Aww Piggy...

This week saw the passing of William Hootkins, a.k.a. Red Six pilot Lt. Jek Tono Porkins from A New Hope ("I've got a problem here... I can hold it... no I'm alright I--GGARRRRAAAGGRRYYYHH!"). This little tale is my way of remembering him.

Most folks who are familiar with Hootkins' character know him only as Jek Porkins, a name introduced in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope written by Grant S. Boucher, one of the earliest titles of West End Games' Star Wars roleplaying game line. The name Tono Porkins, however, actually predates the aforementioned incarnation by a decade. It originally appeared in 1977, in the last issue of the original Marvel Comics adaptation of A New Hope, reprinted by Dark Horse Comics on several occasions. In a touching scene, Luke's childhood friend Biggs Darklighter (the guy who yells at Porkins to "Eject! Pull up!" before he gets shot down), takes a brief second to mourn his friend's passing during the Battle of Yavin. In a storytelling convention more common in comics of the past, instead of word balloons, an omniscient narrator within the panel reveals Biggs' feelings as well as Piggy's full name: Tono Porkins.

Flash forward a quarter century. While Josh Radke was writing his first official Star Wars feature on Wraith Squadron for the Wizards of the Coast mag Star Wars Gamer, he asked me to give his work the once-over. Though he asked for any useful comments and suggestions, the piece he'd already written was already terrific (published in Gamer #9), and I had little to contribute in the way of making it better: heads-up about a comma splice here, a semicolon there.

Characteristically, however, I got in my two-cents continuity wise. One suggestion was that he reference Wedge Antilles' promotion as a general of the New Republic army, originally mentioned in a vignette in Paul Sudlow's Jedi Academy Sourcebook, which preceded his elevation to a general of the navy in Mike Stackpole's X-Wing: Isard's Revenge (both stories were jockeying for dibs on explaining Wedge's promotion as revealed in Dark Empire). The second suggestion had to do with Porkins' name(s).

There is a precedent of retroactive band-aids in the case of the Yavin pilots of Episode IV who were often given overlapping names stemming largely from two sources: the Star Wars Customizable Card Game and the first Star Wars novelization. When the Star Wars Encyclopedia later came out, these names were quaintly combined, integrating the older, more down-to-earth sounding novelization names as nicknames: Garven "Dave" Dreis, Jon "Dutch" Vander, Davish "Pops" Krail.

Turning Tono into Porkins' nickname was ruled out pretty quick since the name "Piggy" from the novelization had already been adopted as the pilot's pet name (this is, in fact, the very reason Porkins is even mentioned in relation to Wraith Squadron, since one of its members, a Gamorrean, shares the Piggy appellation with the movie pilot). But the next solution was no big brain strain: how about a middle name? Or a compound first name, a la the written languages of some cultures? "Tono" was too weird to fit into the pattern of friendly nicknames the movie pilots had anyway.

I shot the suggestion over to Josh and he liked it, incorporating it into his article, and making Jek Tono Porkins' full name official.

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Hootkins. Tono lives. ~ Abel G. Peņa

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To read Josh Radke's complementary blogs to Star Wars Gamer #9's "Wraith Squadron," click here.

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