STAR WARS INSIDER 103 (U.S. EDITION)
Published by TITAN MAGAZINES
Review by Scott Weller
This is indeed a dark time for STAR WARS magazines…
STAR WARS INSIDER 103 is sadly not the “must have” that STARWARS.COM thinks it is in its promotional blurb!!
Along with the, for a change, decently presented preview of THE FORCE UNLEASHED, the interview with CLONE WARS TV series head writer Henry Gilroy are pretty much the only good things about this latest issue, the latter revealing some interesting snippets of what the series to come will focus on. The rest of the magazine..blech!! The Who’s Who guide to the CLONE WARS is a waste of time, and could have been done a whole lot better than just having large illustrations pretty much throughout of the main characters- there could have been stills of them in action in the film, some more info in there, just something INTERESTING!! A nice design would have helped, as well!!! With no sign of any kind of CLONE WARS magazine/comic on the horizon (at least so far), if ever there was a great chance to REALLY plug this film/TV series, this issue had the opportunity and blew it!! The John Dykstra feature has a few rare behind the scenes ILM pics but that’s about it-nothing new here-move on. The Versus feature is an absolute waste of space and a spread. The Long Time Ago is a good idea but it just feels like filler material the way it is presented. The Classic Moment looks more appalling than ever as a full page and should be a spread instead, replacing the hideous child-like Versus section. The letters page is an oasis of few good responses, even Steve Sansweet’s toys section seems to be dwindling on material, and that can’t be right. All of the toy promotional sections continue to be a garish visual mess that fails to make an impact because the design is so bad. And the final insult: the jaw dropping STAR WARS moments takes up a chuck of the magazine-oh, that feature hasn’t been done before by loads of other magazines previously, has it?
This magazine is bland, insipid and BORING!! It still has no idea which target audience to go with. It’s just bad. It makes IDG ENTERTAINMENT’s previous attempts, which I now feel were very under-rated, look like the works of William Shakespeare!! The poor quality of the magazine can be reversed by its publishers-I mean, TITAN’s own INDIANA JONES magazine isn’t bad. If not by TITAN, then please, somebody, save STAR WARS INSIDER magazine. There must be another publisher out there that can help!!!
P.S. A continuing message to INSIDER Editor Brian J. Robb-Brian, I’ve mentioned this twice before, but, two years on, I’m still waiting for my art cards!!!
AFICIONADO RATING: With no sign of hope or recovery for the INSIDER, at least for the immediate future, we’re getting pretty depressed by the state of things here at AFICIONADO. 6 out of 10.
