Tom Veitch, One of the Vanguards of Star Wars' Expanded Universe, Has Died
So, this is an expansion of something I posted last night, on Facebook, giving more detail.
I didn't post it because I liked what he wrote in the Star Wars universe. I did like it.
But I like a lot of "works" by folks, and when they pass, might say something. Might not.
Tom Veitch, however?
He was ... a nice guy.
That's it. Just a nice guy.
Here's my "evidence."
It's a cut and paste I have saved for years, first in a "DocMaker" doc. An early kind of digital magazine format that let you combine art and even clickable actions and sounds.
Resaved it when DocMaker went became obsolete programming to an html file. I can't read it as text, but I can open the "page" in a browser and cut and paste out of it.
It was originally posted on the America Online Star Wars Fan Club. AOLSWFC for "short."
Fas were discussing the new works that were coming out. Among them, Star Wars: Dark Empire. The image on the left above is from the cover of one of the Dark Empire comics.
And there he was. Tom Veitch. The actual writer of the piece.
Engaging with readers and fans. Not just to brag on the work or push sales. Actually, completely the opposite.
Some of what he wrote raised questions among fans. Do Jedi really stay above "anger"?
Subj: Anger and the Jedi
95-10-02 00:24:38 EDT
From: Tom Veitch
SGUILFOYLE says <<As much as he'd like to think it wasn't, Master Thon was full of it when he said it wasn't vengeance. Had to be. Also justice. Also self-defense. But Nomi had an awful pissed off look on her face when she slashed that one guy.>>
The Jedi seem to walk a thin line in battle. On the one hand they fight to defend, to bring justice and peace. On the other hand (or in either hand) they wield one of the most violent hand-weapons ever conceived. Mike Beidler and I were talking about the film BRAVEHEART, which we both agreed is one of the greatest war movies of all time. We seemed to agree that, in many ways, Braveheart is about the same things that Star Wars is about, except Star Wars is a fantasy and Braveheart (supposedly) is about things that really happened. But just put yourself back in time ten thousand or fifteen thousand years, into the "middle ages" of the Galaxy.
Can you imagine a great land battle, with hundreds (or thousands) of lightsaber wielding warriors taking on an opposing army of savage swordsmen in an open plain? Can you imagine the carnage, when those lightsabers cut through the blades and limbs of the enemy?
Well...some Galactic historians say it was never like that. They opine that the Jedi were so versatile in the use of the Force that they simply made all the weapons fly out of their opponents' hands.
The Jedi, they say, seldom, if ever, cut with the lightsword. I dunno. When Obi-Wan pulled his weapon in the Cantina, after years of meditative retirement, I started to wonder.
In the written script and the novel (as we know) he slices aliens left and right: <<The rodent thing had been cleft cleanly down the middle, its two halves falling in opposite directions. The giant multicolored create still stood staring, dazed, at the old human who was poised motionless before it, the shining lightsaber held over his head in a peculiar fashion. The creature's chrome pistol fired once, blowing a hole in the door. Then the torso peeled away as neatly as had the body of the rodent, its two cauterized sections falling in opposite directions to lie motionless on the cool stone.>>
Heavy duty stuff, and probably a small taste of what life was like back in the days of yore, when the only law in town was a well-tuned lightsaber. And yet...there is the tension in the story created by Yoda's admonition to become "passive"... and the darkside monopoly on the emotion of anger. Is a great warrior ever really "passive"?
Is a great warrior never angry? Go see Braveheart and then come back and tell me a great warrior is never angry.
Yer philosopher Jedi, Tom
PS -- Sorry I haven't been around much lately. I can't get too excited bragging about myself or chatting about posters and products for sale, expensive "metal Dark Empire cards" and stuff like that. I'm always up for a thoughtful discussion, if one gets going, though. Or a good joke. And I mean a GOOD joke, SG. ;-)
((This is me back again. I took fake offense at the last item. Because I had tried out in the Star Wars group something I had seen on a Star Trek forum. Star Wars Chicken jokes. They are lame. But people were howling. And that's what I really saved. My entire archive of Chicken jokes, complete with comments and the chicken jokes other people tried to write as well.))
