Story: Using both new and archival interview material and their own analysis, author David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker analyze the three-year reign of Peter Davison as TV’s fifth Doctor Who, a time of upheaval for the show’s schedule, its traditions, and its behind-the-scenes crew.

Review: This volume of the Handbook was one of the last to be released in that series, and maybe it’s easy to see why. The books on the first, second and sixth Doctors dished some interesting dirt about the show’s production team and offstage drama, but by comparison, Peter Davison’s time on the show – as popular as it was – was nearly uneventful by comparison. Some would say the same of Davison’s portrayal, but interestingly enough, the man himself addresses that in interviews here, pointing out that everyone involved with the series was so nervous about how to follow up on Tom Baker’s reign, the decision was taken from the top down to write and portray the Doctor in an almost non-committal, non-character-specific way. That decision alone, and certainly not any lack of acting muscle on Davison’s part (who had already won over the public during his stint on All Creatures Great And Small by this time), is to blame for this era of the show, and its leading man, being labeled by many in hindsight as “bland.” (more…)

Story: The third collection of Marvel’s Star Wars series leads off with the six-part adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, and continues with a number of original stories as Luke, Leia, Lando, and the rest of the Rebels hunt for Han Solo and match wits with the Empire.

Review: Earl: If following up on Star Wars was a daunting task for the first Marvel team to land that title, I can’t even imagine the juggling act that had to be done between Empire and Jedi. Since Empire concludes on a cliffhanger that takes at least one of everyone’s favorite characters out of the loop for the two-and-a-half years it’ll take for the next movie to get done, and sends two of the other characters off looking for that character, the writers suddenly have to do some serious plate-spinning. Empire also raises the dramatic stakes a bit – there just doesn’t seem to be as much of the carefree space opera of the Marvel issues that arrived between the first two movies. Not that it isn’t good stuff though – I really do like most of the stories included here, even if they are a bit more “serious” than what came before. I really feel for the writers, though – the open ending that made all of their previous tales possible just didn’t exist for them here. Where the previous volume had some minor tap-dancing to meet up with the beginning of Empire, this time there were some story restrictions that they just couldn’t shake. (more…)

Story: As Luke struggles to recover from his momentary encounter with the mind of Darth Vader, Leia, Han, Chewie and the droids try to fight and maneuver their way off the Wheel. Their escape from the gambling station is not the end of their troubles – Han still has matters to settle with Jabba, Leia tries to expand the Rebellion to other worlds, and the cyborg bounty hunter Valance is still on Luke’s trail. Throughout the adventures, the Rebel heroes often run up against the agenda of the Tagge family, led by a ruthless baron whose desire for the Emperor’s favor, and for vengeance against Vader, drive him to enact more and more elaborate schemes to crush the Rebellion once and for all. But the Dark Lord is no stranger to scheming, and he has plans for both the Tagge family and young Skywalker.

Review: Dave: Unlike the first volume, I do have some first hand memories of the stories in this collection – at one point in my youth, I had two or three of the issues that dealt with Tagge’s storm corridor through the Yavin gas giant. I remember liking them quite a bit as a kid, and they still hold up pretty well. Now that I read them as part of the bigger tapestry of the ongoing Tagge feud, I’m even more impressed.

One thing I do wish is that that unfolding saga could have led into the events of The Empire Strikes Back a little better. Now, I don’t really know how much lead time Goodwin had to work with, or how much he knew about the overall storyline of the film when he was writing these issues. So I’m not assigning blame here – it’s just something I find a little disappointing. The characters and settings all seem frozen about five minutes after the end of the first movie – Luke’s still wearing his farm boy outfit, the Rebels are still on Yavin, and so on. Outside of a tacked on epilogue that undoes Goodwin’s earlier resolution of the Jabba bounty issue, there’s not much here bringing us to the next stage of the story. And having Luke and Vader face off face to face right before the movie adaptation is supposed to start just strikes me as a bad idea all around. (more…)

Story: The first 20 issues of Marvel’s Star Wars series are reprinted in this full color collection. From the adaptation of the film itself, which saw print before the movie’s release, to Luke’s terrifying brush against the mind of Darth Vader, the original Expanded Universe begins here. Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie and the droids encounter space pirates, frontier outlaws, floating cities of saboteurs, and a droid-hating cyborg bounty hunter named Valance while trying to help the Rebels find a new base and stay one step ahead of a Sith Lord searching for the identity of the pilot who blew up the Death Star.

Review: Dave: With the exception of the movie adaptation, I had never read any of the issues in this volume – the handful of Marvel Star Wars comics I was able to get my hands on were all from later in the run. Reading it now, there’s certainly a degree of 70s cheese, especially in the early issues written by Roy Thomas. But what a collection of talent worked on this series! Thomas, who pushed for Marvel to take up the license, is a former editor-in-chief at Marvel well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of comics’ Golden Age. When he got past the adaptation, he didn’t quite feel comfortable with the universe, and it kind of shows – his next story was more of a Magnificent Seven-esque western than a big space opera. So Archie Goodwin, then editor-in-chief and a legend in his own right, took the reins, and things started to take off. Goodwin created new villains, set subplots in motion, and brought a sense of scale and danger to the stories. And when Goodwin needed an assist, there was Chris Claremont, longtime X-Men writer.

