Zahn corner. Tor’s Ryan Britt looks at Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. And for you audiobook fans, Knights’ Archive spotted that unabridged versions of the Hand of Thrawn duology are coming in the fall.
On that note, Rebelscum has a first look at Gentle Giant’s Grand Admiral Thrawn Mini Bust. The Mara Jade bust they mentioned came out in 2006, by the way, so at this rate we can probably expect a Karrde or something in another 8 to 10 years, assuming the Thrawn trilogy isn’t totally irrelevant at that point.
Chat. Author Drew Karpyshan will be holding a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ this Tuesday.
Short stories. Christie Golden will have a story in Star Wars Insider #142. “It takes place between Apocalypse and Crucible and stars three of the galaxy’s most intrepid ladies,” Frank Parisi says.
Dark Horse and contracts. For those still pondering the chances of Marvel taking over the Star Wars comic contract in the future, Brian Wood says his contract runs through issue #20 of Star Wars and letterer Michael Heisler has some evidence for why it’s not a foregone conclusion. And there’s some sort of big series announcement coming.
First look. Well, of course there’s a LEGO Star Wars book focused on Yoda.
Cartoons. io9’s Rob Bricken thinks Genndy Tartakovsky should return to Star Wars. I can’t really disagree with him, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance.
Reviews. Over at Big Shiny Robot, James reviews Dark Times: Fire Carrier #2, The Clone Wars: Defenders of the Lost Temple and the story picks up in Star Wars #3.
Wow, that Thrawn bust is surprisingly ugly. It actually beats out the old Leia bust that was easily capable of staring even the toughest crowd out of any given room. Quite an achievement, though not necessarily one I’d be proud of.
Seriously: Gentle Giant has done a lot of nice stuff over the years (their Aayla was great as was their Indiana Jones for instance) but this thing is an abomination. And probably violates any number of religious commandments as well as state, federal and international laws.
And for future reference: Thrawn doesn’t need a pet with him all the time. He could simply stand somewhere silently and look genius-ly. Mostly because the last villain to actually use a pet in a meaningful way was He-who-must-not-be-named, and he had a really “upsetteling” snake that could speak and eat people and keep him alive should he die. That salamander thing… Not Thrawn’s best choice from a villain’s perspective.
I loved Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars. I couldn’t help but compare the TCW movie to it and found it lacking. TCW has come a long way from it’s beginning but I can’t help but think if they’d stayed closer to Tartakovsky’s vision, it would have been a grand slam from the start. It would have been interesting to see what he and Fioni would have come up with.
I’ve never viewed DFR as simple a middle book that sets up the finale. There are so many parts of it that I find exciting in their own right.
I found Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars to be fun but really far removed from Star Wars in spirit. Filoni’s The Clone Wars lines up better for me. I hope they give him another shot at continuing his work.
That’s interesting news about Brian Wood doing Star Wars until issue 20, that’s 17 more months of issues. It kind of sounds good for Dark Horse in a way, unless they do a change over starting with Episode VII.
There are also audiobooks of Allegiance and Choices of One coming out (notifications are on the randomhouse website)
I’m okay with the general look of the bust, but the facial expression turns me off. Thrawn wasn’t a very angry villian. I never pictured him scowling very often.
The ysalamiri weren’t pets though. It was Thrawn’s defense against Jedi, though as someone else pointed out in the linked pages comments, everyone forgets about the nutrient frame. As far as the bust goes though…I could do without it.