The Star Wars vintage Kenner action figures changed toys and franchising forever. Sales of this line were so successful that it’s no surprise the fan nostalgia for these 3.75-inch figures in new packages is still as great as ever, 44 years after their first appearance in a pre-order campaign for Christmas 1977. Disney’s line of six-inch “Black Series” has quickly caught up to the original line of characters, with new sculpts and more articulation, including even more characters from the Expanded Universe. At last fans of the original Star Wars comics published by Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s get to see one of the most beloved of all the characters we haven’t yet seen on the big or small screen (but we’re still hoping for that soon): Jaxxon, the six-foot tall Lepi mercenary smuggler from Star Wars Issue #8, Eight for Aduba-3, the Seven Samurai adaptation where we first met the angry talking rabbit and his ship, the Rabbit’s Foot.
Jaxxon stayed around for the next three issues and returned for the first appearance of the borg Valance. Our first real hope of seeing Jaxxon in Star Wars canon was in a variant cover for the rebooted Marvel Comics Star Wars series in 2015, then he re-appeared in the retro Star Wars Issue #108 in 2019, and again for Vader Down. And this weekend for the first time you can pre-order Jaxxon’s first action figure here from Entertainment Earth.
Our borgBest of 2019 list continues today with the Best in Comics. If you missed them, check out our review of the Best Movies of 2019 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2019here, and the Best in Television 2019here.
We reviewed comics from every major publisher this year, and were pleasantly surprised with all the new characters and content available. You’ll find both some new creators on the list this year and some fan favorites who keep making better comic books each new year.
Here are the best comic books for 2019:
Best Limited Comic Series (tie) –Sara by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting (TKO Studios) and Goodnight Paradise by Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli (TKO Studios). The new publisher TKO Studios began with a bang with these two incredible stories. Sara is what every fan of war comics hopes for, and Goodnight Paradise brings the realities of life in the 21st century to the comics page in a story that will stay with readers a long time.
Best Ongoing Comic Book Series – Ghost Tree by Bobby Curnow and Simon Gane (IDW Publishing). Haunting, mythic, and sweeping, this story of a man reflecting on his past and coming to terms with the present combines with Asian legend tropes to form an emotional and curiously funny tale. Sure to leave readers begging for more.
Best Sci-Fi Comic Series, Best Comic Book Writing – Ascender by writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dustin Nguyen (Image Comics). Lemire owned this category with two fabulous science fiction tales, both with strong female lead characters. Runner-up: Sentientby Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta (TKO Studios).
Jaxxon, the mercenary rabbit, first appeared in the original Marvel Comics Star Wars, Issue #8, published in November 1977. The issue was written and drawn by Howard Chaykin, co-written by Roy Thomas and inked by Tom Palmer. Jaxxon was a great character, and fit right in with that Star Wars cantina full of strange aliens in the original movie. Officially a Lepi smuggler working with Han Solo on an early job, a la Seven Samurai, Jaxxon was a 1970s early dose of snarky and cantankerous, a giant Harvey in a spacesuit with the attitude of Howard the Duck. He was tough, smart, and funny, and long before the third movie trilogy he was the first character we met who ate background characters (he hated carrots, but liked his dewback steaks).
If you missed last year’s annual for Marvel’s Star Wars Adventuresseries, you may not know Jaxxon is officially a canon character now. And he’s back this summer when the next comic book annual arrives from IDW Publishing. The creators promise plenty of Jaxxon in his next story, and even better, he’s featured on the cover. And it’s not just any cover, it’s a cover drawn by one of our all-time favorite artists, Stan Sakai, who readers of borg will have seen turn up recently in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo, Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls, and of course the series readers know him best for, the new reboot of his solo series Usagi Yojimbo.
Every creator at Marvel has seemed to want to bring Jaxxon back, from Jason Aaron to John Tyler Christopher, to Chip Zdarsky, with the artists featuring him on their variant covers for the main monthly series and tie-in titles, plus he made the recent non-canon Star Wars, Issue #108. The new, second annual story for the cartoony, young adult-focused Star Wars Adventures comes from the same team to bring Jaxxon back to the Marvel Comics pages last year, writer Cavan Scott and artist Alain Mauricet, this time pairing Jaxxon with Lando Calrissian on his next gig.
Here are just a few of those covers in case you missed them, and a preview:
The Crazy Top Shop was my early 1980s experience with heat-press printed T-shirts. At Southridge Mall you could show off your fandom with slogans or images from your favorite shows. Who can forget the smell of the melting glue as the clerk ironed your selection onto your favorite baseball jersey? I remember getting one shirt with the Three Stooges, one with The Fonz, and one with Yoda right after seeing The Empire Strikes Back.
