[Update: February 23, 2006... Unknown Soldier: The Story of General Grievous in Insider 86 is now on newsstands and arriving in subscribers mailboxes! And its supplement Lord of War is now online! Enjoy folks and let me know your thoughts!]

No more delays. "Unknown Soldier: The Story of General Grievous" will at long last be published in Star Wars Insider #86. What's more, instead of recyclying old art from Visionaries and other sources, my buddy and frequent collaborator Joe Corroney has been hired onto the project to create some jaw-dropping illustrations. A look at the finished and colored illos left me salivatin' for more.

Also, I can now reveal that there will be an exclusive companion article, tentatively titled "The Story of General Grievous II: Lord of War," available as part of the Hyperspace supplement to Insider #86. More details at the link above.

Furthermore, inspired by the Endnotes for the New Essnetial Chronology, I will also be posting endnotes for The Story of General Grievous here on my blog, as a guide to both Grievous articles.

Update: February 8, 2006: Subscribers are now receiving the Story of General Grievous in their mailboxes and the Hyperspace online supplement shouldn't be far behind! Join the discussion here on StarWars.com and at TheForce.net.


I recently completed work on my latest project for Star Wars Insider #84 [#86 now, actually ~ Abel]. In "The Story of General Grievous," Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem's long-lost brother finally gets his due. (That's one for you sanguine Smash TV/Total Carnage fiends--"I love it!").

A little lesson in how an Insider shotgun article gets completed. Why "shotgun" you ask? I'll explain. Unlike most of my Star Wars work, "The Story of General Grievous" (pending title), along with "A Subject of the Divine" -- the THX 1138 feature I did for Insider #78 -- was pitched to me by my editor instead of the other way around about a week before this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

I now paraphrase.

Editor: A lot of folks have been asking about General Grievous' background, and we're probably [emphasis mine ~ Abel] going to be doing a piece on him for Insider #84. I contacted you to see if you'd be interested in that.

Abel: General Grievous, eh? (Rubs goatee...)

Grievous is a really cool character. Besides having a name inspired by Sgt. Slaughter of WWF and G.I. Joe fame, the bone-and-metal visual design of the guy is stunning. After seeing his mug on the cover of Insider #75 and first illustrated in that issue's HoloNet news (Yo Joe!), I was hooked. I'm already a huge cyborg fan. I was obsessed with Robocop and Terminator in the 80s and 90s (in fact, Frank Miller and Walt Simonson's Robocop Vs. Terminator was the first comic book I ever purchased), and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the fate of John the Mandroid in the Eliminators left an enduring impression on me as a kid... of course, so did a Full Metal Jacket and Hamburger Hill marathon that same year. Hell, I even watched the severely underbudgeted Nemesis. Nemesis! I say it twice because, amazingly, that's actually how many times I watched it. (Though I waited over a decade until it debuted on Telemundo this year for that second go. As needlessly argued by literary theorists, sometimes something is clearly gained in the translation).

When I thought about General Grievous, yes, I thought, there's something definitely there I'd be interested in writing about. I'd just read the Visionaries trade paperback and was struck by Warren Fu's depictions of Grievous and the overall background of the character. I told my editor I was definitely interested in the project.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't hear back from him right away, since Comic-Con was right around the corner. And suddenly BOOM: it was convention time and I was off on the Interstate 5 to San Diego. I saw my editor there only briefly enough to snag a copy of the Ultimate Vader Guide and to exchange an "I'll be in touch"-type promise.

Which was kept. After that crazy weekend was over, we talked about the Vader Guide and the recently released Most Memorable Moments, and proposals for some upcoming issues. That's when I remembered the Grievous piece.

"Hey," I said, "whatever happened with that Grievous piece you wanted me to do?"

"Oh yeah," he said. "Think you can write it by next Monday?"

"..." I said.

Now... you remember playing football with six or so of your buddies? And there were frequently times when the all-time QB, because you were always short one man, would yell "Shotgun!-Set!-Hut!-Hut!-Hike!" and then nonchalantly toss you the ball to run an easy 40-yard touchdown the entire length of that impromptu football field? Well, if you're thinking Editor = Quarterback and Abel = Easy-Touchdown-Scoring Receiver, as pretty as that analogy may seem, it has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the term shotgun piece. Or Hutts, for that matter.

No, the origins of the name are much more archaic, some say matrimonial, and have everything to do with that explosive, projectile-hurling tool colloquially known as a "shotgun." Upon hearing the words, can you write this article in one week, you feel the irresistible urge to obtain one of these tools and start using it on things, starting with yourself.

But that's probably just the Full Metal Jacket talking. *Twitch*

In any case, I took the job for a 2000-word article. And I actually had a little bit more than a week, which any hardworking journalist will tell you is more than enough time, probably too much. As a former journalist myself, I would largely agree to that statement in the case of something like a feature on THX. But for folks familiar with my meticulous approach to Star Wars continuity, one week was...well, hopefully enough.

After all, "History of the Mandalorians" took only a month to research and write. Two at the most. How long can one measly cyborg Jedi-killer take?

In the end, I bumped the word-count to 3,500 and came in on deadline.

Star Wars fans and editors alike should be feeling that infamous Smash TV and Robocop mantra growing on them right now like that chin on Sgt. Slaughter--"I'll buy that for a dollar!" ~ Abel G. Peņa

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