#matt jacobs

Happy Clone Wars Friday!

This week’s theme: Headcanons! Feel free to use my headcanons as inspiration for your fics. And please send in your own headcanons, and I will try to find a comic panel to go with them!

I’ve seen a few people criticize the current Star Wars canon for having so many Jedi survive Order 66 (namely Ahsoka Tano, Kanan Jarrus, and Cal Kestis). This criticism could also be applied to many old Dark Horse comics, such as this brilliant Clone Wars Adventure, in which Padawan Joc Sah has to abruptly switch sides when the clone army kills his Master. I love how this story frames the Jedi’s fall from grace: they seem to have lost everything, but they are not entirely hopeless. In this cruel galaxy, there are many friends on the wrong side of the law.

Personally, I do not have a problem with multiple Jedi surviving Order 66. There are a lot of them, after all. I do think some survival stories make more sense than others: the moment between Rex and Ahsoka in Season 7, for example, is pretty confusing. (Poor Ahsoka dances with death on Mortis, Malachor, and Mandalore, and her escapes strain my credulity more every time!) And I appreciate when these Jedi have pre-Episode-IV closure of some kind -- the better for Luke to be all alone when his story kicks off. We know why Kanan and Ezra can’t be there to help him, but what about the others?

This desire for closure brings me to my headcanon. While we wait for excuses for Ahsoka and Cal, I have a gloomy answer for any other Jedi stragglers: to better hide from the Empire, they could cut themselves off from the Force. Luke, according to “The Last Jedi,” is the most famous person who has undergone this, but it also happens to the characters in comics like “Tales of the Jedi” and video games like “Jedi: Fallen Order” and “Knights of the Old Republic II.” I think it’s a tragic and poetic situation, and it would fit well in the repressed setting of Imperial rule. The Inquisitors of the new canon target and recruit those with Force-sensitivity, so it would be coldly strategic to reject it.

And for an outcast like Joc Sah, it would also help him fit in better with his new friends.

The Arcs Volume 1

by Matt Jacobs aka  darkmatterillustration, the awesome artist who gave us our new and stunning header!

make sure to follow him around!

Matt Jacobs aka  darkmatterillustration gave us this beautiful treat!

make sure to follow him around!

Reeeaally cool interview with Matt Jacobs, artist/illustrator behind the upcoming Faith No more / Mr. Bungle comic book.