Part III in a series of Blogs

Let's dive into the text of Gamer #4...

P. 42 "Aduba-3 is on few star chart, and with good reason..." It seemed fitting to swipe the introduction directly from Roy Thomas's script for issue #7. The needless qualifier "relatively" was axed by word-count conscious editors, but with no harm. What I loved about Roy is he had a real knack for interjection lore that really wasn't necessary to the plot, but added a lot of flavor to what he was working on. My hands down favorite is his description of Chewbacca during a particularly intense fight scene in that same issue: "A seven-foot anthropoid who hails from a world where violence is such an everyday occurrence that there are fifteen separate words for it in the Wookiee vocabulary" Rip-roaring stuff!

p. 43

The chromium-seeding is of course taken from the original comic source, but I expanded it a bit by pointing fingers at Tenloss Syndicate, a criminal organization first established by West End in their 1994 Galaxy Guide 11. It got major play in Shadows of the Empire that people tend to assume it's from that source. Modirin Mining, I believe, was new info.

Tun Aduban was a new name given to the otherwise nameless port town in the comic. I like two-word names because they come with built in legitimacy just by sounding strangely familiar, thanks to our plethora of Santa, Sans, Los, and Las Cities across the U.S. and elsewhere. Tun Aduban kind of echoes Tun Wala from "As Long As We Live" too.

PK droids are from Episode I; whenever possible in source material, it helps to mix up eras in ways that make sense, as it helps knit this crazy patchwork quilt together.

The Sacred Way is from the comic, as is Pera, though I thought to make him a Verpine. Sure, he doesn't quite look like a Verpine, but I figured Frank Springer's artwork in that first issue is so sketchy, nothing looks quite right. I mean, the bantha doesn't look like a bantha and Han and Chewie barely look like themselves, so such artistic license allows for such things. Besides, it saves creating yet another green insect.

Though the bar has no name in the comic, I kept with the Western theme by describing it not as a cantina, but a saloon. Locru is new, and not based on anything I can remember. Page 44 mentions nikta, which is from the original comic arc, which I'm glad to say I resurrected from obscurity in 1995 with sneaky references to it in both Galaxy Guide 11 and my short story "Spare Parts"

That page also establishes that Azoora is a Wroonian, a blue-skinned alien race first featured in the Star Wars Adventure Journal. Again, why re-invent the wheel if you don't have to?

Although it seems likely Serji-X Arrogantus is a thinly veiled reference to Sergio Aragones, I didn't go down that route since I figured one reference to him was enough. Instead, I played it mostly straight, sticking to established swoop racer lore from the original Star Wars Sourcebook, which established Caprioril as a hotbed for the dangerous sport.

Warto's species, Boltrunian, is a nod to one of editor Benjamin Harper's most favorite insults, "poltroon."

p. 45. This is where it gets downright devilish. A note about Tuckerisms. A Tuckerism is a phrase that describes a name dropped into a book as a nod to a real life person, usually a friend. The Star Wars expanded universe is full of these. I don't mind them, if they're clever and not self-serving. My least favorite Tuckerism is Yrrep Evets from Shadows of the Empire, and you could probably guess why.

But if done right, they can be a very nice subtle gag. Jaxxon himself doesn't appear to be a Tuckerism, but he was created with Bugs Bunny in mind. A few issues later, in Star Wars #16, he falls afoul of some bounty hunters named Fud and Dafi. Not exactly subtle, but I armed with that precedent, I decided to go into some dangerous territories and make references to my OTHER fandom: classic Warner Bros. Cartoons. The editor, Ben, was also a Looney Tunes fan, and I knew he wasn't likely to slap me down, as long as I stayed subtle.

So, here they are:

Coachelle Prime. The Lepi homeworld. There's a particular sentence on page 46 that's very deliberate in its structure: "...having colonized all five worlds of the Coachelle system and the asteroid belt therein..."

In the 1953 WB short, "Bully for Bugs" Bugs Bunny takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ends up in the middle of a bull fighting ring. He turns to the "gent in the fancy knickerbockers" - the bullfighter - and asks "Excuse me, can you direct me to the Coachella Valley and the Giant Carrot Festival... therein?"

The other reference is Jaxxon's time with a mercenary group in the Corus system. The sentence "When the boys of Corus broke up..." is a reference to the 1950 WB short, "What's Up, Doc?" which features the repeating gag of an intermission featuring singers parading to the following tune: "Oh, we're the boys of the Chorus, we hope you like our show/ We know you're rooting for us, but now we have to go..."

In the species write-up, the reference to the Silly Rabbit constellation is actually from an audacious Tuckerism that L Neil Smith tucked into his Lando novels to a certain breakfast cereal. It made sense to bring that back again as the site of Jaxxon's homeworld.

The Lepi cited as example names were changed in editing. My original list was Heff, Grubbat, Jaxxon and Tebbi. Grubbat was from a Star Wars Tales story. Heff and Tebbi were from Tatooine Manhunt. Someone either at LucasBooks or Wizards got sneaky and changed Tebbi to Trixx. I can't fault them, but I can't take credit for it.

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