Part I of a series of blog updates...

Star Wars is dreadfully serious business. No, really. It's grim. It deals with grown up, mature subject matter like Senate hearings, starship tactics, and mass-energy conversion ratios. This well-realized and fully internally consistent universe has no place for telepathic hamsters or large green rabbits. Not on my watch.

Imagine me saying the above while suppressing schoolboy giggles. See, after 30 years, Star Wars has grown far too big to be easily painted with just one brush of tone and style. There are those who want their Wars dark, grim and gritty - the last five years have been a morose treat for this segment, what with the NJO and Ep3 taking a turn for the shadowy. Then, there are those delight in Star Wars being a bubblegum and pop kind of groove - it's usually old-timers who remember the 70s, and the inherent capital F FUN of the original Star Wars, and its often dated ephemera of an era designed to be disposal but stubbornly wasn't.

Honestly, I'm somewhere in the middle. I like the whole picture, but I think you need both spectrums fed with new content at the same time. While the realists bristled at the actions of the Clone Wars cartoon, my inner child was delighted and downright envious of the kids today, wondering why didn't I get cartoons as cool as these when I was a tyke?

A few years back, there was an editor at LucasBooks by the name of Benjamin Harper. He and I had very similar tastes when it came to Star Wars. We liked the dark and moody drama of the grown up stuff - hell, he's an unabashed dark side booster all the way - but we both championed the fun underdogs like Ewoks, Jar Jar and our true hero, Jaxxon.

So it was with Harper at the editorial helm of Star Wars Gamer that I was tasked to write the REAL story of Aduba-3. We were gung-ho about it, pushing it on Wizards of the Coast to even go so far as putting Jaxxon and the silly crew on the COVER of a magazine. A green rabbit?! On the COVER of a 2001 magazine? What are we crazy?

Crazy as a rabbit, my friends. Nervous folks in the art department slapped the infinities label on the cover as a concession to those hardcore realists who didn't want a green bunny in their galaxy. But pay it no attention! Jaxxon is alive and well in Star Wars mythos. He just happens to live in a corner that's easily ignored by those who need to ignore it.

So, bringing Jaxxon back to the spotlight after so many years of shoddy treatment was done with gusto, and more than a little mischief. But Ben and I reasoned, if we love Jaxxon so much, surely there must be those out there that also love him? Right? Right?

Okay, so Gamer folded because of poor sales. I'm not gonna blame that on the big green bunny.