Fri - May 13, 2005

The Great Curve goes green!





V. fine comics blog The Great Curve reviews "Jaxxon's 11" -- with author Michael May bravely revealing the personal history that places him in J11's tiny target audience:
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Back when I was but a wee lad of ten or eleven, Marvel adapted that Star Wars movie into a six-issue comic book series and then blew my little mind by continuing the series on past the adaptation. Lord have mercy, I've never been as excited as I was when I saw the cover to Star Wars #7 promising a brand new story about my favorite characters, Han and Chewie.

Looking back at it with adult eyes, it's a lame Seven Samurai rip-off with some pretty uninspired characters.... [But one of the characters] was my favorite: the giant, green, carnivorous bunny named Jaxxon, who looked like a gamma irradiated Bugs Bunny and talked like, well, like Han Solo. Which was a little redundant, but still kinda cool because Solo was cool and, hey, it was a giant rabbit....

Anyway, this trip down Memory Lane is precipitated by the announcement this week that TheForce.net is sponsoring a webstrip starring my favorite Marvel Star Wars character. Appropriately, it's a rip-off of another movie. Not Kurosawa, but Soderbergh....
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God bless you, Mr. May. (And thanks also to The Comics Reporter and The Pulse for helping get the word out that J11 is back from its ridiculously long, totally unplanned hiatus.)

On Any Other Planet, They'd Be the Bad Guys (The Great Curve)
Jaxxon's 11 (TheForce.net)


Posted at 07:20 PM    

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Wed - May 11, 2005

The green rabbit returns! 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 8 now online



Here's the all-new Scene 8 of "Jaxxon's 11" -- our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net.

As we tell our (remaining) readers on the official site:

Now that the terror of unholy career-change vertigo has subsided, we're back from our totally unplanned 13-month hiatus. Scene 8 brings us to page 51 (of about 100), and introduces the final member of Jax's heist team, Don-Wan Kihotay. (Those blissfully ignorant of the history of Marvel's "Star Wars" comics -- we remember those days fondly -- can learn a bit more about this crazy old fool right here.) There's also an update to "Letters to Jaxxon" -- with more missives (and our responses) on the way soon.

You can read Scene 8 ("Everybody Comes to Vol's") at the official site, or click here to read it after the jump.

And if you want to print your own book, high-rez PDFs of all eight scenes -- and the "J11 Scriptbook" -- can be found here.

(Catching us late? Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here. Scene 3 is here. Scene 4 is here. Scene 5 is here. Scene 6 is here. Scene 7 is here.)


Posted at 12:00 AM    

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Sun - March 13, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 7




Here's Scene 7 of "Jaxxon's 11," our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net.

David went totally granular drawing this -- taking my suggestion to "fill the sky with classic spaceships from the canon of science fiction" way beyond all reasonable expectation. (It's worth paying attention to the backgrounds in the first few pages, if your geek-jones leans that way.) And the, uh, subtext to the Greyshade/Master-Com relationship is all right there in the original Marvel comics, if you ask me.

You can read Scene 7 ("Siegfried and Robot") at the official site, or click here to read it after the jump.

David's currently drawing Scene 8, "Everybody Comes to Vol's." It's set in an intergalactic rest home.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here. Scene 3 is here. Scene 4 is here. Scene 5 is here. Scene 6 is here.)


Posted at 07:12 PM    

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Thu - March 10, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 6




Here's Scene 6 of "Jaxxon's 11," our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net.

I love the way David draws Lando Calrissian; he looks just like "Barney Miller"-era Ron Glass. This scene also sees the addition of crimson-skinned sexpot Dani -- arguably the tartiest character in the "Star Wars" universe.

You can read Scene 6 ("Lando and Libido") at the official site, or click here to read it after the jump.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here. Scene 3 is here. Scene 4 is here. Scene 5 is here.)


Posted at 04:54 PM    

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Tue - March 8, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 5




Here's Scene 5 of "Jaxxon's 11," our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net.

In the Scene 5 script, I wrote that Watto's junk shop/coffee bar "should be filled with robots from the annals of science fiction," or something like that. David Stroup, ever the obsessive genius, proceeded to fill the backgrounds with something like twenty-six famous and obscure droids -- from Japanese cartoons, "Silent Running," "The Black Hole," "Forbidden Planet" and I don't know what else.

