BAMFS in the Star Wars Universe

BAMFS in the Star Wars Universe

Here we go! Today I will be discussing some of the most BAMF’in’ characters in the Star Wars Universe. LET’S DO THIS THING.

Darth Maul

Again following the big bad villain mantra of less is more, this smooth operator only speaks a smattering of sentences, but his presence, his weaponry and his judicious application of make up make for one unforgettable foe.

Weapon of Choice- The double-bladed lightsaber. This guy pretty much invented the double-sword in the eyes of popular culture. From future Jedi tales such as Knights of the Old Republic to classic playstation games like Chrono Cross, everyone took some notes from the Darth Maul playbook and saw how cool it is to fight with a staff made of two blades. Heck, in Star Wars: Battlefront Darth Maul is a nigh unstoppable foe because of his signature weapon. The guy fells enemy troops as easily as blades of grass, and he does it all the time grumbling like a madman.

BAMF Moment- The first time he popped that double-bladed bad boy out, we as an audience were stunned. After being both bored and stupefied by the ridiculous idiocy that is Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, when Maul popped the double blades we knew that we were, at least for the moment, in for a treat.

Ultimate Fate- After chomping Ben Kenobi’s master Qui-gon Jinn like a butterscotch candy, Darth Maul eventually finds himself at the receiving end of the swish of a lightsaber. The guy’s cut clean in half, and plummets down a seemingly endless corridor. Hard to retcon him as being alive, I’ll tell ya that much.

Boba Fett

He's got a backpack, with jets. Cause he's Boba the Fett.

The Fett man is one of the coolest cats ever to grace the silver screen. He speaks only a handful of lines between the two movies, and yet he is permanently implanted in the halls of coolness.

Weapon of Choice- Jetpack, flamethrower, cool ass blaster, wrist rocket launcher- this guy’s got it all.

BAMF Moment- This guy doesn’t even need any particular moment of doing anything cool to define how cool he is; He’s just that smooth.

Ultimate Fate- Through some accidental blaster shots and a few stray swings of a stick, a blind Han Solo accidentally knocks Boba Fett off of Jabba’s sand cruiser into the disgusting Sarlac pit. “How could the Fett man go down like some common cow?” You ask, reeling back in horror. Well rest assured, dear reader, as it is accepted canon that Boba Fett used his backpack to blast himself out of that sand-dwelling beast, which is how he appears in a crapton of the novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe series.

The Apprentice

Actual gameplay footage.

Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. I have to say that I, personally, am insanely excited about this guy starring in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Nick and I both had previously discussed the direction of possible future Star Wars stories, and we came to the same conclusion that these developers have: Sith always come in twos, the master and the apprentice. Sooooo, where the heck was Vader’s apprentice? Running around in secret, that’s where.

Weapon of Choice- Reverse lightsaber. The Apprentice runs around with his lightsaber held behind him, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. You can talk all you want about lightsaber fighting styles, and why it’s a more advantageous combat technique compared to other stances. Do you want to know the real reason for the reverse lightsaber style? Straight from the mouth of one the game developers at Comic-Con, The Apprentice holds his lightsaber in a reverse style so you, the player, get to see that lightsaber all the time. He was originally developed using a traditional lightsaber-in-front stance, but you lose sight of the blade that way. With the reverse style, you always remember that first and foremost, you are a seriously bad dude with a lightsaber.

BAMF moment- The first trailer for Star Wars: Force Unleashed shows The Apprentice standing outside, watching a Star Destroyer coming his way. With a wave of his hand and a clench of his jaw, he pulls that fat space ship to the ground using only the force, crashing the bajeezus out of it.

Ultimate Fate- Who knows? The Force Unleashed hasn’t come out yet. Maybe he falls at the hands of a Jedi. Maybe he goes into hiding, waiting for episode VII to strike again. I guess we’ll just have to play the game and find out.

Darth Vader

What more can be said about Darth Vader that hasn’t already been said. Ominous music theme? Check. Booming voice by the legendary James Earl Jones? Check. Greatest movie villain of all time? Check. The man is a legend. From the first time you see him you know that he is the stuff of legends. Spooky, black-clad legends.

Weapon of Choice- The Red Lightsaber. Vader was the first to sport this truly pimp-tacular weapon. All other Star Wars villains are just being copycats with their red lightsabers; they all want to be the next Vader (literally in The Apprentice’s case.)

BAMF moment- Vader chokes an underling. Over and over we see Vader tossing the force choke in the direction of the non-believers and the displeasers. My personal favorite is when an imperial officer decides to take the burden of apologizing to Darth for the imperial troops failing again. The next thing we see of the guy is his dead body being dragged off, and Darth Vader booming the words “Apology accepted.”

Ultimate Fate- After dueling his son to near death twice, lopping off ol’ Luke’s hand and running around the galaxy kicking ass, Vader finally has a change of heart in the end. Luke decides to forgo the way of the Sith, and chooses peace over revenge. Seeing this, Vader follows suit to save his son, and is mortally wounded in the process. After a few final words Darth Vader, bereft of his mask and his hate, passes on. Luke gives him a true Jedi funeral, cremating him as he watches on from the spiritual nether, along with the spirits of deceased Jedi masters Yoda and Ben Kenobi.

Mace Windu

The beret is considered canon.

Mace Windu is credited as being the most powerful of the Jedi, at least at the time of the clone wars saga. His wisdom and strength shine through whenever he’s forced to wield his lightsaber in defense. And the fact that he’s played by King BAMF Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t exactly hurt.

