Hey, everybody! Guess what? I was just invited to be a regular contributor to the fantastic news and opinion site, Geek League of America. My first piece “The Jedi Are Pricks: How Star Wars VII-IX Can Make the Prequels Retroactively Better” just went up! Here’s a preview:
The upcoming Star Wars sequels present a unique challenge in that they’re not only following up one of the most beloved trilogies of all time, but also one of the most reviled. The Prequels. AKA, the movies you really, really want to like more than you do. But you never will, right?
Maybe. Maybe… not.
What if there actually was a way for Director JJ Abrams and Screenwriter Michael Arndt to embrace the Prequels and, retroactively, make them better? They kind of have to do the former. Like it or not, Episodes I-III are part of the story. A trilogy that caps a trilogy of trilogies has got to acknowledge its roots in some way to be complete. Otherwise, it will be as empty as, well, the Prequels.
But how do you make something that’s done and complete, better? Simple, you reframe it. You present insight that gives new meaning to what came before and changes how you look at it forevermore.
And it’s not even hard. The Prequels have been set up for this from the beginning and it’s all due to one, simple, undeniable fact: the Jedi are pricks.
Read the full piece over at Geek League of America right here! And while you’re there, check out the site. It’s a good one.
AAAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAAAa!
I know!
Swifty knows!!!!!!! HAUL BUNS swifty report to spy gal let her know her “beloved” just sold out everyone in valhalla!!!
He certainly could do that. Will he? Find out Monday.
I’m still waiting for it to be a bluff
Though it’s beginning to be more of a hope than an actual belief 
You guys are always looking for the double cross. That’s probably my fault.
Jerry’s expression is hard to read in the last frame.
…and I think we’ve finally hit the point shown in 292. I wonder if Jerry’s hat flew out with him? Without it, he’s probably not positively identifiable as the Third Man – but then Swifty is a suspicious bastard, and hardly well-disposed toward Jerry in the first place.
It’s a tough break for Jerry – all his scheming and plotting and he just gets bullied into submission. A little disappointing to see that he’s just a paper tiger – after all, he wouldn’t need to beg for Spy Gal’s life if he’d simple disappeared with the crystal as he threatened to, since Zurida wouldn’t have had the means to threaten it. For all his years of deliberate planning, Jerry seems very much inclined to fly into a panic the moment things go wrong.
Jerry has had quite a few panic moments throughout the story, that’s true. And with good reason. I mean, besides the alien invasion, he’s got a time-traveling Swifty stalking him. That’s enough to make anyone freak out now and again.
As to the hat… that question is easily answered by going back a few strips.
Curious that you mention the time-traveling Swifty, Brock, as every time we have seen Swifty ambush the Third Man, he’s just picked himself up and continued on like nothing has happened. Which I’ve always found curious. Has Jerry not realised that it was Swifty? Does he hide his panic better at some times than others? Or, despite your suggestion, is he just genuinely unconcerned about the random attacks?
This is digging a bit deep, but see if you can follow me on this. Jerry has his full memory of the his trip as a youth to his current future. That means he knows what the bubbles of light mean and what they do. So, every time he’s been ambushed by Future Swifty, he knows that it’s a time-traveling Swifty. He also knows that time-traveling Swifty is from the future since he was the only one who came to Valhalla from the wrong point in time (i.e. the future). I wouldn’t say he’s unconcerned about the attacks so much as he knows it’s a problem for later, if it is at all.
I keep thinking back to Jerry’s origin story, where the “boy who survived” tells the story of how his parents died. There’s something about that telling that always itched at me…the way he asked “Does that make you feel BAD for me?…Isn’t that AWFUL?”…the fact the door was only big enough for him and not his parents…that his Dad was yelling at him….
I dunno, but there’s a part of me that wonders if Jerry caused that fire, by accident or out of childish frustration. He made a door, big enough only for him.
Jerry’s problem is that he never grew up. He’s still that child, wanting the attention, desperately wanting the things he wants. And he’s willing to manipulate and destroy others’ lives, even those that he supposedly loves, to get what he wants. He did it with the Captain back in the 1970s, turning against him rather than helping, and he did it again in Vegas, preying on the Captain’s weakness to pull Spy Girl away and to him.
Now, he’s willing to let everybody else burn to keep SpyGirl. Including the innocent.
This is the blood on Jerry’s hands.
I like the threads you’re pulling on. Good memory.
I still think you’re all to quick to just write him off.. I like your analysis of Jerry, but SF wouldn’t be SF if there wasn’t an ace up someboy sleeve, and it might yet be Jerry’s. Although I might just be grasping at straws at this point
**Somebody’s sleeve
I put my money on Dr Rocket with the ace up his sleeve. Also, brilliant analysis of Jerry
This has got to be some of the best art in the series thus far.
Marc claims some difficulty when it comes to drawing Zurida. I don’t see it.
Oh, Jerry, part of me wants Swifty to run around the room at super speed and create a vacuum to suck the air out of your lungs. Another part of me wonders if I should count you out just yet, because somewhere you’ve still got Mr Crook’s doomsday plans. If whatever he had cooked up could destroy the world, it should be powerful enough to take out an alien armada if modified. Also, not sure what impact Dark/Star Maiden could still have on how everything plays out. Much like Dr Rocket, Dark Maiden is on the “if you’re going to try and kill them, make sure they’re really dead” list. I don’t imagine things going very well for anyone when the aliens make their move to take her out. Also, Brock, I find it interesting that of all the women who were involved with CS that she’s the only one who doesn’t seem to have residual feelings for him whether she’s dear discombobulated Star Maiden or malevolent murderess Dark Maiden.
Well-observed on Cap and Star. I don’t know if it means anything, but you’re not wrong.