If you check out the "The Way We Were" section of Bantha Tracks in this month's Star Wars Insider #88, you'll find a picture of me from 1983, when I was four years old, costumed as Wicket the Ewok. (You can also see me unmasked in a photo here).

It was long thought, perhaps erroneously, that in the war of the sci-fi franchises, of all things to be a fan of, Star Wars was the one that was cool. By contrast, if you were a Star Trek fan, you were immediately labeled a social outcast. Of course, when the throngs came out for the re-release of the Special Editions and The Phantom Menace, that illusion was dashed as labels of geek and nerd started flying.

That was nothing new to me, though. Because it was way back in the early 90s that I discovered I was a loser even by Star Wars fans' standards.

I was an Ewok lover.

It's true. As a kid, I owned at least three Wicket W. Warrick shirts, all with the same print, similar to the photo above, with the cloth color varying shirt to shirt. I tape-recorded the Ewoks telemovies and fell hopelessly in puppy love with Aubrey Miller, a.k.a. Cindel Towani, and as an avid viewer I helped keep the Ewoks cartoon on the air when Droids petered out after just one season.

Then Star Wars began to gain momentum again in the early 90s, and pockets of folks were starting to talk about how cool Star Wars was again... except for Return of the Jedi. Perhaps, when I was courageous, I ventured to at least say that "Ewoks aren't that bad."

No longer.

Yes, I love Return of the Jedi. It is the Star Wars movie that I have watched the most. When Star Wars was re-released on VHS in 1992, after not having seen any of the films in years, it was the one I watched first. Ewoks are not the worst part of Return of the Jedi, but are in fact the BEST part of Return of the Jedi. I was shattered by the removal of the Ewok victory song from the special edition of Return of the Jedi, and elated to find it back in with the unaltered original trilogy DVD re-release.

Why do I like Wicket? Well, without putting too fine a point on it, he reminds me of me. Hairy, small, tough, and, if I may intimate, cute. And overall, good-natured.

I strongly suspect there are many other Ewok lovers out there (Ewok Gospel, anyone?), particularly among my overlooked "generation" of Star Wars fans, those born in the late 70s or early 80s, who may or may not have seen any of the original trilogy movies in theaters, but had their primary exposure to Star Wars as kids on television. In any case, as I look at my recently purchased, bad*ss little Wicket Attakus statue, the most expensive Star Wars collectible I've ever purchased, one thing remains certain: if Star Wars is forever, then Ewoks are too.

Yub nub. ~ Abel G. Peņa

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