Weapon of choice- Purple lightsaber. The purple lightsaber was groundbreaking in that thanks to it, all other Star Wars related stories felt that they had the official ok to make lightsabers colored something other than red, green, or blue. So why the purple blade? Some would spout interesting stupid ideas that Mace was actually a balance between Sith and Jedi, as Red + Blue = Purple. I don’t know why the character Mace Windu believed in the purple lightsaber, but I do know that actor Samuel L. Jackson picked the color so he’d be able to easily distinguish himself out from a big crowd of Jedi in any of the fight scenes in the prequels.

BAMF moment- Mace Windu locks eyes with Jango Fett and, with a leap, a deflection of a flurry of blaster shots and a few swings of the lightsaber, lops that Boba Fett wannabe’s head clean off. Booyah.

Ultimate fate- Mace Windu’s final scene in Revenge of the Sith has him dueling Emperor Palpatine. At the end of the fight, Anakin Skywalker lops off Mace’s hand and the emperor chucks him out of the building with some force lightning. Dead? Hardly. In the next article during Star Wars week I will reveal the true fate of Mace Windu, so tune in and find out!

-Alex L.

The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama[1] is a webcomic starring "a high-flying llama, a sword-swinging cat, and a rocket as loyal as a cowboy hero's horse."[2] Created by Alex Langley while he was a student at Henderson State University, the comic first appeared in a comic book titled The Workday Comic. For the Workday comics anthology, a spin-off of Scott McCloud's 24-Hour Comics, comics creators each wrote and drew their own eight-page stories in eight hours in April, 2007, on Friday the 13th[3], which turned into an ongoing publication.[4] Co-presenting with comics author and scholar Danny Fingeroth (Dazzler, Spider-Man, Superman on the Couch), the creators described the webcomic's evolution as members of a Comics Arts Conference panel at 2008's Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.[5][6][7] Contents [hide] 1 Debut 2 Webcomic 3 References 4 External links [edit] Debut The full title of Rocket Llama's debut story in The Workday Comic #1 (spring, 2007) was "The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama #112: 'Trouble in Paradise'".[8] The story introduced the taciturn hero Rocket Llama and his talkative sidekick, an anthropomorphic cat named Bartholomew Meowsenhausen, who find themselves stranded on an island after a battle with an enemy called Jetpack Dog. Spherical islanders capture them and then challenge them to combat. A villain named Böwser vön Überdog arrives with Jetpack Dog and, in a sudden Star Wars parody, summons a giant robot known as the Super Robot Dog Walker which blasts a volcano to bits. Before it can fire a second blast, Rocket Llama destroys it by getting it to swallow a pot of water and backfire. The story ends with Böwser tied up and the heroes using the giant robot dog head as a boat to get themselves home, with the promise of the next story to be titled, "Yuck! Yukon!"[9][10] Whether despite the original story's childlike art or because of it, the Rocket Llama story proved to be the most popular in the 2007 anthology collection of the eight-hour comics.[11] After comic artist Stephen R. Bissette, an instructor at the Center for Cartoon Studies and comic book artist best known for his work on Swamp Thing with Alan Moore, read all of the stories in the first volume of The Workday Comic, he remarked, "That llama's gonna stick with me."[12] [edit] Webcomic Nick Langley redrew the story with a less childlike drawing style in webcomic form for online publication[13] as the flagship title for the website rocketllama.com which grew into an affiliation of websites featuring webcomics, art, entertainment reviews, and scholarly studies of comics.[14] The online story featured a new cover[15] and omitted a one-page gag, a preview for an unrelated Stealth Potato comic, which had appeared as an intermission in the middle of the original story.[16] The original story also appeared online as the comic's "ashcan copy."[17] The authors present the Rocket Llama stories metafictionally as the world's oldest comic book, established in 1916, which they allegedly rediscovered and are adapting into webcomics. "Deep underground, in an archaic vault we searched until we found the fabled tales. As both the current production team behind The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama and appreciators of such groundbreaking literature, we have taken it upon ourselves to restore these classic issues to a glory more befitting a modern, digital age."[18] Although every "issue" is presented with panels and screens in the correct order for each story, the issues are presented out of order as if readers were discovering old issues of a classic comic book in a seemingly haphazard order, however they come to find them. After the redrawn number 112's online publication came the serialized time travel story #136-137, "Time Flies When You're on the Run," appearing one page at a time throughout each week.[19][20] Special Rocket Llama Says bonus features appear only in "ashcan" form drawn by the original creator.[21] [edit] References ^ Rocket Llama World Headquarters ^ You are here. ^ Waddles, Joshua. (2007, April 2). Comic book club puts in a full day's work. The Oracle vol. 99 (25), p. 3. ^ Beard, Sarah. (2008, August 25). Comic Arts Club offers excitment. The Oracle, vol. 101 (1), p. 5. ^ T. Langley & R. Duncan, panel moderators, with respondent Danny Fingeroth. (2008, July). "Capes and Tights, Caps and Gowns." Panel presented at the Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego, California. ^ Recent and Upcoming Research Presentations ^ Pannell, E. (2008, July 27). Comic communication part of professors' classes. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, T-1, T-4. ^ Page 1. ^ The Workday Comic #1. Spring, 2007.[1] ^ The Workday Comic - online edition. ^ Sorrell, M. (2008, April 14).Club produces second annual workday comic. The Oracle, vol. 100. ^ Quoted in "The Workday Comic: Not Just One Third of a 24-Hour Comic." Comics Arts Conference, Comic-Con International. San Diego, California. July 27, 2008. ^ The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama #112: "Trouble in Paradise." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ You are here. ^ #137-Cover. ^ Sneak Peak at Stealth Potato #75. ^ Rocket Llama Ashcan Copy. ^ Who Is Rocket Llama? ^ "Time Flies When You're on the Run, Part 1." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ "Time Flies When You're on the Run, Part 2." Script: Alex Langley. Art: Nick Langley. ^ e.g., "Tanks a Lot." Rocket Llama Says #8. Script and art: Alex Langley.