Midget Wookiees
You thought you’d seen the last of the Holiday Special, but consider THIS our encore. Something completely different begins on Friday and will last for the next couple of weeks. You may have seen the last of some of the regular costumes so be prepared for a visual change too.
On another note, we just sent off an order for a second batch of our exclusive Blue Milk Special promotional postcards. These are only available at our convention appearances this year, including Star Wars: Celebration V in Florida this weekend. We can not attend Celebration V, however we will be represented by the awesome Joshua (Shadow Stormtrooper) and Paul (Smoking Jawa).
Paul: I’ll be at the Rebel Legion booth twice each day (thurs and fri). The “Smoking Jawa” will be the 5:30-7 pm appearances. Will have both on me as far as Postcards/Flyers….Bring family and friends and get some. Cameras if you have them. I’m also gonna be all over (LFL family room, RL/501 pool party,RL photo shoot, The wretched Hive Photo shoot, R2 builders room throughout CV I’m sure, etc.)
If you will be attending Celebration V please don’t forget to share your photos with our Facebook fan page.
Still want to get your hands on a promo BMS card? A second batch of will be on hand at Baltimore Comic Con on Sat-Sun August 28-29 and New York Comic Con on Fri-Sun October 8-10. We will be at both shows and may have a few other Blue Milk Special goodies for those who don’t want us to feel lonely and dejected. 😉
Good closer Rod and Leanne!
I’m pretty sure that when I was 9, I read a feature in Star Wars Weekly comic in which George was talking about doing up to 20 SW movies. AND… I’m kind of sure that he said the Empire was/would be defeated by Wookies – on the planet Wookie. Or something.
Can anyone else back me up? Did the/a decisive Wookie last stand turn into – *gakk* *spit* – Ewok one?
I heard something along those lines as well: that the Wookies were originally supposed to help them defeat the Empire, but there was some logistical problem or something so they became Ewoks.
Sometimes I think I’m the only SW fan who doesn’t hate the Ewoks. They’re adorable! Okay, it’s completely silly the way they manage to take down the storm troopers, but everything in SW is silly if you look at it too closely.
Having sounds, like lasers and explosions in space is also silly, but the films WOULD be less exciting without them. I didn’t mind the ewoks when I was little. I don’t hate them, but I do regret that the Wookiee plan for ROTJ was dropped. It would have given Chewbacca real relevance to the story, instead of just comic relief. Likewise I seriously regret that they didn’t really do anything with Leia other than her love story angle. She should have been with Luke in the Emperor’s throne room at the end of ROTJ. Still, what’s done is done.
Yes Rod, you’re right about the last scene. The handling of Leia and Solo in RotJ was incredibly weak. To make their plotline nothing more than a gradual confirmation of their love for one another was a missed opportunity. Solo himself looked out of place and even embarrassed with little to do.
I never thought he looked out of place…
I don’t mind the Ewoks, they would make more sense than a army of Wookiees. If it was Wookiees There would be bloody limbs everywhere and it would be 20 min shorter. Look at a chimp : http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/images/dewa-babybonobo-l.jpg he is adorable right ? you just want to dress him in silly outfits and dance with him ! but he can rip your face off make you eat it and take off 2 limbs at the same time. Just think of Ewoks like chimps.
If you look at the fight between them and the troopers it happens like you would expect it to and the few that they take out they do by close lines or having huge logs role down at them.
Chimps are my least favorite animal. Contrary to popular belief they eat meat and can even cannabilize their own young. Oh, and they through their crap around. Charming animals. Cats are low maintenance.
Same goes of dolphins, but they will probably help you rather than eat you (Im not sure if they eat meat but they will kill something and play with its internal organs !). I prefer the giant rabbit to cats because they wont bite you , but they will eat your homework 😉 .
since this is the only reply option…
Chimps do many nasty thinks, like leading organized wars (as one of only two kinds of higher mammals) and in their war campaigns they are prone to rape.
They usually don’t caniballise their own young, they can even be seriously traumatised by family tragedys, even leading to suicide.
But they sure have no problem doing so in war campaigns, just like they eat other monkeys, whom they haunt down in raid parties sometimes.
Generally it seems true that ren’T likeable by western standerts, even compared to their bonobo brothers and sisters, but it’s not like they do anything humans don’t or at least have done in the not so distant past.
