Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark, Lee, and Matthew Wrather are joined by Zach Giallongo, writer and illustrator of “Shadows of Endor,” a Star Wars: Ewoks comic. They also commemorate their fourth grade teachers in memory of Mrs. Krabappel, voiced by the late Marcia Wallace.
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Your Panel
- Special Guest Zach Giallongo: @zackules
- Matthew Belinkie
- Peter Fenzel: @fenzelian
- Mark Lee: @goestotwelve
- Matthew Wrather: @mwrather
Further Reading
- Shadows of Endor on Amazon (affiliate link)
- The Ewok Line on How I Met Your Mother
- Star Wars Ewok Adventures: Caravan of Courage / the Battle for Endor on Amazon (affilate link)
- Ewok Celebration (a.k.a. the “Yub Nub” song) on Wookiepedia
- Auld Lang Syne on Wikipedia
Imagine if Belinkie’s hypnotised trigger phrase was actually “subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it possibly doesn’t deserve”. You narrowly miss a Presidential assassination every week.
Please fix the bad apostrophe on the front page summary for this article. It makes my brain hurt.
Mission accomplished
My 4th grade teacher was Mrs. Mrozowska (you could translate it as Frost or Freeze, no, I didn’t know her origin story nor if she fought Batman) and she… lived in a school building. A corner office was adapted into living quarter.
I extended my pity to her kids; never skip a school day, never “forget” about parent-teachers conference.
Jar Jar spoke in a vaguely Jamaican patois, so his character was completely transparent. That was the mistake.
On the other hand, the Ewoks, like Chewbacca and R2D2, spoke in their own language, and that created a blank space for the viewer to fill in with their own interpretations. If you wanted the Ewoks to be a cute teddy-bear picnic, they were. If you wanted them to be brave warriors fighting to protect their home from invaders, they were. Likewise, R2D2 could be a little kid sidekick, or the wise old veteran nobody listens to, or some other variation.
It also helps to get around some of the unpleasant subtext about R2D2 and Chewbacca; if you want to, you can imagine them sassing back to Luke and Han like Rochester and Jack Benny.
R2D2 as Rochester — that just made my brain explode. I now want to watch A New Hope with Benny dubbed in for Luke.
(Although now I’m worried that Star Wars is droidist.)
This episode was definitely an eye-opener for me — being one of those folks who was older when Return came out, I previously had no idea there were people who saw the Ewoks as anything but furry abominations invented solely for marketing purposes. Hearing about the comic (and generally their place in the Expanded Universe) makes them sound so much cooler.
The “Yub Wub” song is the dubstep remix.
This isn’t quite a dubstep remix, but it’ll do for now, until some hero gets on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUWk1WBfDP8
I listened to this episode after the Thor review, so I was wondering if “Ewok graphic novel guy” was a new character on The Simpsons. Seriously though, kudos to Zach for his “overnight” success with Dark Horse (more proof that chance favors the prepared mind).
I was in high school when Jedi was released, and I took issue with 1) Why are we trying to blow up another Death Star and 2) What’s with the little furry aliens? I did respect their low-tech fighting skills, though. The discussion with Zach did succeed in getting me to consider the Ewoks more seriously, so maybe that is his gift to us older folks. :-)
On the topic of a gritty reboot, let’s remember a TV show which predated Jedi by five years, a mix of sci fi, family drama, and sex comedy, known as Battlestar Galactica. They had the original Muffitt, Starbuck, and comical interaction between Baltar and the Cylons. So maybe an Ewok reboot isn’t so far-fetched.
The Han Solo Trilogy is basically the Godfather of Hutts looking at Jabba and his uncle very closely along with their closest rivals. Star Wars Tales contained comic comedic stories about the Max Rebo band. The Tusken life is definitely considered in Star Wars Republic from Dark Horse and Junior Jedi Knights. The Expanded Universe is so big that there’s almost anything you could want. I loved this episode, writing for Star Wars is my life dream.
But Victory Celebration is an infinitely better piece of music than Yubnub.
Also, I’ve seen the Ewoks for a long time as the Vietcong. The Empire, like the US, were terrible at asymetric warfare. That’s why rebel guerillas and low tech ewoks with local knowledge had the edge against an entire legion of the Emperor’s best troops