An online shop is now offering shirts for all sorts of fans with some great throwbacks to pop culture’s past. From mash-ups, humor, and obscure references, many we haven’t seen elsewhere, Retropolis has an incredible variety of printed logos. We’re betting everyone can find something on the store’s website, where it currently is offering more than 900 retro-themed shirt styles. What’s it going to take to get you nostalgic, and what kind of nostalgia defines you–enough to display it for everyone to see on your shirt? Do you like classic television shows? How about toys and toy companies from the distant past? What about forgotten advertising campaigns and the earliest pop culture slogans? Retropolis may not have everything, but it has plenty. How about a shirt with a vintage comic book logo, like the old Charlton Comics brand, that crazy Hey Kids! Comics, or the memorable Comics Code Authority stamp?
How about a shirt with an image of that yellow plastic 45 RPM record adapter? How about T-shirts regularly seen worn by characters inside TV and film, like Three’s Company, John Ritter’s Captain Avenger from Hero At Large, the jersey from Teen Wolf, Snoopy’s Joe Cool shirt, Mork and Mindy, or Pigs in Space? And a few hundred of the catalog listings are for shirts sporting famous and not-so famous superhero logos. From Super Grover to the Flash, several 1966 Batman characters, and even Captain Carrot, if you can think of something, it’s probably there.
You can also find several mash-ups, allowing you to show off your own twisted sense of humor, like an unforgettable Marvel Star Wars comics character colliding with a Carl Weathers movie for an Action Jaxxon logo. We also spotted Atomic Blondie, Cap’n Crunch on a Big Wheel, Fonzie’s Jump the Shark episode from Happy Days meets Jaws, and other shirts featuring Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots, Monster Cereals, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Planet of the Apes.
Along with the superhero shirts, we spotted four big categories to choose from. Like fake pop culture. We saw Amalgamated Ice Cream(Batman),ACME(Looney Tunes),Arnold’s(Happy Days),Athlead (The Office),Advanced Idea Mechanics (Marvel),Chop Suey Palace(A Christmas Story),Camp Crystal Lake(Friday the 13th),Child Detection Agency (Monsters, Inc.),Cocktails and Dreams (Cocktail),Frostbite Falls(Rocky & Bullwinkle), Fox Force Five (Pulp Fiction),Hill Valley Police(Back to the Future),Rockford Agency (Rockford Files), and Wimpy Burgers (Popeye).
You still haven’t found something you must have yet?
Happy Easter! Along with the Easter Bunny, how well do you know the famous rabbits of print and screen? We thought we’d dig in and see what we found and a few dozen surfaced that you probably know, maybe don’t know, or might want to know. Americans are raised knowing something about the Easter Bunny from year one. Are any of these other rabbits even more famous?
We had a hard time finding a photo of one famous movie rabbit. There he is–Harvey, from the 1950 movie co-starring Jimmy Stewart.
Everyone needs a painting in their home like that.
Since it’s Star Wars Celebration weekend, we won’t forget our favorite rogue rabbit, Jaxxon, from the Howard Chaykin and Roy Thomas 1970s Star Wars comic book series. (That’s him at the top of this article).
We discussed another comic book rabbit only yesterday here at borg.com, Stan Sakai’s samurai from Usagi Yojimbo.
Usagi is a rabbit you want on your side. But so is Judy Hopp. She’s one great cop.
She’s the star of last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Animated Film, Zootopia. And speaking of zoos, Judy would fit right in with this next guy.
That’s Captain Carrot, from Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew!, the 1980s DC Comics series.
Who could be cuter than Thumper, the rabbit from the 1942 Disney movie, Bambi?
Can you remember the first comic book that ever landed in your hands? More than a decade ago I first met one of my comic book creator heroes, Howard Chaykin. Chaykin created the very first Star Wars movie poster, a stylized, action-filled cover in his unique style:
Chaykin was visiting town at a local Con and luckily for me most of the visitors at the show were in line for the newest young comic artist, and didn’t realize all Mr. Chaykin had done in his long career in comics and television, so I got plenty of time to chat with him, and have him autograph my first comic book: Star Wars, Issue #8, featuring a story called “Eight for Aduba-3,” influenced by The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai story. I’ve bragged up Chaykin before here at borg.com. He’s one of the most interesting guys in the comics business.
“Eight for Aduba-3” came out when Marvel Comics first had the license to create the Star Wars movie adaptation, drawn by Chaykin and written by Chaykin and the great Roy Thomas, after a quick look at materials from the film and conversation with George Lucas. They were tapped to take the characters from the new phenomenon in a new direction following the events in Episode IV: A New Hope. “Eight for Aduba-3” included more than one tough recruited mercenary, much like its source material, but the big standout was Jaxxon, a giant, angry green rabbit-man.
