501st_card_highresEmail: click here or hover over the text to see the e-mail address.

Want to navigate the strips a little easier? Click here, for the BMS Webcomic Archives

Want to know more about Rod? Check out his website.

Want to know more about Leanne? Check out her website.

Click here to support Blue Milk Special by purchasing a shirt, print or other non-related product made by the webcomic’s creators!

We can’t sell you much more than products with our logo on them, but you can show your support by donating to a cause we believe in. Use the Force to Stand Up To Cancer. See below.

What is blue milk?

Remember when Luke Skywalker is having dinner with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? There’s a jug of blue liquid on the table. This blue liquid has since become known as “blue milk”. There’s also a production still of Aunt Beru holding some, see the photo on the left. Blue milk is one of those obscure pieces of trivia from the original Star Wars movie and seemed the perfect source for the title of our Star Wars parody webcomic.

What is Blue Milk Special?

A webcomic that parodies the Original Trilogy one scene at a time, starting with A New Hope, including The Holiday Special (yes, you read right) and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (the first ever Star Wars novel, published before The Empire Strikes Back). We are currently about one third of the way through Return of the Jedi. The comic is written and illustrated by Rod and Leanne Hannah.

Blue Milk Special has been on the TopWebComics.com list since 2009. This began a slow climb from the 100s up to the Top 30 throughout 2010-2012. In September 2012, Blue Milk Special climbed to the Top 10 for the first time. Since then we have ceased offering voting incentives and focused on trying to keep our heads above water with twice weekly updates whenever possible on the main site.

leanne-hannahLeanne Hannah:
Leanne Hannah is an illustrator who has worked for Marvel Comics, Hasbro, Scholastic, and Mattel, amongst other companies. Her most recent work includes Casper and the Spectrals for Ardden Entertainment and Whatever Happened to Baron Von Shock? for Rob Zombie and Image Comics.

In her spare time she and her husband Rod collaborate on a Star Wars web comic called Blue Milk Special where they lovingly poke fun at the original Trilogy of films.

Leanne currently lives in Maryland, loves studying history, is fiercely devoted to the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, takes pride in her left-handedness and has more Beatles knowledge in her head than is probably healthy.

 

hannahrod_1348865826_6Rod William Hannah:
Rod William Hannah writes for the two-time Harvey Award winning Mice Templar (published by Image Comics) and the retro animation magazine Cereal:Geek. He has written and self-published the All-Ages comic book Once Upon A Caper and popular ongoing webcomic series Blue Milk Special (now translated into five languages!). Rod has edited and lettered indie comics, including Kevin Conn’s Lava-Roid and Jim McCarter’s Pulverized. He is currently dividing time between various writing projects including his first full length children’s novel.

Born in England, Rod moved to New Zealand when he was 5 1/2 years old. Love brought him to the East Coast of America where he now works with his comic book illustrator wife, a girl from Southern Maryland named Leanne Hannah.

Both Rod and Leanne are Friends of the Legion, an honor bestowed by the 501st Legion, a global Star Wars cosplay organization for their work on Blue Milk Special and charitable service.

Rod Hannah and Leanne Hannah (husband and wife).

Who else helps Blue Milk Special?

G. Padilla – 3D Star Wars vehicle poses
T. Gatto – Paper milk carton designs, supplier of some strip backgrounds
J. Porter – Blackhole Stormtrooper cosplayer, promoter and forum moderator
P. Dejawavu – Jawa cosplayer, promoter
Gennady – Russian translator
M. Stipp – German translator
V. Torres – Spanish translator
C. Gutiérrez – French translator

We welcome all the support and help we can get and would love to see the BMS family grow. Contact us if you have ideas how you could contribute.

Blue Milk Special in other languages?

Without people like Gennady, Michael & the folks at Jedipedia.net, Vicent and Carlos, we would be an entirely monolingual fan project. If you speak Russian, Spanish, German or French, please check out those BMS sites and lend them your support and a few kind words.

When did Blue Milk Special start?

February 2009. I scripted 300 strips before we launched.

How often do you update?

We try to have at least one strip per week. Our current goal is Tuesday and Friday updates (as of August 4, 2014). We used to have a regular schedule and would update two or three times per week but, like any webcomic, as time goes by it gets harder to maintain a regular schedule. Webcomics with original creator-owned material might have an additional incentive to put other things aside in their personal lives to treat their project not only as a labor of love, but as a business. Legally, we are not able to pursue that avenue with our Star Wars fandom and we respect LucasFilm’s and Diseny’s rights over the property.

Will you publish a book collecting the Blue Milk Special strips?

No. See above. We could only do so if we were given a license from LucasFilm giving us their blessing and giving them royalties and a degree of control and censorship. WE enjoy our creative freedom and being able to throw in cameos of characters from other sci-fi properties. We publish Blue Milk Special for free as a pop culture parody under the Fair Use act. We are non-profit. Star Wars is Disney’s property now. We respect that and only make Blue Milk Special in the capacity of fans who his Original Trilogy inspired. BMS is free to read so if you like it, share it and have a laugh with your friends.

As aspiring creators of our own original comics we hope you and your friends might give our other projects a shot in the future. If you simply MUST rep BMS in some fashion then consider buying a T-shirt with our logo or a coffee mug or something… or a print. That is one way to help support us and help keep the project going.

What about prints and merchandise?

