Star Wars

I recently had the honor of being a participating artist in Topps’ 5th series of Star Wars Galaxy trading cards, a series that I’ve been watching since the very beginning. Instead of using still frames from the films which we’ve seen a hundred times already, the Galaxy line of trading cards invites artists from all genres to create their own visions of the Star Wars universe. Recently, Topps stretched their participating artist list to include those who are known (or even relatively unknown) within the designer toy & street art worlds, and that’s where I came in. As a result of this project, I was given a complimentary box of cards.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve gone through a whole box of something and tore into randomized packs of stuff, but it’s a good feeling. It was one of my favorite aspects of collecting Heroclix – the lottery of trying to score a rare or powerful piece for your collection. As far as boxes of Star Wars cards go, each box of 24 packs is guaranteed to have one original sketch card – which is what everyone buying these packs is after. In terms of buying this set for its secondary market value, none of the many varieties of chase cards are nearly as valuable as these original artworks that are slipped into the regular packs of cards, and they come in three varieties : sketch cards, manga sketch cards, and shaped sketch cards. Some of these are sold for around $300, with many hovering around $50, and the occasional card not selling at all.

The basic set contains 120 cards in a huge variety of styles, from comic book, to beautifully painted, to propaganda-poster styled works which would look even more amazing if they were done up in actual poster size. Of course, you look at these images much more closely after you tear through the packs searching for chase cards.

Nearly every pack that I opened contained a chase card of some kind. While most were foil cards, depicting a character on a shiny background, one was a much rarer ‘gold foil parallel’ card of Darth Maul, only 770 of which were made. This accompanies the regular and bronze versions of the same card, which have backgrounds in slightly different colors. There were also 4 etched foil cards, which use an aesthetic that was once very, very rare when searching through packs of Marvel trading cards in the 1990s. It’s almost strange to see these types of cards as commonplace, but I don’t object to the new variety of chase cards featuring original art at all.

Finally, as I was nearing the end of my box, I found my chase card – a picture of Greeata (one of Jabba’s dancers) done by a mysterious artist whose signature was a scribble. If there is an element of disappointment in this, it’s that certain artists approached their sketch cards by producing the same image many, many times, instead of using each card as a new canvas for a new character, a new visual problem to solve. I had seen this card before, as someone else on the Scoundrel Publishing boards (where Star Wars card collectors gather and trade) had pulled a nearly identical card. Regardless, it was still an original artwork, and the art is expertly done, so I’m pleased to have a little part of someone else who participated in this set.

A full box yielded enough cards to complete a base card set as well, and enough to stick in the spokes of your bicycle, or whatever one does with extra trading cards now. Cut them up into little Tie Fighter replicas?

I’ve spoken about it here before, but it needs to be said again.

Over the past week, the mighty internet has bludgeoned me with two completely different examples of how collectors are occasionally perceived – and it was not pretty.

In the initial instance that I came across, someone had dug up an old Gizmodo article from 2008 which interviewed a dedicated Star Wars action figure collector, and reposted the accompanying images on their blog. This, of course, was followed by the obligatory comment that follows anything about a Star Wars fan that’s ever been posted on the internet :

“He needs to get out of his mother’s basement! It’s sad that he’ll never get a girlfriend!”

Now, I’m not going to speak for the entire geek populace here, because I’ve honestly never been in another room that’s had a proud display of Star Wars action figures, but when is this weird stereotype going to die? And what keeps on perpetuating it?

I admit it : when the Original Trilogy was a big deal a few years ago, I went a little crazy over the vintage-style Star Wars figures of the essential characters. I bought many of them, and I still have them tacked safely to my walls. At this point, they’re likely destined for eBay, but let me say this : these action figures have seen more action than you could possibly imagine. And yes, it involved women. Live ones. I feel that I needed to qualify that statement.

In fact, my last, very hot girlfriend requested that I keep all of my Star Trek action figures so that we could display them around the apartment. While the apartment didn’t work out, nor did her ability to keep her pants on among random strangers, it served as fairly concrete proof that it’s totally okay to be yourself. There’s going to be someone out there who embraces the same passions as you, or at the very least, embraces your passion. It’s simply wrong, and more than a little sexist, to assume that there are no chicks cool enough to embrace what you love, even if it is vinyl caped Jawas.

Sure, there’s a point of obsession where real life and responsibility becomes occluded, but collecting is usually a sign of prosperity. One simply doesn’t spend money on collecting things if food and shelter are an issue, unless there’s a much larger problem of mental illness. That’s another discussion entirely, but to assume that anyone who collects slightly geeks paraphernalia lives in a basement as a virgin is a frustrating stereotype to battle.

My love of Star Wars led directly to a job illustrating Star Wars cards for Topps. Have you done anything that awesome?

