Happy 20th anniversary, TeeKay-421!

Congratulations to Belgian Star Wars fan club and site TeeKay-421 upon reaching their twentieth year! You’re now as old as the Star Wars special editions and the Galaxy of Fear books! As one of the longest-running Star Wars fan clubs still around, with their own website, print magazine, and podcast, TeeKay-421 has been a mainstay of great fan content for not only Belgian fans, but Star Wars fans around the world, with several TeeKay staff also being frequent contributors to Star Wars Insider magazine and StarWars.com. Hats off to our friends on their “Twintig Jaar” celebration, being held today in Antwerp. We’d say that in another year, your club will be old enough to drink, but that’s just in America, so bottoms up to Tim, Kevin, Sander and the rest of the gang! Proost!

Roundup: Does The Force Awakens novelization answers, raises questions about the film

The Force Awakens novelizationBoth io9 and The Daily Dot explore things we’ve learned from Alan Dean Foster’s novelization that aren’t in the movie – including things that got changed. There are some possible hints at the big question regarding Rey, but remember that the novelizations have a rather tenuous connection to canon – they only really count when they’re supported by what’s in the actual films. (As for Rey, I’m not up for picking any teams yet, but I do plan to explore the question of her possible origins at some point.)

→ What happened to those lightsaber scenes, and other things that we saw in the trailer but didn’t make the final cut? J.J. Abrams explains to Entertainment Weekly.

→ Video: J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan and other behind-the-scenes folks discuss The Force Awakens after the movie’s official Academy screening.

How to talk to your family about The Force Awakens. Important!

→ Also: Buzzfeed profiles Domhnall Gleeson, Wired interviews Jason Ward of Making Star Wars.

Want more Star Wars ladies, in action figure form? We’ll have to vote one in

A Leia in Boushh disguise is one of the few women featured in the 6" Black Series line so far.
A Leia in Boushh disguise is one of the few women featured in the 6″ Black Series line so far.

We’ve bemoaned how hard it is to find action figures of Hera, Sabine, and well, pretty much anyone that isn’t Slave Leia. Sure, there’s a 6″ Rebels Ahsoka figure in the pipeline, but what else can be done?

Seems like Hasbro themselves has an answer – well, sort of. They’re doing a Fan’s Choice poll for a 6″ Black Series figure, in collaboration with several Star Wars collecting fan sites, and all characters (except for those from The Force Awakens) are eligible at this point. All you have to do is submit a name – via the comments at Jedi Temple Archives and Rebelscum, or via email to Yakface. (Also: Jedi News, Making Star Wars, ComicBook.com, Sir Steve’s Guide, Topless Robot, FlyGuy, Yodasnews and Galactic Hunter, Jedi Business.) The top choices at the fan sites will be used to create a top 6 that will go up for a vote on StarWars.com next month, with the winner announced at SDCC.

This is a great opportunity to show Hasbro that there is an interest in more female figures – remember, a Fan’s Choice Poll was how we got that last Mara Jade figure, though that hasn’t stopped at least one fan from making a case for a 6″ Mara.

(H/T to The Mary Sue.)

Forum poster guessed ‘The Force Awakens’ title back in 2012

tfa-tfn-guessTheForce.Net tracked down forum member Queen Gimmedala, who guessed the Episode VII title way back in 2012. She told Eric Geller:

Ultimately this was a random guess. No inside info or connection to Lucas. But to me it seemed logical that the first movie in this trilogy would need to address the force. I’m a believer that the movie titles in each trilogy closely relate and I suspect this will carry over for the ST.

So I knew it was going to be 3 words, and the force. I also know that the wording would be vague/ambiguous/old fashioned like all the other six movie titles.

The Phantom Menace (something is wrong with the force), A New Hope (something is helping) and The Force Awakens (It’s BACK BABY). I LOVE IT.

Pretty neat! This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a fan predate an episode title, although under vastly different circumstances: The title Revenge of the Sith was used on a 1986 fan fiction novel, a story set some 40 years after Return of the Jedi.

There’s a new StarWars.com!

starwarscom2014-7-01

This one looks to be a bit more heavy on the back-end than the last one – the blog is gone, or rather, most of the content that was live on it has been incorporated into the main site. (Contributers like our pals Bryan Young and Amy Ratcliffe now have their own super-neat landing pages.

And yes, of course there’s still a page for Episode VII

Head to the community section to welcome to all the sites and podcasts now being featured! And also get a first look at our new logo! (Because I’m a lazy ding-a-ling sometimes.)

To log in, you will have to create a new Disney ID, as the old starwars.com accounts will be (have been?) purged. Considering that nearly all of the content related to those accounts – the blogs and the message boards – are already long gone, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a hardship.

EUbits: Everybody loves pilots


Spotlight. Essential Guide to Warfare co-author Paul Urquhart takes a look at ‘the best star-pilots in the galaxy’. But what we’re really talking about here is the art by Frank-Joseph “Mazzic” Frelier, which includes what I think is out first look at Syal Antilles.

In other Warfare-related matters, there have been three more installments of endnotes since we last checked in: 9, 10 and 11.


Awards. John Jackson Miller’s Knight Errant is a Scribe Award nominee for Best Original Novel in the Speculative Fiction category. The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers are also naming Expanded Universe alumni Kevin J. Anderson as the year’s Grandmaster. Other familiar names among the nominees include Mike Stackpole (for his Conan the Barbarian adaption) and A.C. Crispin for her Pirates of the Caribbean novel.


Interviews. Lots of them! In the world of podcasts, we have Aaron Allston over at Tosche Station Radio and Mike Stackpole at Star Wars Book Report. If you can stomach the ForceCast, they had Leland Chee on, plus there’s a new Jedi Journals. If it’s text you prefer, Tom Taylor talks Darth Maul at CBR.


Teases. A bounty hunter short story by a new-to-Star Wars author will be gracing the pages of Insider #136. Karen Miller’s Myri Antilles story will be in the next issue, #135.


Now hiring… NJOE, EUCantina and Knights Archive are looking for some dedicated fans to join their respective sites. (Rather limited) internet fame! Glamour! No money! But possibly drinks at CVI!