Before anybody points it out – I have not abandoned the storyline. Don’t worry (assuming you wanted to see where the story was going, of course), I simply had a lot of extra work to do this weekend and by the time I could finally manage to sit down and work on the comic I realized the time I had available for it would simply not allow for me to draw what I wanted to happen next.
Like I said, I’ve had a lot of extra work to do these past few days, and while I’ve been working I’ve been listening to Star Wars audiobooks. I started around the Old Republic stories, and yesterday was listening to “A New Hope” when I reached the part where Luke Skywalker turns on his father’s lightsaber for the first time.
In the story, they describe it as not being hot, which seems rather unlikely to me, since those things sure do look pretty hot. Then again, although I have read how lightsabers are supposed to work, I know nothing about the actual, real-world physics of how lightsabers would work, if they existed. So I can’t really say for sure if lightsabers would be hot or not.
Still, if I had to guess, I’d go for saying they’re hot. And thinking about this, and burning, and lamps, and fake lightsabers and all those things, I somehow thought of lightsabers and tannings beds. And that thought go me thinking that for some reason, most dark Jedi, Sith and such are very pale (Darth Maul doesn’t really count, since that’s just the color of his skin, it’s not like he’s red and black for being out in the sun too long).
So now you know, tan is light, pale is dark.
Good hunting;
O
NOTE: I apologize if this joke has been done before by somebody else. The thing about making Star Wars jokes is that one always runs the risk of making jokes that have already been done. Standard Star Wars joke procedure demands that you do Google searches before you decide to go forward with it, which is why I had to discard my attacking Jabba the Hut with a saltshaker joke and that Darth Vader would dress up as Batman for Halloween. Nevertheless, you never know. Maybe it’s been done in some obscure forum or something like that. I did my search, and that’s my defense.
Just in case, y’know.
That Yoda… O, you ruined my childhood!
I’d have thought Yoda would say ‘A path to the dark side they are’, not ‘are they’. Or is that a joke I don’t understand? (My husband adores me for being able to do Yoda-speak
))
@Nordic: Nah, I think it’s just that I’ev never really taken the time to study Yoda-speak. So I’ll take your word for it, and fix it like you said.
In the movie Ep1, Qui-Gon-Jin cuts through some heavy vault door thing with his lightsaber and it did leave a molten track. So yeah, they’re pretty hot stuff.
Lucas may not have intended lightsabers to be warm when he wrote Star Wars the book, but you can’t digitally enhance a book and resell it, so the best you get is a snapshot of the way Lucas once thought.
One of the early star wars sourcebooks had lightsabers as using contained antimatter for their cutting. That would generate some definite heat…plus deadly radiation, when used.
Talking like yoda is pretty easy. Just translate dutch grammar en sentencebuilding directly in to english and you’re pretty close.
I’m surprised you didn’t use Darth Fabulous for this.
I’m a physicist, and nerd enough to read about lightsabers. It’s supposed to be a plasma blade contained within some sort of a… well, an undefined containment field (here be science fiction). The canon describes it as heat-containing as well, meaning it will not emit heat and thus ‘not hot’. Given that without such containment the plasma (assuming it’s real plasma) is thousands of degrees hot and will be extremely dangerous to hold this close to a human body, not to mention the effects on the air around it, its either cold or in-world impossible.
Now, regarding Yoda-speak: A normal sentence’s order is Subject-Verb-Object-Place-Time (I need a cake at my place tomorrow). Yoda Speak is Object-Subject-Verb-Place-Time (A cake I need at my place tomorrow). It’s an easy way to remember how it works.
I am tempted to match the lightsabers with their owners (The top three are Vader, Anakin, Obi-Wan), but given there are two purple sabers I guess it’s not really accurate.
Unless I’m wrong, and they are accurate.
Are they?
To make things more clear in my lightsaber theory: Either the plasma is completely isolated, making the lightsaber cold (when not touching it, of course), or the heat emitted from it will instantly kill the person activating the lightsaber, probably igniting the air around it in the process.
@J.C: The hilts are accurate. The blade colors, however, are not.
And last thing, being a geek and all: Yoda’s feet has between three and five toes per leg (depanding on the movie), but never less (and you drew him with only two toes).
I will shut up now.
your fellow web-artist, XKCD who is a heavy science geek, in fact I have learnt more from researching his comics than from actually studying, runs answers to readers questions using real physics. I can heartily recommend it, so he could probably give some interesting viewpoints to light-sabers. I was blown by his speed of light baseball pitches. (and so was the rest of the world, according to his physics)
Pale is the dark side?
Damn it, seems I should be one of the most powerful force-users of the dark side ever …
It almost looks like there isn’t any glass…
The 2 purple sabers are not a problem, as there are two canoniocal purple sabers. 1 is Mace Windu’s, and the other is Mara Jade-Skywalker’s.