Tom's Fabulous Star Wars Collection

X-34 Landspeeder - Factory Fresh!

On September 1, 2017, I went to Escape Velocity, a pleasant little convention in Washington, DC, that's sort of a science convention, sort of a pop culture convention, sort of an arts and crafts convention, a little bit of everything.  It was a fine time, I spent the day manning the table for the DC Star Wars Collectors Club.  But one of the coolest things I saw, in addition to some original paintings by the Brothers Hildebrant, was a model of a Landspeeder as it might have been sold right off the assembly line.  It was really one of the most creative things I'd seen.

Built by Acme Design, Inc., of Elgin, Illinois, the X-34 Landspeeder, as initially offered by the manufacturer, was a marvel of art deco design.  (If art deco design exists in a galaxy far, far away!)  By adding a few cones to the engine nacelles and a dome canopy (as was actually the original design of the movie prop,) as well as a shiny, glistening paintjob, the model builders created a truly plausible retconning of the classic movie vehicle.  The new model was displayed alongside its' screen-accurate counterpart that is dented, dusty and looks like it's been on regular blue milk runs in the desert for the last 65 years. 

I was honestly taken aback by the clever details added to the new model.  While the version we know looks like a beat up pick up truck, the new version looks like a car of the future, a real Flash Gordon hot rod.  The model builder, Clint Borucki, explained that he did a quick Google search to find the Sorosuub emblem (the in-universe manufacturer of the X-34.)  That was new to me, or maybe I'd forgotten it, but it sure seemed to be a great, logical thing to add to the vehicle and in keeping with George Lucas' love of classic cars that inspired some of the film designs.

Other nifty details included a dealership window sticker that was entirely illegible, but gave fuel mileage, extras and other specs as you would see on any new car.  Paper floormats were also included because those Sorosuub employees "Really Do Care"!  The detailing even went so far as tiny copper grating inside the vents of the engine nacelles.  It was a remarkable piece of model building.

Acme's floor display also included a set of lightsaber hilts that were actually tooled for props at Disney parks, a very cool egg and Nostromo jacket from "Alien", a lifesized TARDIS and assorted helmets from other films.  But the factory fresh Landspeeder stole the show.  Check out the Galleries on the left for more photos... 

Star Wars Rock Remixes

(Someone pointed out to me last weekend that I haven't updated my blog recently, so thank you to both of you for reading and noticing!  Here's something very cool that I found recently.)

Back in 2001, LucasArts released a video game called Star Wars Force Commander.  When it was released, there was a bit of press concerning the games' soundtrack.  I don't remember exactly how it was described, but as a music aficionado, it was enough to pique my interest, so I clicked on a link to download a few of the tracks.  I was blown away.  I was later able to obtain two more tracks and made my own little 5-track e.p. of the Star Wars Force Commander Soundtrack.  Simply put, these are remixes of John Williams classic scores featuring rather blistering rock guitar in some places, looped movie dialogue, synthesizers, blips, bloops, sturm and drang.

At the time, I tried like hell to track down the "soundtrack" CD that was included in a LucasFilm store exclusive iteration of the game.  I have literally been on the hunt for that CD for 16 years.  Once, I lost out on it in an eBay auction.  And until last week, I'd never seen it listed on eBay again.  But last week I did see it and this time I won it.  And, guess what?  There are only three songs on the CD.  The same damn three songs I downloaded 16 years ago...

I knew that would happen, so I "googled" the soundtrack and wouldn't you know it?  It popped up right away.  It took me to a pretty neat site with hundreds of other video game soundtracks available for download, if you're moved by such things.  I heartily recommend you download all 28 tracks of the Force Commander soundtrack, but if you just want the three that really moved me for the last 16 years, check out "Imperial Rage (Leviathan Mix)", "Assault on Ruul" and "Crisis on Sarapin".  The remaining 25 make up what is a thoroughly enjoyable alternative mix of Star Wars music that is respectful to the original source while sending the music on a wild, techno-psychedelic adventure.  My yammering doesn't do these mixes justice, so let the music do the talkin'!

Star Wars Force Commander Soundtrack

(If you try to download all at once, they try to charge you.  Simply download each track individually and it's free.)

Finally, here's a little blurb I found from another Star Wars fanpage.

"Insights from Project Leader, Garry Gaber

When I started Force Commander, I knew that the genre we were entering had a certain style of music that didn't necessarily fit the mold of the previous Star Wars games we had produced as a company. When Peter McConnell and I first starting talking about Force Commander back in January, 1999, we both had ideas about how the music should sound. I wondered out loud, "is there anyway we can do something a little different with the classic Star Wars music?" And Peter, with a big smirk on his face replied, "As a matter of fact, I've been wanting to do that for a long time." So now what you have in your hands is one of the most original treatments of the Star Wars music from the Classic trilogy since John Williams first composed the pieces. In listening to each of these themes and Dave Levison's amazingly deep remixes, Peter and Dave were able to evoke what it was that originally made me fall in love with William's themes, while adding a new element to fall in love with as well. I'm sure you will all feel the same."

My Blue Milk Cameo

On 9/23/16, my good friends Rod and Leanne Hannah at Blue Milk Special  name-dropped me in one of their strips.  Even though I'm more of a Rebels kind of guy, the Imperials do have better hats!  The other officer in glasses is Eric Grubb of the Old Line Garrison of the 501st Legion.

 

Star Wars Celebration Orlando 2017 Swag

I'm heading down to Orlando for one day at the big Star Wars convention.  In addition to a few pieces left over from ICE, I'll be giving away bottle caps that are similar to those being given away by the DC Star Wars Collecting Club.  Here's a preview...

