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Pirates Ahoy!
An Interview with Haden Blackman

Bad to the Crossbones

The expanded universe of Star Wars spin-off fiction has developed a cast of unforgettable characters that typically reside only within the media of their origin — a comic book, a novel, or an electronic game. It’s a rare and special occasion when a character draws enough attention to break through into a different medium. Such is the case with Nym, the alien pirate, who has made the jump from electronic games to comic books in Dark Horse Comics’ current series, Star Wars: Starfighter — Crossbones.

Nym is the brainchild of LucasArts story developers, and helming his comic book escapades is Haden Blackman, producer at LucasArts.

“When we were working on the first Star Wars: Starfighter, I sat down with [Project Director] Daron Stinnett. We started brainstorming different character concepts, including a Robin Hood-type pirate figure who was a little more gruff than he was flamboyant and similar to Han Solo in some ways, but we envisioned him as big and loud,” recalls Blackman.

Early concepts had pegged Nym as a human. It wasn’t until Lead Artist Jim Rice and Concept Artist James Zhang first sketched the tentacle-tressed alien that Nym gained his Feeorin heritage.

“At that point, it all came together, and we realized how cool he looked,” says Blackman. “There’s something you can do with an alien that is harder to do with a human character. You can really punch it up and go overboard with his emotion, so we really made him wear his emotions — especially his anger and frustration — on his sleeve. That was incredibly fun to write.”

Stinnett worked with a team of writers to develop Star Wars: Starfighter’s dialogue. He oversaw the recording sessions, and it was then — with the casting of actor Charlie Rocket (“Saturday Night Live,” “The X-Files”) as Nym — that the character came to life.

“He just brought a really great voice to Nym,” says Blackman, “really deep and gruff, and was able to take that certain kind of emotion we wanted to put behind Nym, and not make it too comical but really push it.”

Though internal reaction to Nym was overwhelmingly positive, it wasn’t until the game went public that Blackman knew he was dealing with a character with star potential.

“We started to receive some really good feedback about Nym. Then, Dark Horse actually came to me and asked if I wanted to do a short story featuring a character from a LucasArts game. I brainstormed some ideas, and the one they liked the most was the one with Nym.”

Thus Nym saw publication in a Blackman-penned short story in the pages of the anthology series, Star Wars Tales. Dark Horse wanted more, and Blackman was only happy to oblige.

“He’s fun to write,” the author reveals. ” I kind of describe him as the Lobo of the Star Wars universe, without the comical invulnerability. It’s the fact that he can be so loud and rude.”

A comic series was then envisioned to tie-in into the upcoming sequel to the best-selling Star Wars: Starfighter game. The Dark Horse mini-series would prepare fans for some of the events to be depicted in Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter.

“We wanted it to be a story that stood on its own, so it had to show some of Nym’s story-arc, but it also planted some seeds for the game,” says Blackman. The events of Crossbones would advance Nym’s character, aging and maturing the pirate to a level anticipating the game. “At the end of the first game, Nym just takes off. He does what Han Solo doesn’t — he turns his back on his new friends and decides to go back to his old way of life. But he can’t really, because the Trade Federation has taken everything from him. We had to get him to where he could actually become a more important leader than he was in the first game. There, he’s leading a band of pirates. In the second game, he’s leading a real resistant movement that’s fighting the Trade Federation in a remote system.”

Cast and Setting

While Nym’s moral growth is but one aspect of the three-issue series, fans of blaster-packed hard-hitting action have plenty to look forward to. Crossbones takes Star Wars piracy from the spacelanes to the high seas, and delivers a story with sail-rigged vessels, hull-scaling boardings, and deep sea treachery.

“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do with Star Wars,” admits Blackman. “It’s one of those ideas that has been kicking around, but there hasn’t been a good outlet for it. I’m a big pirate buff — you know, Blackbeard and Captain Kidd — so whenever I hear that term ‘space pirate’ it conjures up these other images that are outside of what we think about in Star Wars. I really wanted to make that crossover.”

Blackman’s affinity for buccaneers dovetailed well with the story development of Jedi Starfighter. “One of the things we decided early on was to have a water planet in the game.” he says, “We wanted it to be in Nym’s home setting, so that planet, Maramere, became a natural setting for the Crossbones comic.”

Aside from settings, the comic also previews upcoming characters. “Loreli Ro makes a cameo in Jedi Starfighter,” reveals Blackman, “Adi Gallia, who makes a cameo in the very beginning of Crossbones, is one of the main characters in the game.”

The previewed character with the most import, though, is the comic series’ main villain, the pirate chieftain Sol Sixxa. “Sol Sixxa has a scene with Nym in the game and tons of dialogue. We had Jeremy London (Mallrats, “Party of Five”) do his voice. He’s in several missions and he’s got his own special aquatic craft.”

By introducing Sixxa to readers first, Blackman not only previews an upcoming game character, but also sheds some light on Nym’s growth.

“In the Crossbones series, Sol Sixxa’s scope is relatively small. It’s limited to Maramere. He’s become a pretty ruthless, violent pirate. He preys predominantly on the Trade Federation, so in that way, he and Nym are similar. But Nym has grown past that. I almost see Sol Sixxa as a younger version of Nym. Nym still commits violent acts, but because he needs to, to get by, and it’s not a power trip that he’s on, like Sol Sixxa.”

Blackman’s writing is usually translated into rich vocal performances by professional actors and mindblowing graphics by electronic game artists. Having them instead rendered as pen-and-ink illustrations by artist Ramon F. Bachs is no less rewarding.

“It’s been pretty incredible working with Ramon,” says Blackman. “It’s unbelievable how he’s taken my panel-by-panel descriptions and been able to translate them very well. It almost felt like, towards the end of the series, that I wasn’t writing abstract descriptions anymore, but that I was writing concrete things that he’d translate.”

Throughout Blackman’s script are examples of faith in the artist’s ability:

Open with a large shot of the Havoc, Nym’s bomber, screaming over Maramere. It should be low to the water, kicking up wakes as it goes. It’s being pursued by several (six, seven?) Trade Federation droid starfighters. Laser-fire barely misses the large bomber. Through the next few pages, Nym engages in a battle with these droid starfighters. Yet again, if you can think of any images that would be more powerful, etc., feel free to mess around with the layout and even the action. I’m not married to any of the maneuvers described here.

“I really wanted him to have the freedom to change things so that they’re more dynamic,” says Blackman. “I’m friends with a lot of comic book artists, and talking with them before I even got started, one of the things that they say they hate is working with writers that say ‘this is the way it HAS to be,’ unless they’re someone like Alan Moore who always seems to have a larger plan. So, I try to be as flexible as possible, and try to provide as much detail as I can so that if that’s the direction he wants to head, he can translate that as well. Ramon’s just really intuitive, and even though we’ve only exchanged e-mails and have never met, we’re on the same wavelength, which is great.”

The future for Nym looks bright, says Blackman. “We plan to use Nym in one of our other game titles that takes place in the Galactic Civil War period. We do want to keep him around and use him again. If there are any future Starfighter games, Nym will probably be a part of them.”

Blackman looks forward to his future, too, particularly in writing comics. Recently announced is his four-issue high profile Star Wars: Jango Fett — Open Seasons series coming out in April.

“I really hope to write more comics in the future,” says Blackman. “The Nym comic was great because it’s sometimes just really fun to write a one-note character, and Nym is maybe a two-note character. He’s pretty in your face, and that’s really fun to write, but the tone of Open Season is totally different than Crossbones, and I’m really excited about that. Hopefully, if both of these series do well , I’ll get to do some other stuff.”