Rex & Roll - My Second Insider Article!
Hello there!
I didn’t know whether I should write a dedicated post to my second article for Star Wars Insider. The first one was a big achievement, and I talked all about the process of getting there. A second one is more of the same.
Except this is Star Wars I got to write about, and while my first article combined my current passions, my second took me back to when I fell in love with Star Wars as a child, to one of my favourite characters, Captain Rex from the animated series The Clone Wars.
And what makes this article special, a certain upward trend from the last, is that my article made the cover! NOT the cover story, but it is the headline running across the bottom from that inset picture.
There’s a funny story to how I found out this article had made the cover. Eman Esfandi, the great actor that brought Ezra Bridger to life in live action (star of the cover above), shared his excitement.
He was excited as he didn’t know he’d be plastered over the cover of this worldwide magazine. But I was excited to see something else on the cover, and couldn’t say!
Anyway, back to The Clone Wars, specifically the animated film that launched it all (probably the piece of media I’ve re-watched the most). It introduced Rex, Ahsoka and many others, and launched seven seasons and many spin-off shows, recently celebrating its sixteenth anniversary.
I was five, soon to be six when it came out. And yet I still remember my dad showing me the newspaper with an image of a couple of animated characters. I think it was Anakin Skywalker next to Admiral Yularen.
We never saw it in the cinema, but got the DVD at some point. It was the first Star Wars film I could watch without looking away, and of course the Lego sets that came with it probably quadrupled the size of my collection.
One of my favourite minifigures, one of my favourite characters then just because he was cool, was the clone Captain Rex, second in command to Anakin’s 501st Legion.
Before I knew the term character arc or had consumed enough Star Wars to appreciate Rex’s journey as a man born to fight, committing to life as a soldier over thirty years, even after he’s retired, it was just his rank and armour that drew me to him, and the quality of his friendships with the show’s Jedi characters and fellow clones.
Really he was the coolest toy, and so one of me and my grandfather’s unfinished woodworking projects happened to be this large scale semi-articulated version of Lego Captain Rex.
What made the article even more special was that I received the email giving me the go ahead on my grandfather’s birthday. Wooden Rex has been watching me from the side of my writing desk ever since.
Here’s an official description of the article:
CAPTAIN REX: A top ten feature showcasing the major events, battles, and achievements in Rex’s life.
Thankfully it was broad enough not just to be battles, so I could encapsulate moments, periods, really tell a biography. This top ten is chronological not ranked.
A bit about the writing process: Rex’s journey was actually told, like most of Star Wars, out of order. We got The Clone Wars seasons 1-6, Rebels seasons 2-4 set 20 years later, The Clone Wars Season 7 going back in time, then The Bad Batch seasons 1-3 and a brief Tales of the Jedi continuing from there. Never mind appearances in books and comics. But actually, there’s an amazing through thread that makes it seems like it was all impossibly planned out, like a real person’s journey. The Bad Batch did a good job filling in some of the gaps, but there’s some room for interpretation for the middle of Rex’s life.
Anyway, it was a great excuse to watch some of my favourite TV again. Selecting ten items was both difficult and easy, only going through a couple of iterations to balance out his eras. Writing each 150 word entry was actually the hardest part, because of that word count. Sometimes I’d write thrice that much, if not more. Trimming down from a page to a couple of paragraphs like that was a very good editing exercise, though. I have to thank Yoon Ha Lee, whose novelisation of the infamous Umbara four-parter from Rex’s POV really helped me summarise.
I was also lucky to move my deadline to the day The Bad Batch finale aired, in case Rex made another appearance beyond the great (and important for his character’s journey) two-parter earlier in the season. Rex was mentioned in the finale, so I’m glad I did ask for that and could tell his story in the most up to date form. Plus it was a certain kind of thrill that morning to wake up and know I’ve got to watch Star Wars and then write it up for an official article that day!
I also wanted to make sure I explored all of Rex’s journey, focus on the character not necessarily the ‘bigger’ stories. His earliest appearance in the timeline is actually a flashback in Marc Guggenheim’s Age of Republic comics short story 501st Plus One.
Readers of this newsletter may remember when Marc answered a question about this Battle of Arantara on his newsletter. Well, now we all know why I asked!
Where to find the magazine
Star Wars Insider #227 should be on newsstands August 27th in the US and Canada, and maybe the rest of the world where it’s sold. It supposedly won’t be out in the UK until September 26th - I’ll be 22! If you’re in the UK (unless you’re very lucky to walk into a Forbidden Planet on the right day), your best bet is to order from Titan Publishing’s comics and magazine site - where you can also read the editor’s fun introduction.
For ease, here’s a dedicated link for physical copies:
•Rest of the world (don’t think #227’s available to order from that link yet.)
I’ll also link to Forbidden Planet, who stock the previews and foil covers too, all available for pre-order. I will say that the covers on their listings are out of date though. For example the background on the foil cover is plain silver when it will be a dark blue starscape.
And what makes this issue even even more special is that the collector’s foil cover is dedicated to my article! It’s Rex’s iconic Phase II helmet!
A big thank you to Star Wars Insider designer David Colderly not only for designing everything, my article, the covers, but for keeping me informed on all things related to the issue. Of course I have to thank our editor Chris Cooper again for letting me write in the magical worlds of my childhood. And I suppose I should thank my parents too.
(For those reading this who aren’t subscribed - please do! I write about Star Wars every other Sunday. My ‘A Long Time Ago…’ series shares all the written Star Wars stories in my ultimate canon timeline order. We’ve just finished the books but there’s more beyond those! Plus I throw in some ancient sites too. And the series may be moving in an exciting new direction later this year... Check out the archive.)
Cheers for reading this bonus edition of my newsletter. I think this was worth another break in the schedule. Please check out the magazine, not just for my article, but for all the amazing features.
This issue includes one I’m really looking forward to reading, by our editor Chris and fellow Brit contributor Mark Newbold, who I met last month at London Film and Comic Con. Here’s a quote about that from Mark’s Fantha Tracks site, definitely something to check out:
…a tour of the shop at Pinewood Studios where myself and Insider editor Chris Cooper spent a day with Neal Scanlan, Lee Towersey and the creature shop team to get the inside scoop on the story so far as well as a look behind the scenes of The Acolyte.
Plus there’s some photos on there, including the other two covers for this issue!
This issue, this article, means the world to me. You could say it’s been sixteen years in the making.
If you know Captain Rex, you probably know his quote “Experience outranks everything.” This has certainly been an experience.
May the Force be with you,
Harvey