I have never been a comic book guy, neither as a kid nor as an adult. I can easily count on one hand all my childhood memories involving comic books. My great Grandma Brown had a small stack of them in her living room that I used to flip through each time we visited. One time, at a garage sale, my mom bought me a stack of horror-themed comic books. My dad had a collection of Star Wars comic books that he kept in his bedroom. That’s pretty much it.

Many years ago, my dad bequeathed his collection of Star Wars comics to me — twenty-two of them in all. The first few comics retell the story of the first movie. From there, they go off in all sorts of crazy directions. Issue #17, Crucible!, promises the “untold tale of Luke Skywalker’s past.” In the opening pages we see Luke zooming across the surface of Tatooine in his landspeeder, shooting womp rats with his blaster to prevent them from chewing on vaporator cables. A few pages later he’s out flying his T-16 Skyhopper through Beggar’s Canyon. The comic books are full of things and locations that were only casually mentioned in the film, brought to life with color artwork.

They’re also filled with inconsistencies that made them non-canon pretty early on. In that same issue, Luke’s Aunt Beru explains to him that his Uncle Owen was hurt when his Owen’s brother — Luke’s father — abandoned Owen and left him to tend to the farm alone. In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back we learned that Luke’s father was Darth Vader, invalidating this story. Technically speaking, Owen Lars was Anakin’s step-brother (having married Shmi Skywalker), but I’m going to chalk that up to the writers getting lucky. Besides, I’m pretty sure the Dark Lord of the Sith was too busy slaughtering Tusken Raiders to get much farming done.

So, you know, you can get hung up on inconsistencies or you can just enjoy the yawn about the time Luke battled a big orange space cobra.

One character that was introduced in the comics was the smuggler Jaxxon, a large, green rabbit who teamed up with Han Solo for a few adventures. Jaxxon appears in three of the comics I own, and may be the first “extended universe” character ever created. According to his creators, Jaxxon was inspired by Bugs Bunny, a fact seemingly verified by the names of his two enemies in issue #16: Dafi and Fud. I don’t know if Bucky O’Hare (another large green anthropomorphic rabbit who wore a red jumpsuit and flew a spaceship) was inspired by Jaxxon, but it seems likely.

Every Star Wars comic I own is in near-mint condition and virtually worthless. If you have a copy of the first issue with a 30 cent price printed inside a white square, it could be worth $1,000. The same issue with a 35 cent price inside a white square can sell for $10,000. The ones with a 35 cent price inside of a white diamond (instead of a square) and no bar code on the front cover sell for a dollar or two on eBay.

Like many of the Star Wars items I own, their street value means nothing to me. These are the comics my dad purchased when he was ten-to-fifteen years younger than I am today. I’ll never get rid of these, nor will I ever add to them. The pile of comics I own are the only ones I’m interested in owning.

The older I get, the more I find that my vintage Star Wars items are the ones that bring me the most joy. All the other stuff, as fun as it is, or was, is just starting to feel like “stuff.”

The first electronic version of Chess I ever saw was Video Chess, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979. It still amazes me that the code to Video Chess program was 4 kilobytes in size — that’s less characters than this post contains, and that includes all the graphics and eight difficulty levels contained within the cartridge. On the easiest setting, the console was limited to ten seconds of thinking between moves. On the most difficult level, the Atari could spend up to ten hours between moves. You could almost smell the smoke at that point.

As computers began invading people’s homes in the 1980s, hundreds of programmers tried their hand at creating electronic versions of classic games such as checkers, backgammon, and chess. As computers gained speed and memory, chess programs also became better, as their ability to weigh moves and their outcomes (to “think” — or at least simulate it) could be processed more quickly.

Sargon, originally released in 1979 for the TRS-80 and quickly ported to the Apple II, set the new standard for computers by playing a quick and challenging game of Chess. The next groundbreaking computer-based Chess game was Chessmaster 2000, released in 1986 by Software Toolworks.