(And yes humans use(d?) fecals in warfare as well)
Having them battle Stormtroopers might have been quite funny, but also gory, chimps shot down by lasers from afar, turned tu luke’s parent alike smoking corpses, or chimps tearing weak human flesh to shreds in close distance (and due to stormtropers aiming skills, they would have gotten close)…
I just don’t like those dirty apes/chimps…
Sam’s mention of dolphins brought a smirk to my lips…
This is because, much like humans, some of them are nice and friendly, some of them are mean, some of them are rapists, and some of them are into bestiality.
Which is to say some dolphins (generally young males) group together, find humans swimming in shallow waters, drag them into underwater caves and gang-rape them to death.
And anyone who thinks of dolphins as cute creatures really needs to learn about dolphin rape-caves.
I totally agree that Leia and Luke should have confronted Vader and the Emperor together at the end – what was the point of making her “the other” Skywalker if you’re not going to use her as that? Ah well, it just makes it even more obvious that Lucas didn’t have it all planned out from the beginning as he continues to claim. Maybe when we get to your ROTJ you can fix that … 😉
Actually, I didn’t have that planned for our BMS take on ROTJ… however, ROTJ is so far away that IF this webcomic survives that long I’d be more than happy to consider exploring that idea (inserting Leia into the throne room scene alongside Luke). We already have some big twists on the ESB plot that will be unexpected by our readers… so maybe.
What would she do shoot the Emperor ? I think the point of Leia being the other skywalker was to end the love triangle.
I thought the original plan was to make the Wookiee home planet the site of the final battle, but since Chewbacca was first mate on a ship, they couldn’t make the Wookiee culture totally primitive and have it believable….how could Chewie know how to fly a ship, but the rest of his fellow Wookiees had no knowledge of advanced technology?
Didn’t make sense, so the decision was made to invent a new species – the Ewoks, who were primitive and furry and lovable.
Anyone who knows anything about this, please to be confirming or correcting.
Thanks for the info. I’m rusty on this subject, but like you, I have the general gist of it. Personally, I don’t think they thought hard enough IF they considered Chewbacca’s piloting skills to indicate all Wookiees were tech savvy. What if, for example, a space traveler took a young neanderthal with him from Earth and educated him how do do all the basics? Chewie certainly doesn’t seem particularly proficient with fixing things. I actually get the vibe from Chewie that he isn’t that well equipped mentally for the tasks he undertakes, yet he gets by well enough. Perhaps George and co might have decided, “right, well Chewie is one of many former slave wookiees who were educated out of their primitive culture to be able to serve the Empire’s more advanced needs… hence their being a little slow.” That way, the Wookiee world of Kashyyyk could still be full of the basic primitive neanderthal sasquatch wookiees that would suit George’s thematic needs of a primitive culture overcoming a soulless technology reliant one. I think it was also personal choice on George’s part. He wanted diminutive heroes to OVERSELL the concept. It’s either that or he felt he didn’t want to contradict the Wookiee nuclear family society we saw in the Holiday Special.
Karen is correct about the Wookiee Ewok switch.
I never got the vibe that Chewie isn’t well prepared for fixing thing I always thought that the Falcon was just screwed up so much that wen you fix one thing you break another and when he was fixing C3PO he was on the move most of the time and dint have time to get everything correct.
Oh and thanks to this decision it helped make Knights of the Old Republic !
I’m kind of agreeing with Sam on this one – the Millennium Falcon struck me as the spaceship equivalent of a beater car – you fix one thing on it, another thing breaks. I think Chewie was at least somewhat adept at fixing things – he did, after all, fix C-3PO when he was pretty badly messed up. Granted, he *did* put his head on backwards, but despite that, he got him at least partially reassembled and working.
I’m thinking with limited resources, tools available, and a hunk-of-junk spaceship, he did the best he could under the circumstances. Chewie’s a pretty resourceful Wookiee, I think.
Sounds like a good rationale. Fair enough. But… if you go to remore rural places it can be pretty primitove still, but their kids do sometimes go off to university and become physicists.
The whole E-WOK/ WOOK-IE, thing has always made me sspicious that GL only ever relly intende there to be one race of furry critters in his galaxy, otherwise he would have surely come up with more than one name…
From what I’ve read, Lucas’ early drafts for star wars included sequences with Ewoks reading the story to their children…
But then TBF Georgie boy was retconning the backstory to the trilogy LONG before the Prequels, or even the Special Editions…
Incidentally, I think your promo cards will make a good impression. Should really boost your readership!
