Force in Focus December 2015

No new reviews or content this week, on account of the holiday weekend (in the US, at least), but I did want to give a quick heads up about my plans for posts in December, in the run-up to the release of The Force Awakens.

My plan is hand over the first two Saturdays to reviews of Shattered Empire (the four issue series covering events following Return of the Jedi) and Aftermath (the first novel in the new canon to do the same). After that, Force Awakens will be out, so I'll probably have a reaction post to that up on the 19th (though probably not a formal review at that point). After that is Christmas, and it remains to be seen if the new movie prompts any more immediate posts after that, but before long, we'll return to regular reviews of the old Marvel series and kickoff "The Siege of Yavin"!

In the meantime, if you're jonesing for some Star Wars reviews, I've reviewed (nearly) every issue of Marvel's newest Star Wars series for Pop Optiq, and you can find all those here. My Pop Optiq editor and I are also trading off chapters of the "Vader Down" crossover for review as well, and those can be found here (and December is Star Wars Month at Pop Optiq as well, so look for a bunch of cool posts on all aspects of the franchise, from me and other writers, there).

Finally, for an additional Star Wars fix, the Star Wars Minute podcast recently returned from their between-movies hiatus earlier than expected, and have begun reviewing The Phantom Menace, one minute at a time. I was initially a little wary about this latest installment of the show, as the hosts' discussions of the Original Trilogy made it pretty clear that they're not big fans of the Prequels (and while those films are certainly not without their faults, I'm also not terribly interested in listening to nothing but negativity and cheap shots in every episode), but so far, they've managed to treat the film the same as they did the others: both reverently and irreverently in parts, not afraid to make jokes at the film's expense and call out what it gets wrong, but also not afraid to point out what works and is enjoyable, with a stated goal (called the "Phantom Menaissance") of re-analyzing the movie with fresh eyes and not just turning the show into a 126-episode screed against it. 

Check out their site here (or in iTunes/Stitcher), and for a brief, daily Star Wars fix on a wide variety of topics, check out the Star Wars 7x7 podcast as well.