Blue Milk Special

One of the worst things about Shadows of the Empire is that the story was split across several mediums to make money, meaning to read/witness/experience the whole thing, you had to spend an ass load of money and do your damnedest to collect it all. I skipped the bandwagon at the time and later caught up with it all via the internet. However, one of the benefits of being divided between a video game, a comic series, a book, a soundtrack, trading cards and Force knows what else, was the art of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt.

The two brothers made their mark in the fantasy and sci-fi genres in the latter half of the 20th century, painting memorable scenes from Lord of the Rings, the Sword of Shannara, and the famous Star Wars film poster. In the 1990s they were leading artists in the non-sports collectible trading card business. Their art appeared in the popular card game Magic the Gathering, which I played through high school, and no doubt had a part in their selection as the official artists for the Shadows of the Empire trading cards.

What makes the trading card series so cool, is that unlike the other mediums where the story is purposefully divided and incomplete, the trading cards look at the story as a whole. It is possible to look through the cards in chronological order and see exactly where Dash Rendar’s adventures and Boba Fett’s escapades fit into the the larger scheme. Though I don’t own any of the physical cards, I have an almost complete collection I have gathered off the internet. The art is vibrant and richly colored in typical Hildebrandt style and a lot of fun to look at, even if it feels a little cartoony in places. I’ll touch upon this in more detail later, but several of the costumes of the supporting cast look like they were “inspired” by the insanely popular X-men titles from Marvel Comics.

Today’s strip is inspired by a scene that takes place in the novel, but is omitted from the Dark Horse comics and audio adaptions. I’m not even sure if it is the same “Devil Man” from the Mos Eisley Cantina in the original film, but thanks to the Brothers Hildebrandt I could not pass this scene by. It seems after Empire Strikes Back, Leia had to deal with a lot of lusty slime balls, two of them in Shadows of the Empire, and one giant-sized slime ball in Return of the Jedi. I get it, licking Carrie Fisher would have been a real treat, but let’s keep the hormones in check or at least wait until Han is around to put a blaster bolt between their eyes!

If anyone has a complete set of scans of the Hildebrandt brothers’ Shadows of the Empire card series (I’m missing about 5 or so) shoot me an email if you’re willing to send them my way. Who knows, those missing cards may inspire future BMS strips!

Here’s an old voting incentive strip featuring Malloc, “the Devil Man”…

And now we are pleased to announce…

Blue Milk Special teams up with Star Wars communities

Speaking of cards and card games, we have agreed to allow the Star Wars card game and miniature community A Few Maneuvers to begin posting Blue Milk Special strips in chronological order from the very beginning. If you play the Star Was LCG or the X-Wing miniature games but didn’t already know about A Few Maneuvers then I encourage you to join the community. They also have a great photo gallery!

Likewise, we’ve also agreed to team up with WampaTown. It is a forum for Star Wars fans, including fans of Blue Milk Special. The site has been in operation since 1999 and is definitely worth checking out. We will be retweeting their daily BMS strip posts and hope to net a few new readers along the way. Please head on over to both communities and find out what treasures they hold! 🙂