On the artistic side, Howard Chaykin was the first penciller, and while he was still a bit rough around the edges, but you can already get a sense of the dynamism that would serve him well later in his career. (Although he was certainly greatly assisted by his inkers in those days – more on that later.) And when Chaykin left, his replacement, Carmine Infantino, was no slouch. Infantino, a former art director and publisher at DC, was well known for his Silver Age work on Batman, Flash, and a host of other heroes. While his facial renderings are sometimes a bit crude, he could definitely pack a lot of energy into his panels, and he and his inkers did fine work on all the technology of the galaxy far, far away. There’s a lot of fun stuff packed into these comics. I can only imagine what it was like to pick up each new installment in ’77 and ’78. (more…)

Story: Using archived interviews, documents, and photographs, J. W. Rinzler recounts the development and production of Star Wars in the mid-1970s.

Review: It takes a certain amount of skill and a certain amount of luck to retell a story that’s been told many times before and make it compelling. J. W. Rinzler has both working for him in The Making of Star Wars. Charles Lippincott, a Lucasfilm marketing executive, started conducting interviews in 1975 for a possible book on the making of the movie, but he never finished and those interviews wound up buried in Lucasfilm’s archives. Through those interviews, Lucas’s original film drafts, contract letters, and other photographs and documents, Rinzler was able rebuild the narrative of the film’s development and recapture the perspective of many of the principal cast and crew during the time period where very few people really understood what George Lucas wanted to achieve with Star Wars and no one had the faintest clue of how the movie would be received. (more…)

Story: The work of the various art teams is showcased along with brief descriptions of how the designs fit into the evolution of Revenge of the Sith.

Review: J.W. Rinzler explains that this book should be considered as a companion to The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith; like that book, it is organized chronologically. This sets it apart from the other five Art of Star Wars books, which were organized either topically or around the framework of the screenplay. I appreciated the change; there is less text taking away space from the art, and what text is there helps place the images into the context of the making-of-the-movie story. (more…)

Story: This chronological recounting of the filmmaking process begins with pre-production art and design work in April 2002 and runs through October 2004, as editing and effects work continues leading up to writer-director George Lucas and composer John Williams meeting to spot the film.

Review: The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is a great book with one gaping flaw: it’s incomplete. In order to be available as part of the early-April marketing/product blitz for Sith, the book had to be wrapped up long before the movie was. So the book doesn’t end so much as it runs out, leaving the reader to wonder how the movie was actually finished. There is a free electronic book/PDF file that adds a final chapter, mostly focused on the score, the last pick-up shots, and dialogue looping. While it does provide some additional closure as veterans of the saga like Anthony Daniels do their last bits of work, even that ends with a few hundred shots of the movie left to complete. And even if the e-book did finish the job, I can’t help but think that there’s very little good reason to publish a book about the making of a movie before the movie is done being made. (more…)

Story: The Planetary organization moves the pieces into place for its counter-assault against the Four, drawing resources from its knowledge of the world’s secret history. Also included are several episodes from Elijah Snow’s past, including his discovery of a conspiracy to save the world in 1919, his adventures in the hidden city of Opak-Re, and his pivotal early encounter with the Four.

Review: Planetary has always had a very episodic structure, and that becomes even more prominent in this third collection. Three of the six chapters are tales from Elijah Snow’s past, and the other three have a heavy emphasis on flashbacks. As a result, the series loses a little bit of urgency here; at the end of the second collection, I had the feeling that the conflict between the Four and Planetary was about to get serious. I had the same feeling at the end of the third, which is a little disappointing. That said, the individual stories in this volume are rather good and do shed some useful light on the backstory of certain characters, while also bringing in threads established earlier in the series. So although it does seem that the book is a circuitous path that leads right back where it started, the journey’s worth taking. (more…)

Story: Ever since he joined the Planetary organization, Elijah Snow has helped uncover the secret history of the world – but there a few private mysteries he’d like to solve. What is Planetary’s real mission? Why do others seem to know more about his life than he does? And who is the Fourth Man that bankrolls and orchestrates the team’s adventures? Elijah finally tracks down the truth – and when he does, the rules of the game change completely.

Review: Remember how cool I said “Planetary: All Over The World” is? There’s lots more fun to be had in “The Fourth Man,” as pieces fall into place and the book’s central conflict comes into view. Ellis does his usual fine job with characterization and dialogue this time out, using flashbacks to explore the history of the Planetary field team (including Elijah’s predecessor, Ambrose Chase) and their relationships with each other. There are the bitter, sarcastic one-liners (no one does cantankerous like Warren Ellis) but also a lot of warmth. There’s one shot of Ambrose holding up his daughter in which he says, “World, this is my daughter. I want you two to be good to each other. Because it’s a strange world out there, and you both need all the help you can get.” It’s a great line, one that sums up the wonder and optimism that are a part of this world, regardless of the craziness of its more twisted corners. (more…)

Story: Elijah Snow is almost a hundred years old, a witness to many of the strange and awesome events that make up the secret history of the twentieth century. Now he spends his time hiding out in the middle of nowhere, until a woman named Jakita Wagner offers him a million dollars a year to join Planetary, a group of ‘mystery archaeologists’ in need of Elijah’s experience. As part of the Planetary field team, Elijah investigates gateways to alternate Earths, mutant Japanese monsters, the vengeful spirit of a Hong Kong cop, and more before turning his attention to Planetary’s opposite number, the Four, who have been manipulating the world for their own ends for decades…and who seem to know more about Elijah than Elijah himself.

Review: Planetary is one of the most addicting stories I’ve ever read, and one of the few serialized comics I make a point of buying on an issue-by-issue basis anymore. The series is not just a great adventure story with terrific characters, outstanding dialogue and stunning artwork. It’s also a commentary and exploration of the twentieth century’s adventure fiction, including comics, monster movies, pulp novels and more. (more…)