As computer graphics improved, so did the graphics of chess programs. The first major breakthrough was Battle Chess. For the first time, chess pieces came alive and actually battled one another for position. The rules of chess remained the same (unlike games like Archon, in which players took control of pieces and physically battled for position), but new animations, sound and music introduced the world to what I refer to as “animated chess.”

Battle Chess inspired many impersonators (including MicroProse’s hilarious National Lampoon’s Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1), and many companies learned that they could add updated graphics and sound to their already developed chess engine to effectively “reskin” their engine and create a new game.

All of that brings us to The Software Toolworks’ Star Wars Chess.

Under the hood, Star Wars Chess runs on the Chessmaster 3000 engine. The only difference between this game and that one is the Star Wars “skin” that has been applied.

Although the front of the box says “486 Recommended,” the minimum system requirements were a 386/33 PC with 1 Megabyte of RAM, DOS 5.0, VGA, and 40 Megabytes of hard drive space. A mouse and sound card are highly recommended. The version I purchased came with 8 installation floppy disks (later versions were released on CD). I purchased the DOS version. It was re-released for Windows 3.x, with requirements boosted to 4MB of memory and SVGA, and it also appeared on the Sega CD. The back of the box boasts that Star Wars Chess “is the largest animated chess program ever,” with “over 5,000 frames of pain stakingly [sic] hand drawn cel animation” and “72 unique capture animations, twice the competition’s.”

The game’s graphics are undeniably Star Wars. As expected, the game pits members of the Rebellion against the evil Empire. One problem Star Wars Chess shares with all other chess games with custom pieces suffers from is that once the pieces begin to move about the board, you’ll spend lots of time trying to remember which character relates to which traditional chess piece. The easiest to forget is Darth Vader, who serves as the dark side’s Queen, but others, such as Chewbacca, Boba Fett, Tusken Raiders and Yoda, are easy to confuse, too.

The game’s audio also contains digitized sound and audio tracks from the movies — a big deal back then. As different pieces move, recognizable snippets from the film’s soundtrack play and add to the overall Star Wars theme.

The charm comes in the game’s hand drawn animation. Various characters from the Star Wars universe come alive as they shuffle, roll, and march around the board. When one piece takes another (again, following the traditional rules of chess), gamers are treated to an animated sequence. Some of them become repetitive quickly. Each time a Stormtrooper (dark pawn) takes R2-D2 (light pawn), an animation lasting between 15-20 seconds is displayed, and that happens a lot. Fortunately, most of the other animations are 5-10 seconds in length and don’t happen quite so frequently. And because there are so many possible combinations due to the fact that there different pieces for each side, it’s possible it will take you several games to see them all.

My copy of Star Wars Chess still has its original price tag on the bottom of the box of $14.97. The game was originally released in 1993, and during the time I worked at Best Buy (1994-1995) I purchased a lot of discount bargain bin software titles from both there and (our competitor and neighbor) CompUSA. It’s possible I didn’t pay the full $14.97 price, although it still would have been a good bargain; the game originally retailed for $69.99.

By the early-to-mid 90s, for many Star Wars collectors, it felt like the days of buying, collecting, and displaying toys were over (if only we knew!). It was around this time that I began expanding my interests to Star Wars books and games. Unlike toys, which often remain unopened and go straight to display shelves, I opened and played Star Wars Chess many times. Again, the graphics and sounds are movie-authentic and fun, but by recycling the Chessmaster 3000 chess engine, Software Toolworks managed to deliver a competent chess-playing game, too.

I don’t own many autographed items. I have one Atari 2600 cartridge signed by the programmer (Yars’ Revenge, by Howard Scott Warshaw), a show brochure I had autographed by David Copperfield in the mid-1980s, and three books signed by their respective authors: hacker Kevin Mitnick, magicians Penn and Teller, and my writing professor, Deborah Chester.

The only other autographs that I have belong to people who appeared in Star Wars films. I have five action figures autographed by the people who played them in the films: David Prowse (Darth Vader), Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0), and Kenny Baker (R2-D2).