Subj: Re:Anger and the Jedi
95-10-02 02:07:19 EDT
From: SGUILFOYLE
<<<Or a good joke. And I mean a GOOD joke, SG. ;-)>>>
I have a feeling there's going to be some very pissed off capons knocking at your door pretty soon, Mr. Veitch.
Wounded, hurt am I. I have entertained, probably, maybe, at the very most, dozens (OK one dozen, but it's a baker's dozen if you include my mom) with my chicken jokes.
I thought we were buds.
((I do not remember how extensively we had been talking before that post. But I switched gears to discuss another project he had that just came out.))
Anyway, I picked up Superman at Earth's End tonight. Kal-El was looking a lot fluffier than when I last saw him. Different kind of tale. Down note, I was actually kind of grossed out by Clark walking into the funeral pyre and we getting to see a flaming silhouette of his skull. it was almost as disturbing as flashing on Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair on Baba Wawa the other night. I have a clicker to take care of one of those unsettling sights.
Subj: Shadows of the Chicken Jokes
95-10-04 23:41:22 EDT
From: Tom Veitch
<<I have a feeling there's going to be some very pissed off capons knocking at your door pretty soon, Mr. Veitch. Wounded, hurt am I. I have entertained, probably, maybe, at the very most, dozens (OK one dozen, but it's a baker's dozen if you include my mom) with my chicken jokes. I thought we were buds.>>
Enjoy those capons we did, SG. Very fine roasted, and the next day chicken salad we made. A little Ewok pate on the side.
Seriously, though, good Star Wars jokes are hard to come by. I tried all day yesterday to think of one, finally came up with one about two Scottish bounty hunters in a bar, but unfortunately it transgressed AOL's TOS, so I guess it'll have to wait. :-\ T-
Subj: Re:Shadows of the Chicken Jokes
95-10-05 03:08:17 EDT
From: SGUILFOYLE
You can e-mail the joke to me. Make me laugh so hard I'll pee ma kilt. ...
I think the discussion went on in another thread. Because he mentioned Braveheart and talked about Jedi walking over fields of dead people in a great battle, the horror of it, I told him somewhere I thought that, if George Lucas ever got around to making the prequels, Angus MacFayden would make a good young Obi-Wan Kenobi. I had drawn a picture of a young Obi-Wan striding across a battlefield looking devastated, and gave him the MacFayden goatee and he looked a bit like the actor.
Tom didn't agree. Tom was already in tight at Lucasfilm, such as it was, at this time. And Lucas was already beginning to do some work on the prequels. So maybe he knew something I didn't when he disagreed.
We had other discussions, but I didn't save them because there was no obvious appeal to my vanity at the time. And a good chicken joke is hard to come by.
I did them on and off for a few months. At a certain point, I wrote a special "series" of them, based on his series. Star Wars: Dark Chicken.
I keep meaning to get all that stuff I put on the Internet back in the day into some usable form on another blog or website. But life doesn't give me a lot of time.
But I went and found the files again, because of his passing.
And I will go out at some point to the garage and comb through the boxes and find them, the real testament to the kind of guy Tom Veitch was.
At some point we fell out of touch. The AOLSWFC got to be a slightly different place. I was moving on from Cheraw to Barnwell about that time. Maybe I left it before it went belly up. Maybe it was AOL's collapse.
But before I lost touch, we were talking about some of his other stuff. I said it was impossible to find the series that made George Lucas trust him to do a Star Wars comic.
It was called "The Light and Darkness War." Really weird, but in a good way. Forces of light and dark, obviously, fighting (obviously). Leonardi da Vinci hooks up with weird aliens and Vietnam veterans to fight the war.
It was a six-issue series, but I think a limited run. I didn't know at the time, but he got the job doing that comic and had a chance to work with THE Archie Goodwin. A great comic writer and storyteller. I am as jealous of Tom's time with the Goodwin as I am as his time with George Lucas.
The comics, like I said, were impossible to get.
But during one of those chats, he had asked for my address, and not thinking the thoughts I would think now in these days of internet privacy, gave it to him.
A little while later, I was surprised to find all six issues delivered to my door. I can't remember where or when exactly it was.
Gratis. Just because we had had some good chats online, and he laughed, though he wouldn't admit it, at a chicken joke or two of mine.
Like I said. He was just a nice guy.
I have the comics to prove it.
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