Well, actually, I do know what else -- because David provided us all with a handy key after TheForce.net held a contest to see who could spot the most automatons.

You can read Scene 5 ("Watto's Junk N' Java") at the official site, or click here to read it after the jump.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here. Scene 3 is here. Scene 4 is here.)


Posted at 09:21 AM    

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Wed - March 2, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 4




Here's Scene 4 of "Jaxxon's 11," our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net. This installment attempts to rectify all the different versions of Jabba the Hutt that are floating around out there.

What's that? You didn't know there were multiple Jabba the Hutts? Here's the deal (and I warn you, I'm about to get a little arcane):

(1) In the 1977 comic-book adaptation of the first "Star Wars," "Jabba the Hut" actually shows up to threaten Han Solo in Mos Eisley spaceport -- but he's drawn as a sort of humanoid seal.




(2) In the original cut of the 1977 movie, Lucas shot this same scene with a big fat guy in a fur coat standing in for Jabba. The scene then promptly disappeared for two decades, finally showing up in the "Star Wars: Special Edition" in 1997 -- but with a digital Jabba (in his final sluggy form) superimposed over the fat guy.





The great "Star Wars" triviologist T'Bone covers all this, in greater detail, here.

Now. If none of that made a lick of sense to you, I wouldn't suggest reading any further. This is one of those "niche audience" kind of cartoons. Though if you do read on, you will see Chewbacca driving a tiny pod racer at the "Star Wars" equivalent of Malibu Grand Prix.

You can read Scene 4 ("A Tale of Two Jabbas") at the official site, or click here to check it out after the jump.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here. Scene 3 is here.)


Posted at 02:38 PM    

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Mon - February 28, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 3




Here's Scene 3 of "Jaxxon's 11," our ongoing spoof of Marvel "Star Wars" comics for TheForce.net. It features some intergalactic group therapy and a surprisingly lengthy discussion of the order Rodentia. It also references many specific incidents and characters from the Marvel "Star Wars" universe, and if you don't get those references, uh, that's probably just as well.

You can read Scene 3 ("I Ain't No Rodent") at the official site, or click here to check it out after the jump.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here. Scene 2 is here.)


Posted at 10:43 AM    

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Sat - February 26, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 2




Here's Scene 2 of "Jaxxon's 11": "Jabba's Palace and Casino." You can read it at the official site, or click here to check it out after the jump.

(Scene 1, and a wee explanation, can be found here .)


Posted at 01:59 PM    

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Thu - February 24, 2005

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'Jaxxon's 11,' Scene 1




A couple of years ago, I had a very, very silly idea for a comic book:

Resurrect the stupidest character from the 1970s Marvel "Star Wars" comic books -- a seven-foot-tall green rabbit named Jaxxon -- and have him recruit a middle-aged Han Solo for one last heist.

As a joke, my co-worker David Stroup and I hammered out a story while driving back from a coffee shop. (This isn't quite as out-of-the-blue as it sounds -- the coffee shop was two blocks away from the offices of Dark Horse Comics, and we'd just been chatting with one of their editors.)

A few weeks later, also as a joke, we pitched it as a free Web comic to the world's biggest "Star Wars" fan site.

Well.

Forty-two pages later, "Jaxxon's 11" remains the single geekiest act of my public life. The comic has its own page at TheForce.net, and you can download a "J11 Scriptbook" and high-rez PDFs of all the pages here. I wrote the script, packing it with references to the original Marvel "Star Wars" comics (which I purchased and, between frequent bouts of wincing, read). David added his own gags and drew the pages with a lunatic attention to detail.

Unfortunately, both David and I went through major career changes in 2004. Even though we have a full story outline, we haven't put any new scenes online in about 10 months. But I hear David may soon be drawing pages 43-51 -- which I finally got around to scripting -- so I'm re-posting the "Jaxxon" archive here as a refresher.

Here's Scene 1, "Welcome to Mos Eisley." You can read it at the official site, or click here to check it out after the jump.


Posted at 01:04 PM    

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