EUbits: Al Williamson, Heir to the Empire, and September comics

RIP. Artist Al Williamson, who illustrated the Star Wars comic strip and adaptions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, passed away this weekend. He’s remembered by editor Dave Land at DarkHorse.com

We read it uphill, in the snow, with no boots. Suvudu salutes Heir to the Empire — with a little help from Tim Zahn, editor Tom Dupree and art director Jamie S. Warren — as part of their 25 years of Spectra features.

Solicitations. Look ahead to September comics from Dark Horse, with new issues of Invasion, The Old Republic: Threat of Peace, that Fett thing, and a $1 reprint of Legacy #1.

Blogside. Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff on mistakes.

For the nitpickians. A new Essential Atlas appendix – in PDF form. Prime your hole-punchers!

Newsbits: Penny Arcade, SFX, TCW apathy, 3-D

SFX covers TCW

Are you ready for Vaporator Commando?

Penny Arcade on The Force Unleashed and Star Wars gaming:

I’m sure the Force Unleashed will be fine. The time period around the original trilogy is just getting so crowded. Now Vader has a secret apprentice? I mean, it makes sense canonically to me. The Emperor had Mara Jade out there doing his dirty work. It’s not unreasonable to think Vader had a similar arrangement. Also the very nature of Sith rule makes covering your ass a necessity. The hook for the game is fine and I don’t mind the 3rd person action stuff. There are a few games I’d much rather see them make though. The fact that they have not made a sequel to Republic Commando is fucking criminal. That’s not a joke either. I mean that someone over there should be put in jail for the rest of their life. RepCom was an incredible squad based shooter, and unlike most games in that genre it was packed with awesome characters. This games deserves a next gen sequel. The other game that needs a next gen installment is Tie Fighter. Seriously that game came out in 1994 and it’s one of the best space shooters ever. And for fucks sake stop setting things during the movies. There’s nearly sixty years worth of incredible content (minus the dark nest series) extending out past Return of the Jedi. You don’t have to keep trying to cram stories into the same 20 year period. They’re milking so much content out of that period that eventually we’ll be playing a game as Luke where the goal is to repair vaporators on the south ridge. Hurry up you’ve only got ’till mid day!

I don’t necessarily agree – the fact that games actually count in continuity has always mildly annoyed me – but he has a point. Hell, I’m already a bit sick of The Clone Wars and it hasn’t even started yet.

And dude, Dark Nest might not be the best trilogy ever but at least it didn’t plague us for five years. For that alone, I can’t hate it.

Also, check out the latest comic. Teehee.