Saturday 2 January 2016

THE UNCANNY VADERY

As discussed in my last post, I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. I was but a sprout when Episode IV was first screened on ITV and captured my imagination and heart. Star Wars was my world. Well, Star Wars and comics. More specifically, Star Wars and Marvel...
  
But until last week I had never read a Star Wars comic in my life (let alone read an EU novel). Which seems ridiculous – surely this would be a perfect synthesis of my interests? For some reason, I've always been repulsed by the very idea of it. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why...

'A laser-gun' might have had something to do with it.
  
A few days ago, I met up with an old, old friend who I see not nearly enough. He and I were tiny sprouts together, we grew up playing with each other's Kenner figures and playsets, we pretended to be Luke and Han in our back gardens, drew Star Wars pictures, went to see Return of the Jedi in the cinema. Our childhoods were inextricably intertwined with Star Wars. Obviously, I was really keen to hear what he thought of The Force Awakens. But he hadn't seen it and had little interest in doing so. I was stunned. For the love of Jabba, why, man, why? He told me that the prequels had completely crushed his interest in Star Wars, because 'It's amazing how much of the appeal of Star Wars is in things that aren't explained.'

My god. He's right. That's it.

So much of the original trilogy is left to your imagination. Who the Bothans are and why they died. What the Senate is and how it was disbanded. The badassness of Boba Fett. Who the hell Mon Mothma is. Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship. Tosche's station. What happened in the Clone Wars. Those spider-robot-brain things in Jabba's palace. How Han won the Falcon from Lando. What a womp rat is. What happened to Dengar's face. Half of the familiar names are never even said in the films themselves but came to us via the toys – AT-ATs, Ugnaughts, Y-wings, Bosssk, Gamorrean Guards, Lobot, Wampas, Salacious Crumb...

Who hell he?

This willingness to drop the viewer into a world without feeling the need to explain every detail is a huge part of what makes OT Star Wars so compelling. It's also one of the many reasons why I find the prequels so unsatisfying. And it's the main factor, albeit a subconscious one, in my avoiding the comics and the EU for the last 30 years. I don't want to someone else to fill in the gaps for me, because the gaps are where quite a bit of the fun lies.

If the OT taught us anything, it's that not everything needs to be spelled out, while the prequels explained too much. Yet one of the recurring complaints I've read about The Force Awakens is that not enough is explained or resolved, and too much is left open for the sequels. Needless to say, I don’t think this is a problem – we're now in an age of serialised movie storytelling, and I embrace the wider scope of that. I'm all for movies working in isolation, but I'm equally excited about them working towards something bigger. TFA gets the balance right, and in leaving a number of questions unanswered, it opens up a lot of directions in which modern Star Wars can go.

All of this is a very long-winded, circumlocutory way of saying that I recently read the first two trades of Marvel’s new Star Wars and Darth Vader series. Set just after A New Hope, these intertwining stories follow Luke, Han, Leia et al as they mount a raid on an Imperial weapons factory, and Vader as he tries to uncover the identity of the Rebel pilot who blew up the Death Star. From a pure comics storytelling point of view, I enjoyed these quite a bit – especially the Vader one. Both are rollicking, multi-layered tales that interconnect in interesting ways and explore new facets of the Star Wars universe. And both have fantastic art, from John Cassaday and Salvador Larocca, respectively.

  
However, I do still have a psychological block with these titles, partly because of the aforementioned wish not to have the gaps filled in, but also because there is a slight element of uncanny valley to them. When comics are converted to films or TV, they are of necessity more or less faithful adaptations, taking sometimes considerable liberties with the source material in order to work in a live-action medium. The conversion of films to comics, however, entails a tendency to replicate the movie visuals as accurately as possible – which is, of course, great for purists, but for me often makes for an unsettling, stilted experience, heavy on photo reference, full of designs optimised for the screen, not for the page. Star Wars is, of course, full of classic, iconic design, and I’m in no way suggesting they should be reworked for the comics – but it makes it harder to see the comic in its own terms, rather than an as ersatz version of the real thing.

Ultimately, this is my brain’s problem. And I’m seeking help with it. But the comics are pretty good. If you can handle them.

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