Free Like Tears in Rain: Meditations on Science Fiction Cinema by Alex Kane

multiplayer. The fact that this was just a beta—I have high expectations for  Titanfall  when it releases March 11. I suppose if  Terminator taught us anything, it’s that our own creations can be our undoing—or salvation. I think there’s definitely overlap between mechs and kaiju, and it’s not just a matter of size. I’ll also add that  Titanfall  is apparently going to feature some giant hostile creatures, according to online sources. Even more reason to pick up the game!
     
    With the  Godzilla  reboot right around the corner, and  Kaiju Rising  climbing the Amazon bestsellers lists with a slew of 4- and 5-star reviews, what’s next for our beloved kaiju in the world of mass entertainment? Are they prepping to take the world by storm, or have they simply always been here, lurking unseen just beneath the water?
    I think that you can expect a surge in popularity for the kaiju genre.   Pacific Rim  was a good start, but I expect  Godzilla  to really ramp things up. I have my fingers crossed for a sequel to  Pacific Rim , and if  Godzilla  is as good as I’m hoping then a sequel to that isn’t out of the question.
    Meanwhile, Ragnarok Publications may be expanding the   Kaiju Rising  franchise with a series of novellas; and there’s always  Mech: Age of Steel  in the works. Oh!—and I just found out today that my favorite big-five publisher, Baen, has its own kaiju anthology in the works, called  The Baen Big Book of Monsters , edited by Hank Davis. And Bob Eggleton did the cover! It’s a good time to be a fan of kaiju.
     
    Thanks so much again for your time, Nick, and best of luck with your future endeavors at Ragnarok! It’s an interesting time to be involved with publishing, and I look forward to seeing what you guys do next.
    Thanks so much—it was a pleasure!

The Star Wars
    My first fan letter to Dark Horse Comics
     
     
     
    Read the first issue of Dark Horse Comics’ new adaptation of  The Star Wars  last night, and in a fever of fannish passion unlike any I’ve felt in ages I composed the following e-mail:
     
    from: Alex Kane
    to: [email protected]
    date: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 9:12 PM
    subject: The Star Wars #1
    I’d like to congratulate everybody at Dark Horse for their phenomenal work on  The Star Wars  #1. Although I only got into reading comics a few years back, while in college, George Lucas’s universe has been a part of my life since I was just old enough to operate my parents’ VCR. When my dad took me at age seven to see  Empire  and  Jedi during their Special Edition rereleases, at my hometown’s now-defunct Rivoli Theatre, Darth Vader’s revelation on Bespin felt like a religious experience. The Emperor and his Force lightning, given my vague understanding of the Dark Side, left a similarly lasting impression.
    Not long afterward, the three-year wait between   The Phantom Menace  and  Attack of the Clones  left me feeling starved for the Force. So, like a lot of fans, much of my childhood was spent scouring the Internet—in its dialup-modem era—for whatever artifacts I could find from that galaxy far, far away. One of them was a .txt file alleged to be Lucas’s original draft of a screenplay called  The Star Wars , and it began precisely as the first issue of last month’s comic does: with a “Jedi-Bendu” named Kane Starkiller and his two sons encountering a Sith warrior.
    I never gave that plain-text file much credence. Half of me assumed it to be fake, maybe the longwinded imaginings of a zealous fan. And it didn’t feel like the   Star Wars  I knew and loved anyway; its DNA seemed . . .  different , somehow.
    Your comic succeeds so admirably in this regard. You’ve managed to take the rough draft of the story we all know and treasure and imbue it with the life that Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston, Dennis Muren, and so many others gave to Lucas’s seminal vision back in ’77. Nick Runge’s gorgeous