The second instance was an image posted on FailBlog, in which a kid was laying in a room full of Pokemon stuff. Being from FailBlog, the image was emblazoned with the word ‘FAIL’, though I can’t seem to make the connection between a kid collecting something that he loves and the idea of ‘failure’. Since when are we a culture to insult and deride children for what they’re passionate about?

Everything that we learn and everything that we love are tools to be used towards something greater. An acquaintance recently related the story of her daughter who was very much into Pokemon, back around when the whole US fascination with the series began. Her Pokemon cards turned into an interest in Japanese culture, which evolved into an interest in the Japanese language, which soon turned into an invitation from Japan to come and teach English to elementary school students – at the age of 14.

While not every collector will turn their interests into something productive or positive, a vast majority of us possess a deep, intellectual curiosity about the things we love, and how they connect to the rest of the world.

And that’s not something to be laughed at.

Star Wars collectors.

These three words define some of the most passionate, dedicated, invested, and serious collectors you’ll ever encounter. While my own collecting interests have been narrowed down to the Original Trilogy by the cruel, cruel economy, I’ve certainly been an intense Star Wars collector in my day. Maybe I just relate better to funky aliens with eye stalks and distended proboscii than I do with my neighbors.

There have been more Star Wars trading card series than I can count, starting with the original series released around 1980 (including the legendary C-3PO card with the inappropriate anatomical details), and a good handful of recent sets have included cards that feature original artwork by various famous illustrators and designers – but this year’s Star Wars Galaxy IV set did something very different.

Curated by the amazing Sucklord, an underground ‘bootleg toy’ artist operating out of Chinatown, Star Wars Galaxy IV featured hundreds of artworks by artists who weren’t as well known as their big-name illustrator counterparts. Instead, Sucklord called upon the talented and innovative, but not yet ‘famous’ artists that toil away in the relative obscurity of the designer toy art movement and street artists. Seeing as how some of these guys are my friends, I couldn’t have been happier to be two steps away from the fabled and notoriously well-protected universe of George Lucas.

While a few hundred cards were collected from artists around the world, not too many collectors could get their hands on them, considering the ratio of regular cards to these ultra-limited, one of a kind cards. As a result, many of these sell on the secondary market for a minimum of $30, and some have reached as high as $300. Of course, this depends on the appeal of the card and how hot the artists themselves are in their underground circles. You can check out this Flickr group to see a handful of the neat artworks that were done for these cards.

The diversity is apparent – from stencils to paintings and drawings, related to Star Wars or completely divergent from Star Wars themes and off on wild aesthetic tangents. In recent years, Lucas has been releasing his asphyxiating stranglehold on his universe and appreciating the impact that it’s had on popular culture and a generation of artists. This is an amazingly clear expression of this – and collectors, always hungry to devour most of what the Star Wars universe has to offer, are excitedly gathering as many as they can find.

Yesterday, I was invited to an artist in Star Wars Galaxy V, so in a few months, somewhere in the world, fifty different art card collectors will open up packs of Star Wars cards and get a little palpitation when they see my original art on a die-cut Darth Maul head. The collector has become the collected.

As a toy collector, there’s nothing worse than when a toy company cannot see a line of action figures through to its logical conclusion. You start to purchase the first few figures of what promises to be an entire team of heroes and villains, and suddenly, you’re left with a sparse collection of characters that simply aren’t as relevant without one another.

When Palisades Toys died, they left without completing two members of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which only has three members to begin with. Ren and Stimpy would never meet Sven Hoek, George Liquor, or any of the other great characters from their show. I sold off all of my Heroes toys when Mezco gave up on the show without ever producing an Ando, and my Sideshow Lord of the Rings 12” figures are headed there too, without a Gimli to complete the Fellowship.

Still, there are a few really great lines out there which have been carried out smartly, in a timely manner, and without breaking the companies that produced them, and leaving very few characters to be desired.

1. Palisades’ Toys ‘The Muppet Show’

While Palisades halted business unexpectedly many years ago, they had already managed to crank out over fifty Muppets action figures from the classic television show, as well as a few more characters who came to prominence in the later Muppets films, leaving very, very few figures to be desired. The line even included a ‘Muppet-ized’ figure of Jim Henson himself, as he appeared a few times. If you have a favorite Muppet, it’s likely that they’re in here.

The crowning achievement of the entire series is undoubtedly the Kitchen Playset, which has more working doors, drawers, cabinets and little storage areas than you can count. It’s huge, and it’s probably one of the best playsets of all time. The rarest pieces from this collection are the huge Backstage Playset, and some exclusive variants of figures which were given out during industry only events and a wedding.

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2. Playmates’ ‘World of Springfield’

With over 160 figures (about 21 of them being Homer in various states of being), this is another set that addresses every single character that you could possibly care about from the prime years of the TV show.

This line includes the only Stephen Hawking action figure you’ll ever see, a Simpsons-styled Lucy Lawless, and a man dressed like a bumblebee. To top it all off, a series of playsets allow you to plug each figure into electronic pegs to hear phrases from the show, exclusive to each character – essentially acting as a key to unlock secret features.