Carmine Infantino

At the risk of violating some sort of copyright law, I took a few pictures of the ONLY unique Star Wars mentions (other than the odd cover art reprint) in Carmine Infantino's autobiography.  Boy what a disappointment it was to find this scant bit of information about the artists' involvement in Star Wars.  But it served to show that while contributing a great deal to nearly half of the 107 issue series, Star Wars was only a very small portion of his life and career.  I conducted an interview with Mr. Infantino once for a project I was working on in the mid-90's that went nowhere.  A very pleasant guy, even though I may have been interrupting his dinner...

Cloud City Playset Unboxing

I picked up a Cloud City Playset at a convention a while back.  It was mint in the box, but the tape was pretty well dried off so I purchased it with the intention of opening it and upgrading my old one.  For your viewing pleasure...

Here's my old one...

Here's the new one side by side with the old one...

ICE 2016, or DICE ...or DC ICE ...or...?

Part of the inspiration for the "re-visioning" of my collection was DICE.  So while the ideas for the redo had been banging around in my head for a while and I decided to go ahead and follow through with my ideas before DICE was announced, DICE was a good motivator.  So you may be asking, "What is DICE?"  I'll let DC Star Wars Collectors Club president Martin J. Thurn explain:

"What exactly is this "DICE" thing we're talking about?

"DICE" is our local nickname for what is officially called "ICE 2016", which stands for "International Collectors' Event"; the "D" comes from our "D.C." region so it is also called "DC ICE" or simply "DICE".

In simplest terms, ICE is a gathering of major Star Wars collectors from all over the world. But to expand on that a little...

A very small percentage of Star Wars collectors is lucky enough to have a club in their area, and most collectors get to see each other at Celebration, but friendships that have been fostered over the years and (perhaps more strongly) the desire to show off and see other collections first-hand drive a desire to get together more often, ideally at each others' houses.  The ICE events were created as a way to kill all these birds with one stone.

As a host, you get a bunch of people come over to see your collection all at once or all in one day, as  opposed to perhaps dozens of individuals or small groups arranging visits at different days & times, or perhaps never getting to show your collection at all). As a visitor, they get to see many individual collections all in one big trip, as opposed to making several small trips over time, or never seeing these collections at all. To feed the friendship side of the coin, ICE includes large parties and socials in addition to the collection visits." 

A few more pictures from the event can be found here.  Also, here's a link to a great podcast from the event, courtesy of Star Wars Action News.  Arnie and Marjorie Carvallos are two of the nicest people I met at this event and I must say, Marjorie is the classiest Facebook friend I have!  I had a LOT of fun doing the interview with her and thankfully, Logan ate all the bad parts!

Getting ALMOST Back to Normal!

Here you see the finished comic shelves with a few things set on them to get an idea of spacing.  These shelves would ultimately display scenes shown in vintage Marvel Star Wars comics including deleted scenes from A New Hope (Biggs and Jabba scenes,) as well as scenes from the great Marvel stories including characters like Fenn Shysa and Shira Brie (AKA Lumiya.  Ooops, spoiler alert...)  I also included figures from the Droids cartoon series and a Shadow Trooper scene from Russ Manning's early newspaper adventures in the Star Wars Universe.

Also, as you see below, by this point, the entire room was getting back to normal.  Final adjustments to the displays were inevitable after the picture was taken, as even today, seven months later, I continue to fine tune each display.  Over the next few weeks, I'll show a few of my favorite close-up shots from various scenes before taking a new, full set of photos of the entire collection.

 

New Comic Scene Shelves

Here I began building a new set of shelves to hold vintage Marvel Comic-related scenes from the great vintage Star Wars comics.  Hasbro made numerous comic packs featuring the old comics with new accompanying figures.  Out of all the Hasbro comic packs, the Marvels packs were the only ones I did not sell during my early 2016 'purge'.  A few Dark Horse packs are still in my collection, but most EU stuff not related to the Marvel comics were sold.  And I have no regrets.  The new shelf would serve two purposes; first was to display the Marvel stuff, and second, on the other side, I created more wall space to display my Star Wars style D window box poster.  And as you can see to the right, the new Clone Wars displays were coming along quite nicely at this point.  More to come...

Return of the Jedi

Yes, this is JUST Return of the Jedi.  Like ANH, there are six shelves devoted entirely to Jedi.  (Empire has five shelves.)  Here are three of the Jedi shelves.  Jabba's Palace, Jabba's dungeon and the Rebel Fleet at Sullust.  One thing that has been very interesting, noting the many variations of vehicles over the years, is that I've selected what I think are the very best representations of each vehicle, in addition to their vintage counterparts.  So here, you see the best of the best A-Wing, B-Wing and Millennium Falcon, which I think is the greatest Star Wars toy ever made.  Again, this is not the final arrangement, but it's getting close.

Another interesting thing to observe is how the vintage figures hang with the modern figures.  In rare cases, they work pretty well mixed together.  But mostly, I like to keep them a bit separated.  So, if you look closely, you can see the vintage figures on the left side of Jabba's palace and the modern figures on the right.  Just that small delineation helps everything look "right". 

Also, like the vehicles, I use what I think are the best of the best figures.  For example, the Boushh figure at the far right is from 2007, though another one was released just last year.  The earlier version stands better, has a better paint job and is just a generally better representation of the character.  Rarely, though, do I go back to the mid-90's Power of the Force figures, though, which were great toys, but often too big or had odd poses.  There are a few characters from that era that haven't been remade, though, including one or two of Jabba's crew members and Mon Mothma!

More to come...