I threw together Black and White, crappily home-printed, copier paper A6 flyers for my site at the eleventh hour before a SW convention here last March and handed out a few. I doubt they helped me much! When I say eleventh hour – Gabby and Johnny were literally in the car waiting as I sweated and begged the printer to hurry up. By the time I handed them around they were creased and looked even more rubbish.
Lesson learnt. We’re off to another SW con in September. I’m going to price better prints an do a decent design.
Are Joshua or Paul going to be there on Saturday?
They will be there all weekend! 🙂
This is the perfect time to post this song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdd0edT-BeE
I never had any hate on the Ewoks, I would prefer Wookies tho. But think about it if wookies helped them the fight would just be them ripping limbs off of the Stormtroopers
Aaaand your point is..? Sounds great to me!
So did a Star Wars prequel trilogy…
The film would be 30 min shorter and Leia would probably be missing a limb or two.
But did you listen to the song ?
Er, no… I’m to scared.
Its awesome , Billy De is in it !
I just watched this. The first time I saw it, many months ago, I think I stopped it before it got good. The shots of the dude singing must have given me a knee jerk reaction to the vid. However, it was pretty good! Billy Dee is the man.
Billy seems like a good sport when it comes to and him and Star Wars.
Agreed. Carrie also.
Carrie Fisher roast George : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ97s396kb0
When the Trilogy re-makes were shown on TV for the frist time Billy Dee Williams hosted the Star Wars (episode IV) Segment. This struck me as odd because he was not in episode IV. When the Falcon blasted off from the planet Tattoine he was clearly reading off cue cards when he stated that the Milinium Falcon blasted off from the “Planet Mos Eysley”. Now I know you do not have to be a fan to be in a movie, or even host a TV showing, but someone really needed to proof read his material better.
Also he (and all the other hosts) were blatantly reading off cue cards, it was sad.
Well, they’re just actors, after all. Just because they work on the material doesn’t mean that they have the sort of obsession or interest in the genre that we do. I hear what you’re saying, but at least he participated in the show. He may not know all the gobble-di-gook that we do, and he may even have expected the writer of that show to have known better than him and second guessed his own knowledge.
I’m just glad the little spud got to say goodbye.
I’m gonna miss him almost as much as I miss tax time, and my last root canal.
In all seriousness, by todays standards I give the Holiday Special a 3 outof 10, but when taken back to that standards of 70’s TV specials it gets a 5 for being no worse than most. Can anyone remember the last prime time Christmas/holiday special that was worth watching more than once?
The BMS remake, however, rates much higher, and was very entertaining.
SOTME and Greedo’s Gang now please!
BTW I’ll be checking Ebay after the conventions for a set of postcards, everything else seems to end up there sooner or later.
There’s not much we can do if some assholes decide to sell our postcards on eBay, but it does suck from our point of view because we are giving them away for FREE. If people want to pay money for expensive promotional material that was originally FREE then so be it. But please, if any of our readers want the promo cards badly enough to pay for them just contact us and we will send them to you just for the cost of postage. I do not want any of our loyal readers having to pay some prick on eBay for items we made for free. bluemilkspecial@gmail.com
Hurrah! Well said.
I always thought the Ewoks added a neat touch to the Star Wars universe as a kid. I even remember getting excited about “Battle for Endor”. I don’t remember if I ever saw “Caravan of Courage” but I do remember watching Battle for Endor multiple times. I even had the Ewok tree village toy set with Wicket and the other Ewoks, and their net traps, etc. Man I wish I’d known then what I know now and I’d never had let those toys go to waste.
I hear ya. I enjoyed those Ewok movies at the time as well, although I remember at the time wishing that they weren’t just about the Ewoks because it felt like something was missing. Having seen Caravan of Courage first I was completely shocked and mildly traumatized by the opening of Battle for Endor. Not sure why they thought they should do what they did in the first few minutes considering the film was for the sort of age bracket that unconditionally loved teddy bears and family.
Ewok movies? Where these the animated TV shows? Hang on, I’ll Google it…
I think I’d totally forgotten about SW by then I was more preoccupied with girls and Heavy Metal. Never heard fo these at all. If I had I would have been shaking my head in despair.
But you reckon those two films were actually ok? Was there much familiar Star Wars stuff in it? ie; Imperials, spacecraft and droids etc?
