20: “Use your harpoon tow-cables—go for the legs!”
Age 13/14/15? | 1981/82/83? The rebels try to trip up an At-AT Walker with a Snowspeeder’s tow-cable’
The first Walker is brought down—and just… explodes!
Copy-and-Paste
Anyone remember this bit? Me neither!
Cor… that’s a lovely mag/news clipping that I put in there! I also seem to have enhanced it by adding some laser bolts to it with white pencil—and a speech balloon. It reads:
“Another transport’s on its way. Give the shield some cover!
Was I confused about the difference between the shield and the base’s shield generator?
I’m actually beginning to feel a bit confused about now, to be honest!
In the next panel we see the Walkers attempting to shoot down the fleeing rebel transport ship. “Blast it!” Wonderfully daft. I suppose it’s all a bit implausible in the film too, but Star Wars being Star Wars, we seem not to notice these minor details very much, and just enjoy the ride as usual. It’s interesting how Star Wars plays that trick on us.
“Detach Cable”
I used to love it when my son, Johnny, was mad into Star Wars. It really was our father-and-son-thing. It wore off around the age of 5 as he got more into football, but you know, it’s only right that kids start to figure out their interests for themselves. He still plays Battlefront on the console and enjoys the films, but it’s not that big a thing to him.
Anyway, it was funny, and lovely when he was about 3, 4, or 5, and he’d surprise us and say things—like when we were driving somewhere—just out of the blue. From the back seat, you’d hear, “You rebel scummmm…” or “Deee-tach… CABLE!”
I never said those things around him, but they seem to have stuck somehow, from watching the films. It was just funny that something kind of mundane like, “Detach cable!” was catchy for him and he enjoyed saying it. I wonder if he ever said, “Turn on…. CENTRAL HEATING!” or “Unnnload… DISHWASHER!”
Of course he said lots of other things to—all of the time. You see our Johnny has always been a chatterbox. I think he inherited it from his late Supergrannie Pauline. So, as we drove along there’d be this non-stop—funny—monologue going on!
Wedge Clarification
You can see that two speech balloons were added later in this page for clarity’s sake:
“Wedge here.” and “Well done Wedge!” Which is nice. I wasn’t just going to let it look like Luke was doing everything by himself!
I also added, “Cable away, yeehah!” and ‘—and blasts apart!’
Before I wish you all a great weekend, what the hell was Ewan McGreggor’s uncle Denis Lawton thinking when he turned down the opportunity to reprise his character, Wedge Antilles, in ‘The Force Awakens?’ Was he nuts? Seriously, how boring or onerous could the job be for the money he could demand from Lucasfilm? Does he prefer acting in that silly, lightweight TV cop series, ‘New Tricks?’
Have a great weekend!
Please give (free) support to this comic, and post your comments below 🙂 Do you think Denis Lawton was bonkers not to take the job?
A neat bit here that Lucas cribbed from his Classics education, along with the Empire replacing the Republic:
An ancient Roman legion was attacked by war elephants, so Roman charioteers harpooned their legs and circled about, to trip them up.
(Lucas mined more than Flash Gordon and Kurosawa movies for his epic!)
Hey Rob,
That’s very interesting. I never knew that. Hadn’t heard about it before.
Thanks for that nugget.