The one thing all of these actors have in common is that they are primarily known for playing characters that wear masks. Several of them have cameos and appear as other characters within the films without their masks on (see Anthony Daniels below as Dannl Faytonni, who appeared on screen for just a few seconds in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).

For some, however, it was easier to find them unmasked outside the Star Wars universe. When Darth Vader was finally unmasked at the end of Return of the Jedi, it wasn’t David Prowse but rather Sebastian Shaw’s face that appeared. Shaw,not Prowse, also played Anakin Skywalker’s ghost at the end of the unedited original film. It wasn’t until I saw Clockwork Orange that I got my first glimpse of David Prowse acting without his mask and cape on (he plays the bodybuilding bodyguard that appears in the film).

When I was little I thought R2-D2 and C-3P0 were real robots, but it didn’t take long to figure out that C-3P0 — being the same shape and size as an average adult human — probably had a person inside that metal costume. But it didn’t dawn on me for years that there was a little person crouched down inside R2-D2 as well. I owned a remote controlled car as a kid and always assumed that R2-D2 was remote controlled, too. Over the years they’ve experimented with CGI versions and robotic versions of the droid, but looking back, you can see that the man inside that little blue and white astromech droid was actually performing.

It wasn’t until 1981’s Time Bandits that I got to see Kenny Baker actually perform without a silver dome covering his head. Here he is on the far left, standing proudly with a colander on his head… which, now that I think about it, looks a lot like a silver dome covering his head.

In Flash Gordon and The Elephant Man, Kenny Baker simply played characters named “Dwarf,” but in Time Bandits, he was Fidgit, one of the bandits avoiding both the Supreme Being and evil incarnate as they traveled through time, robbing the rich to feed themselves.

From the moment I saw Kenny Baker in Time Bandits, I always thought of him every time I saw R2-D2 rolling around. I have no idea if he was cramped inside the droid’s body or how much he could see through the costume, but surely rolling around in the desert and on hot sets wasn’t comfortable.

You’re not likely to run into Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher at a run-of-the-mill sci-fi convention, but that’s exactly what brought Kenny Baker to Oklahoma City back in June of 2001: the Sci-Fi Expo and Toy Show.

I think I already had my C-3P0 card signed prior to meeting Baker, so it seemed like the thing to do would be to stick with signed figures rather than 8×10 glossies or posters. I don’t recall what (if anything) the two of us said to one another as he signed my action figure. There were a lot of people in line in front of me and even more behind me. What I do remember is that he smiled, and was kind.

Kenny Baker passed away this past weekend, just a couple of weeks shy of his 82nd birthday. He is the second main cast member to pass away, following Sir Alec “Obi-Wan Kenobi” Guinness who passed away in 2000 at the age of 86.

Sometimes when watching films we see characters and sometimes we see the actors who portray them. It’s hard to watch Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon or O.J. Simpson in The Naked Gun and not think about their real life troubles. Even though we can’t see his face when R2’s dome spins or he emits an excited series of beeps and boops, I plan to make a point to think about Kenny Baker each time I see R2-D2 from now on, and I’ll keep this autographed figure hanging on the wall to remind me of him, too.

Every time the word “Commodore” appears on my local Craigslist, I receive an email alert. Sometimes the alerts link to people selling cars or boats, but most of the time, it’s the computer. I received one such alert last Friday night, informing me about a computer for sale at a garage sale. I need another Commodore 64 like I need a hole in the head, and the one pictured in the ad looked pretty sad (incomplete and with a few mismatched parts), but where there’s smoke, as they say, there’s often fire.

Sometimes literally.

I didn’t make it down to the garage sale until 10 a.m., Sunday morning. When Susan and I arrived, we were greeted by a colorful character who goes by the name Orange Rex. “I’ve worn orange every day for the past twenty years,” he informed the two of us as we began to poke around the interesting items in the man’s front yard. Susan found a box of what appeared to be teaching supplies, and asked the somewhat eccentric man if he was a professor at the nearby college.