Uh uh… those two films ARE NOT OKAY. I was just saying that those films were “okay” for my young 6 year old self at the time. I quickly realized how lame they were as time went on and I grew more discerning. Watch them at your peril. Keep a crossword handy.
What’s your take on the Han Solo and Lando novels that were among the first non cannon works published?
– I did not read any of them until years later, but enjoyed them as they still had the old school pre-reworked universe flavor.
– Also has anyone read the Zombie Star Wars story “Death Troopers”? Normaly “anything is better with zombies” is my motto, but come on, what were the writers thinking (aside from make $)?
I have only read the novelization of Han Solo At Stars End when I was in my teens (man, I sound like an old fuddy) and about half of the second book in the trilogy. I never new about the Lando books, or had forgotten of them, until relatively recently. I bought copies of both trilogies this year, but the trouble is I don’t know when I will have time to read them. I read the Wookieepedia summaries, and I’ve glanced over the newspaper strip adaptation of Han Solo At Star’s End, which refreshed me on the general plot somewhat. I suspect I will enjoy them. Not anywhere on the level of the Original Trilogy, but more so that the majority of the now convoluted mess that is Star Wars. At least the work back then “felt” like Star Wars.
Again, I don’t want to disrespect our readers who love ALL of Star Wars, after all, we’re all Star Wars fans , right? But one of the main reasons we are incorporating the Holiday Special and the Splinter of the Mind’s Eye into the BMS canon is that it felt like too much time had transpired between Star Wars and TESB. The characters all seemed to have grown a lot while off-screen… which is a bit of a storytelling no-no. So, having missed out on seeing Luke mature and the beginnings of the Han and Leia romance I felt like we could enhance the existing material written at that time to cover these subjects and tells a story that felt like old school Star Wars… even if it is a nonsensical cartoon-style parody. I am at least prepared to reference events from both the Solo and Calrissian trilogies in Blue Milk Special canon. It will probably go a long way to helping definie Lando as more than just another Bigg’s-type hero in a cape.
Those Lando novels are quite short IIRC, shouldn’t take you more than an afternoon to plow through the trilogy, fairly light on chracterisation mind, turns out he was a bit of a gambler and a rogue…
Since someone else has mentioned ECOC, what’s the plan for BMS post ROTJ?
*Dan runs and hides…*
Thanks. That would have been 4 hours I never would have got back.
John White: ‘Thread-killer’
Having a blast at CV. Passing out cards in and out of costume. Unbelievable, some people just won’t take them. Their loss. i’ll be at the 501st room from 4-6 today doing guard duty. My wife will be on hand with a stack of cards. Hope to see you guys!
Thanks so much Joshua! And yeah, we noticed that some people just don’t want freebies… almost as if they expect you to follow it up with a sale pitch. LOL. Oh well, more cards for the people who really do want them.
Ot of curiosity how many cards have you given out ? Also what costume are you in ?
Joshua is in a Shadow Stormtrooper outfit. See this article for info http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shadow_stormtrooper
I have not seen a photo of Joshua’s costume, but I imagine that is how it looks. Can’t wait to see the photos!
We gave Joshua and Paul 2000 promo cards. Hopefully there will be plenty for the big days, Saturday and Sunday.
Hey when is Sovena Red coming out?? I really can’t wait for that!
Wow… thanks. Right now I’m waiting on two artists. One pinup from Mike Maihack and another by Leanne Hannah (of BMS semi fame). I had hoped to have it with us in time for Baltimore Con, but it’s going to be NYCC in October now.
I was wondering the same thing !
Hey as long as it comes out so i can read it im fine with whatever time i have to wait.
The Ewoks marked a decline in GL’s integrity as a film-maker with the lure of merchandising and toy sales taking priority over any other factors. You can see the roots of the creative decisions that led to Jar Jar Binks.
Yes, SW was always steeped in silliness (Sir Alec once made a similar observation) but there’s silliness within reason and the teddy bear guerillas triumphing was beyond all reason and shameless pandering to the kiddie market. The late Marquand is reputed to have said that ROTJ would’ve been a stronger film, had it not been for GL’s insistence on the Ewoks.
No doubt! It would also have been a stronger film if they hadn’t felt the need to recycle the Death Star plot device. Fortunately for the Empire, Death Stars apparently come largely prefabricated to save construction time. 😉