed members of the 501st and Rebel Legion were on hand to help add to the festivities in the Carlsbad theme park.

While Star Wars miniland only opened a year ago with seven dioramas (one for each of the main saga movies, and one for The Clone Wars,) in the theme park industry, you’ve got to keep things fresh (or at least advertise as such) to attract visitors. So this year, the Lego builders have created several additions to the miniland area:

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Star Wars art auction to raise money to help one-year-old Princess Leah

A number of Star Wars artists and fans have pitched in their talents to help raise money to defray the health care costs of little Princess Leah Esquenazi. As we reported last year, when Leah was just two-months old, she came down with a mysterious illness that kept her mostly hospitalized, and the Star Wars fan community rallied to help her parents offset the costs of her medical bills. Now Leah is over a year old, and continues to require hospitalized ventilator support with the diagnosis of a mitochondrial illness. An ebay auction started on May 25th with over 100 unique and rare Star Wars art pieces and craft items to raise money for Leah’s care. Right now, there are items donated by Matt Busch, Randy Martinez, Amanda Howard, Michael Ramirez, and Joe Corroney.

My friend Lesley, of the 501st Legion’s Southern California Garrison, has been busy organizing the auction, and has a photo album of the donated art pieces. Follow the auction news on Facebook at facebook.com/ArtForLeah. After only 24 hours, there’s already over $1,000 in bids for items. A second group of auction items will going up for bid in a few days. You can also follow Leah and her family via their blog. Check out the auction and find a piece of your own to bid on!

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Leaked ‘trailer’ gets Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome plenty of buzz, but Syfy doesn’t want it on TV

A trailer for the upcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel series, Blood and Chrome appeared online earlier this week, but now it appears that the show, focusing on a young William Adama in the first Cylon war, isn’t going much further than being an online offering from Syfy, reports io9. Well, we might get the pilot shown on TV, but probably nothing else.

What’s up with the action-packed trailer? We get a lot of space battles, some gunfights and other action-y type special effects scenes, which seem to indicate that Blood and Chrome might be more action-oriented rather than the drama that BSG was. Deadline Hollywood reports that it was an unauthorized teaser that ended up being shown at WonderCon this past weekend, by BSG’s scientific adviser, Kevin Grazier. After appearing online, the teaser drew a lot of interest, as well as criticism, especially over the lack of a Bear McCreary soundtrack and recycling the Trent Reznor/Karen O cover of Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ from the The Girl who fell facefirst into a tackle box With the Dragon Tattoo teaser. Someone else had already parodied that trailer, but didn’t bother with music rights: the Muppets.

Anyway, with the unauthorized teaser hitting the interwebs, NBCUniversal’s SyFy jumped out to put the cork back on the bottle, and started zapping it on YouTube (oops on unlicensed music!), and repeated that the show is not destined for TV beyond the 90-minute pilot. Looks like the show hit bingo fuel.

Or as Admiral William Ackbara might say: “It’s a frak!”

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Star Wars Identities exhibition unveils some spiffy new images

With the Star Wars Identities museum exhibition opening in Montreal in April, the exhibition’s ad agency, Bleublancrouge released some additional promotional images by Louis Hébert for the show: a series of six character mosaic portraits highlighting the factors that build up identity. Zoom in or check out the full set of images on geek-art.net: Darth Vader, Yoda, C-3PO, Queen Amidala, Boba Fett and a stormtrooper.

Put on by X3 Productions, Star Wars Identities opens at the Montreal Science Centre on April 19 and continues through September 16, then moves onto Edmonton’s Telus World of Science in October. The exhibition, which will showcase a large archive of original props and costumes while focusing on the science of identity, will then move onto Europe, Asia and the Pacific Rim over the course of 6 years.

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The Clone Wars: O ‘Brothers’, Where Art Thou?

Savage Opress crosses the galaxy in search of his brother (or is it half-brother?), Darth Maul, in tonight’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, entitled ‘Brothers’. Can he get the Sith Lord out of his funk? First, Savage has to find him, and helping him in the search is Mother Talzin.

Tonight, director Dave Filoni will be doing the Entertainment Weekly live chat along with the broadcast. Show up around 7:40 p.m. ET/4:40 p.m. PT EDIT: Here’s the direct link to the chat with Dave Filoni, starting at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT!

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Get taken to the Maul with The Clone Wars season finale!

Attention TK-Mart shoppers, there’s a special on Star Wars: The Clone Wars this Friday: the first part of the two-part season finale featuring the return of the warrior who’s half Sith Lord.. and half not, Darth Maul. Stock up now on the following voice actor goodies as you prepare for the end of season four:

And remember, when shopping at the Darth Mall, all prices have been slashed in half!

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First issues of Dawn of the Jedi to be reprinted

Dark Horse Comics announced yesterday that Issues #0 and #1 of the new Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi series would be reprinted after retail outlets reported selling out and not meeting demand. Not a bad way to kick off a new series! If you missed getting the backgrounder guide of #0, or the first part of the story in #1, make sure your local comics shop sets them aside for you when both come back on March 21, which conveniently is when #2 is also going to hit stores. The series by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema goes back 25,000 years, to a time before Jedi and lightsabers. On the fence? I’ve handily reviewed the two issues over at Big Shiny Robot: Issue #0 and Issue #1.

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The Machete Order and watching the entire saga: Does The Phantom Menace matter?

Last week, three different sources pointed me to Rod Hilton’s blog post from last fall on the Machete order for watching the films of the Star Wars saga (especially for newcomers). While his overall proposed order (start with IV – A New Hope and V – The Empire Strikes Back, then go with the prequels, then show VI – Return of the Jedi isn’t new — Last year, we covered Drew McWeendy’s Film Nerd 2.0 showings to his two sons), Machete goes a step further by cutting out The Phantom Menace. Not because Hilton feels it is a bad movie, but because he points out that it is mostly irrelevant to the saga. Either a point gets brought up again in the other prequels or it isn’t needed at all in the larger scheme of things (Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn, Valorum, podracing). He points out how he thinks it makes the saga stronger, by preserving some of the big reveals, and relating whiny Anakin to whiny Luke as showing Luke on the same path to the dark side in Return of the Jedi as Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. He also points out some of the weaknesses of his ordering of the films, most notably about the Prophecy of the Chosen One, and Anakin’s return to rescue Shmi and pick up Threepio in Attack of the Clones. The Machete Order got me thinking, and also prompted a discussion among some Club Jaders, who looked at the notion of order and TPM‘s relevance from several angles.

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Get ready for a ‘Massacre’ on The Clone Wars

Tonight’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars begins the final story arc of the season, a four episode tale that will eventually bring back Darth Maul in two weeks. In ‘Massacre’, Count Dooku sends General Grievous to start his attack on the Nightsisters of Dathomir, but Mother Talzin and Asajj Ventress are ready with their dark side powers to stop the droid assault. This first clip has Talzin counseling Ventress with sisterly love, while the clip below has Grievous getting his marching orders from the Count, who instructs him to wipe them out, all of them.

UPDATE. Entertainment Weekly is doing another chat during tonight’s episode, this time with Matthew Wood.

Want more? At the bottom of this post, get a sneak peek at Darth Maul and his brother in a video preview featuring Sam Witwer getting into the character of the horned half-Sith.
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