“Actually, I’m a fire breather,” Orange Rex replied. A quick Google search confirmed this fact.

The items at Orange Rex’s garage sale seemed to be split — half of them were items targeted toward college students returning to school for the fall semester, while other items were more interesting. On one side of the garage sale sat a table and chairs, some pots and pans, silverware, and other household goods. On the other side sat a few Atari 2600 cartridges, some vintage electronics, vinyl albums, books on UFOs, and all kinds of interesting things.

As Susan continued to dig around, Rex and I talked about Tiny Houses, 3D Printing, journalism, and Rubik’s Cubes. Eventually Susan asked about the Commodore (it had sold at 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning), but as the conversation turned toward vintage video games, I soon found myself in Rex’s living room, admiring his very minty collection of boxed Atari 2600 games.

At some point while I was inside, Susan found a small plastic C-3P0 and thought that I might want it. I did, but not for the reason she thought. I left the garage sale with a couple of puzzles, a book about Rubik’s Cubes, a book about UFOs and mind control, and a plastic C-3P0 from McDonald’s 2001 Clone Wars Happy Meal collection.

“Variety is the spice of life,” Susan always says after we meet someone interesting, and Orange Rex is definitely an interesting fellow. I look forward to continuing our conversations online. Maybe someday he’ll teach me how to breathe fire in return.

The C-3P0 figure is now sitting on a shelf when you enter my Star Wars room. As far as C-3P0 toys go, it’s dreadful; caramel colored instead of chrome, with weird kung-fu hands and poor posture. I didn’t buy him for any of those reasons, of course. I bought him because each time I come upstairs, I want to look at him and remember that variety is the spice of life.

I have lots and lots of books in my Star Wars collection, both fiction and non-fiction for young and adult readers alike.

Star Wars: The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot was published by Random House in 1979. I remember checking his book out from our school’s library. This copy also came from a school library, although not my school.

Unsurprisingly the story begins with Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca and R2-D2 playing Planetary Poker, and C-3P0 running around like a maniac.

First it’s R2-D2 that begins acting rebellious, although soon many of the droids, robots and machines down on Tatooine begin malfunctioning as well. We learn that Luke Skywalker is working with a crew of scientists and engineers to build a super-vaporator because Tatooine was suffering from a severe drought. I hate to break it to them, but George Lucas only builds planets with one climate. Tatooine’s going to be a desert for a long, long time.

After our heroes safely land on Tatooine, they attend a meeting to discuss the rebellious droids. The meeting is led by Captain Egoreg, leader of the vaporator project. (“Egoreg” is suspiciously similar to “George” spelled backwards.) During the meeting, the conference room explodes. Everyone was unharmed except for C-3PO, who was wheeled out on a dolly for repairs.

Ultimately the source of the robot rebellion turns out to be tainted oil, provided by Jawas who were hoping the malfunctioning droids would be donated to them. Instead, Chewbacca scooped up all the Jawas and bonked them on the head.

On the final page of the book, Princess Leia awards Chewbacca with a reward while the others look on and C-3P0 photobombs the picture.

Star Wars: The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot was ghost-written by Eleanor Ehrhardt and illustrated by Mark Corcoran. A great interview with Mark about his memories of the book on its 30th anniversary can be found here.

When this book came out, I’m not sure if I was aware that The Empire Strikes Back was coming out the following year or not. As a kid, these books were a great way to peer into the daily lives of those Star Wars characters. The events captured in the Star Wars films were just a small part of what these characters went through during their lives. Books like these reminded us that there was lots of adventures and stories to be told.

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone — May the Fourth Be With You!

I’m pretty sure I stated that my 1977 Bradley Watch was the first Star Wars thing I ever owned. If it was, this was a close second. The Star Wars Storybook was a Scholastic Book that I purchased through my school’s book club when I was in kindergarten. The school didn’t traditionally bring the Scholastic handouts to kindergartners because most of them couldn’t read, but I could, and someone must have provided me with one.

