Charles Soule’s landmark Star Wars #25 (his 100th Star Wars issue) came out today and he sat down with Starwars.com to reminisce about his tenure as Star Wars comic scribe!
If you haven’t already grabbed a copy, you can order your favorite variant here:
- Pagulayan Cover A
- JTC Action Figure Variant
- Camuncoli Variant
- Noto Variant
- Sliney Variant
- Sprouse Destiny Variant
- Pride Variant
- Rosanas Variant
There are many gems of insight in the article, but one in particular stood out to me: How a fan should deal with Star Wars shows they don’t like.
Soule said of Star Wars shows past:
““Okay, well, there’s some things that are some creative choices here that maybe I wouldn’t have made if I was doing this,” but there’s also all this amazing stuff that is incredible. And the prequels are a great example of that. You can single out certain elements of them that kind of make them of their time or make them idiosyncratic, because they’re expressing certain creators’ views or whatever was going on when those were being made. But they’re still awesome. They’re super, super cool. And more importantly, they happened, and whether it’s the way you would’ve done it or the way you wanted to see it, the minute you start treating every piece of Star Wars storytelling as part of the history, then it doesn’t matter whether you liked it or not. It happened.…”[T]he core story of the prequels is amazing. It’s this beautiful, epic tragedy. It’s great.”
I think, personally, this is great insight into how we should all react to shows that aren’t necessarily our favorite. It’s no secret that certain fans reacted poorly to the Sequel Trilogy, many long-time Boba Fett fans were disappointed with some creative choices in the Book of Boba Fett, and there has been some recent nit-picking of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s all Star Wars, though, and it all happened. So rather than wishing it never happened, maybe we would all be happier if we treated it like history. Yeah, some real silly, stupid, and terrible stuff happened in real-world history (ever read about the Great Emu War? Spoiler: the Emus won). We need to somehow accept that and appreciate and refocus on the parts of real world history we love and that resonate with us.
So, for some, maybe they didn’t like Jar Jar being a part of galactic politics during such a seminal time in the Republic’s downfall. Then again, there are some pretty silly real-life historical people who were around during important historical periods (Charlie Chaplin was making fun of Hitler in films during the latter’s rise to power).
Life is both silly and deathly serious. So is Star Wars. It’s Both!
So, that scooter gang in Book of Boba Fett was kind of silly?
Well, guess what? Real life mod scooter gangs were kind of silly too:
I think this all kind of ties into another thought Soule had about his Memetic line “Beat his ass, Chewbacca!”
“Star Wars works because it’s not just [deep emotional moments]. It’s also sometimes “Beat his ass, Chewbacca.”
This is how I’m going to move forward. Accepting what I don’t like in Star Wars “canonical” history and adoring what I do like about it! Exogol in Rise of Skywalker is awesome. Podracing is awesome. Black Krrsantan in Book of Boba Fett is awesome and so are the Tusken Raiders. Obi-Wan and Vader fighting with boulders-awesome.
Soule had a a few more gems I feel like highlighting:
On reaching 100 issues:
“It meant to me that I had kind of definitively done what I always wanted to do in Star Wars, which was to make a mark, contribute in some significant way to this thing that I’d loved since I was really little. “
On Lord Momin and Fan Reactions to Him:
“But I didn’t know when I introduced Momin that he was going to be the person who designed Darth Vader’s castle. When I introduced Momin, Darth Vader’s castle did not exist, except on like a [piece of] concept or at the Lucasfilm archives, you know?”
” I had no idea if I was ever going to be able to tell anymore Star Wars stuff. So when I did that, I was like, “I’m going to tell the coolest things I can think of, because this might be my only chance to ever do it.” One of those things was a spooky, possessed mask of a Sith Lord that could do some crazy stuff. The extent of the crazy stuff it ended up being able to do, I didn’t know that day, but I knew it felt cool.”
On Qi’ra’s return:
“I think the reaction to Qi’ra’s return was phenomenal. People were so excited….She’s all over this period of Star Wars now, set between Episode V and Episode VI. And to me, anyway, it doesn’t feel forced. It feels like she’s doing the things that she was set up to do back in the Solo film. “
On Darth Vader’s Vision in Darth Vader #25:
“And the original version of that was for those to appear integrated into the backgrounds of the art, like a mountain side might have the words carved into it, that kind of thing. And we kicked it around, Giuseppe Camuncoli and myself, trying to find a way that it would work without getting in the way of the things that Vader actually needed to physically do in the panels. And we couldn’t quite get there. So we used caption boxes, which look amazing, I think the issue came out perfectly well, but that’s one of those ideas that, you know, it evolved throughout the course of the production of that issue. But I remember we all spent a lot of time on it and we all knew how important it was.”
On “Deleted Scenes” From Rise of Kylo Ren:
“I think I pitched an issue between three and four, like more of the newly-minted Ben Solo Knight of Ren going around with them for a little bit. And ultimately, because of publishing schedules and various reasons, we stuck with four.”
On “Beat his ass, Chewbacca”:
“Star Wars works because it’s not just [deep emotional moments]. It’s also sometimes “Beat his ass, Chewbacca.””
You can read the full interview with Charles Soule here!
More later!
-DrunkWooky
