Welcome fictional friends
to the second of my Yay New Star Wars Film Celebratory Look At Posts, which are
fittingly a trilogy. Today’s subject is the Dark Horse Comics adaptation of Splinter
of the Mind’s Eye.
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
was the first original Star Wars novel to be released (in 1978), it was written
by Alan Dean Foster who had previously ghost-written the novelisation of A New Hope Star Wars (Star Wars: From the
Adventures of
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye issues 1-4)
Quick Summary: not long after the destruction of the
Death Star, Leia and C-3PO are forced to land on Mimban after their ship is
damaged, Luke and R2-D2 intend to follow but both crash after being caught in
an electrical storm, they meet up and Leia momentarily gets caught in some
quicksand like mud because fetishes. After a night’s sleep and some incestuous
thoughts from Luke the foursome find a secret Imperial minding facility, steal
some clothes and get some food, whereupon Luke slaps Leia one to keep their
cover and they see the Imperial forces abusing the local ‘greenies’ for their
amusement. Food eaten they’re approached by an Halla, who is Force sensitive
and does them a deal, she’ll help them steal a ship and get off the planet if
they’ll help her find the Kaliburr crystal. Halla even has a shard, or a
splinter if you like, and Luke realises it can enhance a person’s Force Powers
(pretty much). Leia getting Luke back for the slap causes horseplay that causes
them to get into a fight with some miners; Halla leaves them to their fate and
takes the droids with her. The miners get their arses kicked but they all get
arrested and taken to local Little Hitler, Grammel; he takes their weapons,
their shard and throws them in a cell with two not-Wookies after they lie and
tell him they’re escaped convicts. While checking their story (which Grammel
doesn’t believe) they find out who Leia is and the message is sent to Darth
Vader. The not-Wookies turn out to be Yuzzem, and Luke speaks Yuzem (from his
farm boy days), they’re hung-over but helpful and after Halla shows up to help,
the four escape and in the process Luke gets his lightsabre back and Grammel
gets a head injury. The group head towards the temple where the crystal should
be but run afoul of a phallic symbol George Lucas Wandrella, a giant worm.
Vader’s nearly at Mimban and the Wandrella clearly has
a taste for Skywalker bloody, perusing Luke & Leia while the others escape,
they lead it down a huge shaft that turns out to be a tunnel belonging to an
indigenous underground tribe the Coway, the Wandrella falls down and takes the
ladder so the two move through the tunnels, finding and crossing a lake using a
giant lillypad. Halla and the droids get captured then the siblings get jumped
by some Coways, they deal with them via murder. But the Coways are impressed
and have Luke fight their champion, when it looks like Luke’s going to be
drowned by said champion Threepio screams their word for quit – quitting will
get them all killed btw. Of course no one listens to Threepio and the champion
gets brained by a rock, Leia says it was Luke’s doing but he’s…not sure (nor am
I, I think it was Halla?). The celebratory feast is ruined by the approach of
Darth Vader and a shitload of Stormtroopers though, as the best warrior now,
Luke is judged by the chief to lead the Coway forces. It goes surprisingly well
and Leia shoots Vader in the back, but he’s alright and Luke senses he’s
heading for the crystal too, the group steal themselves and transport and Vader
slices Grammel in half for his failure (holy shit). At the temple the group are
attacked by a dinosaur as they find the gem, and Luke is trapped under rubble
caused by it, so when Darth Vader arrives Leia takes his lightsabre and duels
with him! Yeah she gets her arse kicked and Luke ends up saving her, duelling
his daddy until the Dark Lord of the Sith um, trips up his own severed arm and
falls down a big hole but holy shit, go Leia! Hall uses the gem to heal both
Skywalkers and they head off to steal a ship and get to where they were going.
