Star Wars Celebration V wrap-up

I don’t know if I intended to do day-by-day posts from Star Wars: Celebration V, but they certainly didn’t happen; it was a pretty busy but enjoyable time. So now, safely back in the Wampa ice-cave, I’m running through some photos with accompanying thoughts…

The big news for me at the show was the promotion for Star Wars: Knight Errant, both the comics series and novel. Dark Horse and Del Rey both displayed material for the books, and offered free copies of Star Wars: Knight Errant #0, the show exclusive; Dark Horse also had a cool (and tall!) hanging banner promoting the series. This is one collectible that won’t fit in the garage!

The publishers had hired a young lady named Madison Geisler to portray Kerra in a running Twitter contest; folks took photos of her roaming in the convention hall for a chance to win a bookcase full of books, plus bookcase.

She was pretty tired of being photographed by passersby by the time it was done! (Sorry, a photo of me got you absolutely nothing.)

Peter White, whose Zayne Carrick costume had appeared in the letters pages of Knights of the Old Republic, also appeared; it was more than a bit surreal for me to see these two characters in one place.

This is me thinking, “Sorry, Zayne — Kerra can definitely beat you in a lightsaber duel. We haven’t statted her character for the role-playing game, but she’s probably got something like a half-dozen melee feats you don’t!”

Saturday we had a panel on the comics series and novel. “Kerra” sat in on the panel, with Del Rey editor Shelly Shapiro, Dark Horse editor Dave Marshall, and myself. Jeremy Atkins of Dark Horse (far right) ran the panel.

The slide presentation provided people with their first look at the cover of Knight Errant #3, due in December. Which reminds me —I need to get a page online for the second issue here…

While I didn’t give away much in the panel, I did reveal the visual inspiration for a particular tower-like vessel that appears in the first issue of the comics series. I had kept thinking it should look, y’know, kind of like the stubby thing that’s left over when you snap off the wing of a Kenner TIE Fighter; so I finally just told the artist that’s what to base it on. (No, I’m not even going to begin to come up with a continuity rationalization for the resemblance…)

We had signings, of course — I was really pleased to get to meet everyone. And luckily, my voice held out for much of the show — I was pretty terrified of reaching the Saturday panel with only the ability to croak!

At the Hasbro booth, they were displaying the Entertainment Earth exclusive figures of Rohlan and Jarael that are coming later this year. Don’t forget, you can still preorder the figures by clicking here.

The convention being in Florida, we made a family trip of it; it was the first time my kids had been to either a convention or to Florida, so it was a good combination. Jack and Josie got to work on dioramas at Echo Base, see the costume contest, the droid parade, and more. Now they know what Dad does for a living!

It was also the first time I’d been to Florida since my senior class trip umpty-ump years ago. I visited EPCOT then, but got no closer to it to the parking lot this time, on the way to the Magic Kingdom with the family. Initial thoughts of hitting EPCOT again on Sunday evaporated — along with much else — once I saw hot blazing hot it was. (The last time I’d been there, it’d been March.) No matter; it just meant a fourth day back at the convention.

Celebration itself was, of course, plenty entertaining on its own; the life-sized TIE Interceptor was a marvel to look at, as were several other displays. This thing had cables attached to the ceiling to keep the wings standing.