On the first page, readers are treated to a “who’s who” of the Star Wars universe. Some of the pictures are from the movie while others, like Luke and Vader, are promo pictures. I have no idea what Mark Hamill is wearing in his picture — a black t-shirt? I remember being temped as a kid to cut these out and start my own trading card collection. As an adult, I’m sure glad I didn’t.

The book was compiled before the movie was released, and as such a few deleted scenes (like this one with Luke talking to his buddy Biggs about joining the academy) never ended up in the film. I read this book so many times that my mind played tricks with me and I swore that I had watched this scene in the movie theater, even when I hadn’t.

Back before the internet and DVDs and even VCRs, this is what we had — record albums and picture books. This is the only picture in the book where something (Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter) flies out of the picture frame. It really conveyed a sense of speed and action to me as a kid and I remember loving this page specifically. Even though I only saw the original movie once or twice in theaters as a kid, I must have read this book a thousand times.

The back of the book features this picture of Vader that also appears on the picture disc. I also had it as a poster (probably also from Scholastic). I like this picture now because it looks like Vader is standing in front of one of those generic family photography backdrops. “Show me angry, Dark Lord!”

I own probably a hundred Star Wars books including hardbacks, paperbacks, picture books, comic books, and all kinds of things, but this was the first one that started it all.

During the late 70s, there was no such thing as “rarity” when it came to Kenner action figures on the shelves. By 1978, Kenner was manufacturing 3 3/4″ action figures just as quickly as they could. If Walmart didn’t have the figure you were looking for, chances were Service Merchandise, TG&Y, or some other local retailer did.

Despite that, there were rarities, or at least figures that not everybody had. Most of these were figures that came bundled with playsets. The Blue Snaggletooth (included in the early Cantina playset) is the most well-known early rarity, but another one that few people think about is the Dianoga.

The Dianoga, sometimes referred to as the “garbage monster” or “tick monster,” apparently lived (or at least had access to) the garbage disposal system on board the Death Star. The monster appears in the original Star Wars film when our heroes (Han, Chewbacca, Luke and Leia) find themselves trapped inside one of the battle station’s many trash compactors. Taking a cue from Jaws, we only get a couple of brief looks at the monster’s tentacles before a single red eyeball stalk shoots up for only a moment from the murky water. The monster wraps his tentacles around Luke and pulls him under the water. Luke struggles, and just when we think he might be gone forever, the creature lets him go. The creature knows what our heroes are about to find out — that the walls are about to crush them.

The Dianoga “figure” was not sold separately. It was included with the Death Star playset, which retailed for $20 in 1978 (adjusted for inflation, that’s about $75). The Death Star had multiple platforms and floors that allowed kids to recreate different scenes from the movie. In the basement was the orange trash compactor. On one end was a big plastic corkscrew that allowed kids to “crush” action figures. It came with bits of foam (“garbage”) and a green Dianoga.

As far as figures go, the Dianoga isn’t very exciting. His rounded belly prevents him from sitting level on a flat surface, and his tentacles don’t seem to be nearly as long as they were in the film. Where his neck meets his belly he has an open mouth full of teeth. He also has fins that look like wings, something that must have been underwater during the film.

Other than stick him inside the trash compactor, there’s not a lot the Dianoga can do. He can’t stand up or fit inside any ships, so you can forget about him flying away in an X-Wing Fighter. Still, he was cool to own. If you had the Dianoga, you didn’t need to drag your entire Death Star playset (which was large) to school to prove ownership to the other kids. All you had to do was slide the Dianoga in your pocket and watch the other nerds drool.

Dianoga doesn’t get a lot of love. As far as I know there aren’t any fan-fiction novels dedicated to his garbage-eating and hero-drowning adventures. His closest claim to fame that I’m aware of is his cameo in the 1995 video game Dark Forces, in which Dianoga pops his head up as you wander through the sewers of the Death Star.

Truth be told, I have two Dianogas. The one above is my original one from when I was a kid, but I picked up a complete Death Star several years ago which I have out on display in the hallway.