So this was written to be a
lower-budget sequel to A New Hope? You can tell. The whole story is exactly the
sort of late 70’s low budget sequel I’d expect, it’s even written around only
the few actors who signed on with pale imitations of the characters played by
the actors who didn’t to replace them. We get a wholly uncreative premise – people looking for
a MacGuffin and having various random encounters until they fight the bad guy
at the end, mind you Star Wars didn’t have the most original plot but this
feels like the sort of film that was releasd in the wake of Star Wars, not
offensive but lacking that ‘sparkle’ that Star Wars had, but then I suppose it
would have been such a film! So as a side story between two films its fine but
as a film it would have been a big disappointment. Speaking of disappointments:
Darth Vader falling down a hole, that’s pathetic! I do understand the position
Foster was in, for its original intention he needed to keep Vader possibly
alive for a possible sequel and as a novel he had to keep Vader alive for the
actual sequel and Luke couldn’t look too strong because that wouldn’t have
fitted with said sequel so he couldn’t have Luke just kick his old man’s arse
or fucking cut him in half but surely you could have brought the temple down
and have Vader flee for his own safety or have the gem, y’know the TITULAR GEM,
do something to him or give Luke a power surge and have him fling the elder
Skywalker across the planet? Anything must be better have having him fall down
an hole, surely?
That scene however gives
the story/novel/comic it’s one big plus and that’s having Leia fight Darth
Vader one-on-one, we never saw Leia fight Vader (we saw her sass him) and it is
so cool to have this scene, this is what I think the stories in expanded
universe material should be doing, giving us things we didn’t/couldn’t see in
the source material and it gives the novel/story/comic something important,
something that makes it more than just a tie-in novel/comic/story, this is the
tie-in novel/comic/story where Leia
fought Vader. To make it better it’s actually a good fight that Leia does
shitty in, stopping it from being unbelievable.
Uncreative premise aside
Foster is does a pretty good job, I say Foster because I’m assuming Austin
adapted this pretty much straight when it comes to dialogue, I haven’t read the
novel but I read the Wookieepedia articles and very little dialogue seems to
have been changed (though people who say it have been, most of this work in the
story’s favour but it could very well mean Foster isn’t as good as I say).
Anyway ghost writing that adaptation must have given Foster the necessary
insight into the characters and more so the balance of comedy and action of
Star Wars because everything felt pretty much right to me, but then I’m only a
casual fan, I’m sure the hardcore Star War faithful could pick any number of
moments where Foster didn’t’ ‘get the characters’ but I had very little
problems, I might question Luke and Leia play fighting at such a time but the
farm boy DID deserve it. Speaking of that, Luke & Leia, it’s not quite as
bad as you might be lead to believe but it is there, Lucas has attempted to
explain this away saying some bullshit like ‘it was always intentional to show
they had feelings for each other but they just weren’t sure what feelings’ or
something similar – horseshit, they fucking mud wrestle in one scene, there is
more ship teasing than the Mary Celeste, hell by the end of the story I was
rooting for them to get it on and I know they’re related! Speaking of that,
Leia, she got sexualised pretty hard in this, going from her white robes to a
tight black t-shirt then a form hugging all-in-one ninja suit thing, in the
book she also has her hair down for most of the story, I think we have a case
of…what does TV Tropes call fanservice when it’s authorservice? *Google* Author
Appeal! That’s it! Lots of Author Appeal, especially as this was written in a
time before Slave Girl Leia was a thing. Christ Sprouce is also brilliant, he’s
always fantastic though, he has a clean, attractive style – never shies away
from detail or backgrounds and never veers into the exaggerated or
‘Escher-girl’ anatomy, in fact he rarely draws anything off-model. His
likenesses though, I’m honestly not sure if he’s trying to do them or not, but
they do somehow look like Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher despite being firmly in
his style, more so Hamill than Fisher but then I don’t think a lot of people
get Fisher right and I feel few bother (the cover artist for this series does
though, his name’s Hugh Flemming, and I wished he’d remade the novel’s cover
for one of the four issues – issue four preferably – I love that drawing, I
have it saved in high res on my computer even).
All-in-all its ok, it’s a
nice little side-story with some good art and dialogue and a great moment you
couldn’t get anywhere else, and incest, it’s not amazing but it’s far, FAR from
terrible – Darth Vader falling down a hole aside.
Next time we
Look At the Heir to the Empire which has a blue bloke in it, I think, I get it
mixed up with Dark Empire.
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