Early on, the Toys ‘R’ Us exclusive ‘Treehouse of Horror’ playsets were considered rare, though the later waves of figures and playsets tend to fetch slightly higher prices now, especially the final playset, ‘Town Square’, which runs about $160. By this time, interest in the show was flagging slightly and many people who actively collected the line weren’t as into the 15th Bart figure anymore.

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3. Hasbro’s Star Wars

No line is more notorious for making every possible character into an action figure. After all, Star Wars launched the 3 3/4” action figure scale back in 1978. The main cast of characters have seen dozens of iterations each, and almost any alien that’s appeared on the screen for a millisecond has been immortalized. Characters that have appeared in the comics, the books, and that Ralph McQuarrie found in his sketchbooks have all been made into figures. Once we got Yarna D’al Gargan, the overweight dancer from Jabba’s Palace, we pretty much had everything we could ever want. Hasbro even runs regular polls to figure out who the fans want next.

Unfortunately, we’ll never see the Tonnika Sisters from the Cantina on Tatooine. While Hasbro hasn’t really officially released the reason why, it’s widely rumored that one of the actresses who played the character is demanding an outlandish amount of money before she allows them to release anything in her image. In the meantime, we get Willrow Hood, the alien dude who’s walking around with an ice cream maker.

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There are other lines which have done fairly well, but died an early death. Marvel Legends will never release a full set of Inhumans, and JLU is still plugging away at hypothetical characters who never actually appeared on the television show instead of addressing those who have actually been seen.

It can be expensive to wait until a line of action figures proves that it can stand up by itself and play catch-up with the earlier figures later on – but it can be equally expensive to invest in a line that folds and renders your incomplete set worthless. Buy what you love and hope for the best.

As I was walking to catch a bus along 42nd Street in New York City this week, I happened to slip past a tall, geeky kid holding an illuminated lightsaber. He was probably about 16, and brandishing the cheap Hasbro version of the weapon over his head. It was a moment or two before I realized that he was using the lightsaber as a beacon to a group of other field trip kids trailing behind him, but for a minute, it was totally surreal example of the way that Star Wars has completely penetrated our culture. Either that, or the Jedi Academy was on their way to Les Mis.

This is some of what ‘A Galaxy Far Far Away’ is trying to communicate – that total permeation and impact that Star Wars has had over thirty-plus years. I’m not even completely comfortable that I’m dating a girl who hasn’t seen the Original Trilogy, but I think that we can fix that. I just hope that we don’t have to go all Clockwork Orange style.

And sure, there have been many, many documentaries made about Star Wars fans, and science fiction fans in general, and there are even more recent ones than ‘Galaxy’, which was filmed ten years ago – but I don’t think that any are as funny and poignant. What starts out as another ‘let’s make fun of the geeks’ documentary by, let’s face it guys, a couple of geeks, coalesces into something pretty powerful.

Forget about the home video quality of much of the tape, and the funky sound issues, and bad camera angles (the director’s bonus commentary will address all of these points anyhow) – this was 1999. This was the dawn of the digital video camera, and before home video editing was even really a possibility. Using borrowed G2 Macs and working late nights in editing studios that they had no legal right to use, these guys made a great little film. Some of the guerilla-ness of the thing shows through, but it’s a great reminder of the context that this was created in. This was before Episode I had been released. In fact, the whole film builds up to this epic and fabled prequel film – only to have it be the very worst thing that ever happened to the adored Star Wars franchise. Not even that Han-on-Chewie fan fic that you wrote could wound Star Wars more deeply. The illustrations you did to accompany it might come close.

I didn’t want to like the film. Especially when the occasionally-smarmy director insists on referring to ‘action figures’ as ‘dolls’ (which is the equivalent of me referring to his ‘films’ as ‘cute videos’ or something). Many collectors are presented in the film, since Star Wars and collecting seem to go hand-in-hand, and there’s even an expertly shot fade between a scene of madness at a Toys ‘R’ Us when the crappy Episode I toys were released and a shot of starving people reaching for food in Kosovo that are so alarmingly similar that I didn’t realize that they were different scenes at first. And also represents why I stopped shopping for toys at brick-and-mortar retailers.

It’s at least as far reaching and intriguing as Trekkies for the full hour-or-so that it runs, and I immediately re-watched the film with the 10th anniversary commentary turned on, which added a whole awesome depth to an already interesting film. Also included is the original commentary filmed ten years ago, a new audio commentary, and a good 15 minutes of great deleted scenes.

It’s absolutely an awesome companion to have next to your limited-release Original Trilogy discs, and maybe the Episode I through III coasters, too. It’s worth a look – to see collectors, to see geeks, to feel a little better about yourself, and to dig yourself a little deeper into this surreal life. Check out the recent release from Cinevolve.