The Toledo Free Press Star strikes back
Somebody, cue the music:
The Toledo Free Press Star – a weekly publication in Toledo, Ohio — today published an edition that strikes close to my geekazoid fanboy heart.
Here’s the cover (Click any of these pages for a larger view):
James Molnar tells us:
My editor, Michael S. Miller, energetically decided to cover the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. I thought you would enjoy.
Oh, you know me so well, James. I think the cover subhead — “The greatest sequel of all time” — might be a bit of hyperbole. But because I find the whole edition so juicylicious, I won’t complain.
James continues:
For the cover, we went with poster art we hope everyone will recognize. We had some great shots of Boba Fett but thought it wouldn’t be as recognizable for the casual fan.
As lead designer, I did the layout work and created the special logo.
Here’s the index page, which reveals a number of Star Wars-themed touches. The headline, in particular, is a scream:
The heart of the Empire Strikes Back retrospective is a four-page sequence in the middle of today’s edition. James explains:
Michael decided to expand the spread to four pages. He has been in contact with Lucasfilm and was granted permission to use photos from the movie, along with behind-the-scenes photos.
We ran an essay by novelist and Butler University professor Dan Barden and a story by our comic and entertainment writer Jim Beard. The rest was Michael’s handiwork. He’s the true fan.
Find Beard’s story here, along with the factoids text — below, in the grey box on the right of the doubletruck. Find Barden’s “Dagobah, Nebraska” essay here.
James writes:
On page four of the spread, our pop culture guru Jeff McGinnis interviewed Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch. We reached out to other actors from the movie and got an interview with Bulloch.
That Boba Fetish headline is another stroke of genius.
The interview is pretty good. But the ending is priceless:
“More people talk about Star Wars than probably any other group of films,” he said. “And they talk about that particular scene, going into the Sarlacc pit. And they say, ‘You get out, don’t you, Mr. Bulloch?’ And I say, ‘Oh, of course! I’d stay down there for six months, to get money out of other bounty hunters in the Sarlacc pit, and I’d opened a Hooters bar’.”
And here is page 22, on which James used his customized logo again on the paper’s masthead:
Find the digital version of this week’s edition here.
The Star is a weekly product published by the Free Press — which, itself, is a weekly. Read about the launch of the Star here.
Go here to read about a really cool Simpsons Movie tie-in by the Free Press.