32 BBY: Podracing Tales

As taken from Wookieepedia:

“Podracing Tales was an online comic published on StarWars.com on December 19, 2000, as "a special holiday treat" for fans, courtesy of the Official Star Wars Website and Dark Horse Comics. It consists of eight vignettes featuring the Boonta Eve Classic podracers from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.”

Written by Ryder Windham, Podracing Tales did well weaving itself into the peripheral threads of the Episode 1 comics.  Though I didn’t enjoy the art of this piece, the eight fragments were mildly enjoyable simply as bits of text supporting and referencing a larger and earlier text.  Its two major points of familiar subplot from the Episode 1 comics were its reference to the Sebulba assassination plot, and the fact that Sebulba bought Anakin’s old podracer.

In Podracing Tales the scene between Aldar Beedo and Wan Sandage elucidates a little more on the original scene of the two found in Anakin Skywalker’s Episode 1 comic.  Its purpose supports the idea that Wan Sandage is indeed a killer, and references his previous job killing Borzu Nale, a minor crime lord.  There is a disparity between the price the two negotiated to kill Sebulba.  In the Episode 1 Comic the two racers agree to a sum of 50,000 “wupiupi”; whereas in Podracing Tales the two agree to a sum of 200,000. 

Also, at the end of Podracing Tales we see Sebulba with his new podracer and his pledge to head to Malastare.  This scene links with Qui-Gon’s Episode 1 comic, where he sells Anakin’s racer to raise money for the boy’s mother.

Beyond these two aspects of intertextuality, I thought it neat that the racers of the Boonta Eve Classic were all out with each other the night before boozing it up. 

Texts influencing and referencing other texts; one of my favorite aspects of the Star Wars expanded universe. 

For my next post I’m going to take a look at Galactic Battlegrounds missions 2 and 3, thus starting a three-post video game run.  Until then my friends, may the Force be with you.