A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

This is the cover of the second printing from October 2008. It differs from the first printing thusly: instead of "interview with Art Spiegelman,"  the credit reads "introduction by Art Spiegelman." The bonus pack of rare and unreleased stickers is also different. I own a copy of the first printing from June, 2008. (C) 2008 Topps and Abrams ComicArts If you were a kid in the early 1970s, you probably remember Topps' Wacky Packages, a long-running series of stickers that parodied the packaging of  well-known consumer products, including packaged foods, personal hygiene items, and (in later series) nation-wide publications. In the hands of such artists as Art Spiegelman, Jay Lynch, and other comic book artists of the Sixties and Seventies, familiar brands were ripe targets for spoofing as Wacky Packages. Here, Quaker Oats' Cap'n Crunch is transformed into Cap'n Crud. (C) 1973 Topps Chewing Gum Company.  In the summer of 1973, I was a ...

Garindan, a Kubaz informant, works only for the highest bidders - usually the Empire or Jabba the Hutt. Garindan followed the young Skywalker and his mentor Ben Kenobi through the alleys of Mos Eisley.   - From the package blurb.  The shadowy spy retroactively named Garindan only appears briefly in  A New Hope  as the shrouded figure with the long nose and goggled eyes, he is the character who tips off the Imperial stormtroopers that Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi have gone to Docking Bay 94 in Mos Eisley.  He appears twice or thrice, following the Jedi Knight and his new apprentice through alleys and bystreets and muttering into a handheld comlink in a squeaky language.  Garindan is not identified by name in the film or the 1976 Alan Dean Foster-penned novelization; the figure is also known colloquially as "Long Snoot" because of his long proboscis.  The Figure:    Height:  1.85 Meters Status:  Spy Classification:  Kub...

Photo Credit: JediBusiness.com Five years after the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance has driven the evil Empire into a distant corner of the galaxy. But a new danger has arisen: the last of the Emperor's warlords has devised a battle plan that could destroy the New Republic. Before the death of Palpatine, Mara Jade was the Emperor's right hand assassin. Five years later and now a successful smuggler, the last thing Mara expected was to stumble upon her former arch-enemy - Luke Skywalker. - From the package blurb, Mara Jade. In 1991, eight years after the theatrical run of Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and eight years before the premiere of Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Bantam Spectra published Star Wars: Heir to the Empire, the first volume of Timothy Zahn's best-selling Thrawn Trilogy cycle of novels. Though a few authors had written several novels set in George Lucas's Star Wars galaxy during a seven-year-period close to the...

1. Wacky Packages: Topps, the trading card company which also published Star Wars trading cards and stickers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, introduced these graphic spoofs of well-known consumer products and brands, e.g. Spam = Cram . The cards and stickers – which we kids called “Wacky Packies” – were drawn by professional comic book artists and often featured violent, gross and scary images in a sardonic, almost gallows humor that, like the later Garbage Pail Kids cards, appealed to tweens’ often quirky sensibilities. Between 1973 and 1976, I used to go to the Seven-Eleven store close to the Tamiami Trail and SW 97th Avenue every Saturday and buy five packs for a quarter, which back then seemed to be a lot of money for a kid. I was such a big fan of “Wacky Packies” that I saved up $5.00 of my allowance and bought an unopened box. Unfortunately, I lost my entire collection when we moved to our present house; apparently, the movers “lost” some of our boxes during the four-m...