We sell prints of Blue Milk Special pinups and convention sketches, these (along with the site advertising) do not even cover the costs of the website database maintenance and convention expenses. For example, at a show like Baltimore, costs us $300 for a hotel, $200 for a table, and at least $100-$150 for food over the weekend. Our travel costs don’t even factor into Baltimore because it’s only an hour’s drive from where we live, but a place like New York would add either air or train travel costs into the bill between $300-$600 dollars more. Trust us, we do not make that back what we invest in Blue Milk Special as a project. We also have to print the prints that we sell and purchase art supplies. We are fans of Star Wars first and foremost and doing this for ourselves with you guys as encouragement. 🙂

Click here to see what we have on offer for you to do your part in supporting the Blue Milk Special webcomic project.

Leia and Jawas should not smoke!

Neither myself or Leanne have EVER smoked in our entire lives and we’re not big fans of the activity either. Sure, both Leia and the Jawa would likely have healthier lungs and be better role models if they didn’t smoke. That’s the problem with perception that this project faces. Blue Milk Special is definitely not an educational comic or a diversion for parents to give their young children. Despite the cartoony style of our art, this is a parody and often that means looking at the innocence of Star Wars through the eyes of an adult. Blue Milk Special has never been aimed at anyone younger than a teen even though some of our strips are fairly harmless.

The majority of our gags are only really suitable for readers who have an awareness of sexual innuendo and have a tolerance for the odd surprise gore or violence now and then. Although we sometimes allow mild swearing, we limit our use of coarse language and for the most part avoid toilet humor altogether as it is not really our thing.

Carrie Fisher is awesome and the basis for our alternate interpretation of Princess Leia. The Smoking Jawa is modeled after the classic 1970s used-car salesman stereotype and thus wouldn’t feel right without a cigarette. Look at the book, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which is was never inappropriate at the time, but when Han and Leia were turned into an item in The Empire Strikes Back, the Alan Dean Foster novel suddenly took on a twisted tone. Blue Milk Special is as much a commentary at times as it is a parody.

Will you parody the Prequel Trilogy?

No. At least, not in the same way as we have with the Original Trilogy. We won’t cover the Prequels extensively and IF we make it to the end of the Return of the Jedi and we decide to play with the Prequels as well, then it will likely be no more than 10 strips at most. Yes, as few as that.

Where are you based?

Southern Maryland… near Washington, DC.

Will you come to my local show?

We do like to set up at comic conventions, but it has to be practical for us due to travel, hotel and convention expenses. Shows within a few hours of Washington, DC are practical, but a day trip just to reach the city is expensive. We will always set up at Baltimore Comic Con and may also continue to attend Virginia Comic Cons throughout the year. Beyond this, we have to be selective about where we go. We are working on new, original creator-owned projects and may set up at Anime conventions and book fairs in the future.

If you have a show that you would like us to consider, please shoot us an email and tell us about it.

BMS vs Family Guy vs Robot Chicken?

Since we started getting noticed we have often been compared to the Family Guy and Robot Chicken Star Wars parodies. It seems unecessary to have to address this at all, particularly as in many ways we preceded or were running parallel to the Star Wars parodies aired on Fox and Cartoon Network. However, there was an occasion where we were attacked in our comment thread by fans of Family Guy for what one guy felt was a stolen gag. It was a simple case of a similar sense of humor, but it left a bitter feeling for me. BMS is a fan project and any costs come directly out of Leanne’s and my own day job paycheck. We invest an enormous amount of time into something that can never be of financial reward to us. We are all working from the same source material and so occasionally we might cross into similar territory but there is never any conscious plagiarism, just as I am sure Family Guy and Robot Chicken work hard not to copy one another. Blue Milk Special doesn’t always have an easy task in trying to find new twists on such well parodied material. Ultimately, we are a webcomic. There really is no reason to compare us to Network animated shows although I will take it as a compliment anyway.

Read more about Blue Milk Special…

Blue Milk Special is non-profit and made by fans for fans.  Star Wars characters are used under fair-use laws as pop culture parody. But what is Blue Milk Special? Don’t know yet? Click here.

The strip follows the events of the Original Star Wars Trilogy in chronological order… meaning you won’t see much of later characters until we reach that point in the story (although some might make guest appearances in our own original linking material). That being said, we are basically a gag strip, so we’re pretty liberal with our take on events. You’ll also find unique story elements and alternative characterization which evolves as the strip progresses –Biggs Darklighter being one of our key examples.

We are aided on occasion by the talented Geoffrey Padilla, who provides additional 3D spaceship models which are cel-shaded to have simpler cartoony feel (see 3D modeling credits below).

Below is a list of the various 3D models and credit to the talents behind their creation. Thank you to those that have made their hard work available and allowed us the raw material to rework into the BMS style!

Millennium Falcon (YT-1300)

1. George Mezori (ZOO) (Conversion)
2. Al Meerow (Mesh)
3. Don Showalter (Maps/Optimization)

Millennium Falcon (YT-1300) version 2

1. Iven Connery (Original Model)
2. Sebastian Hirsch (Mojo) (Textures)

Y-Wing

1. Al Meerow (Original Model)
2. Don Showalter (LW conversion)
3. Tom Grays (TomG) (LW 5.6 conversions)

X-wing (snub fighter)

1. Dr. Harry Chang (Model)
2. Don Showalter (LW Model)
3. Matt Walton (Pilot)
4. Jose Gonzalez Pareja (Textures)
5. Matt Allen (Extra Detail)

X-wing (Snub Fighter) 4

1. Mister X (Original Model)

Tie Fighter
Authors:

1. Al Meerow (Original Model)

TIE Advanced x1 Prototype (Vader’s Tie)
Authors:

1. Staffan Norling (Squapper_Stuffe)(Original Model)
2. James Bassett (Some Details)

Slave 1

1. A Wiro (Original Model)
2. Preben Hermann (Rough Rider)(Lightwave Conversion)
3. Hartmut Redlefs (C4D r8 Conversion)

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