star wars the force awakens

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

When Marvel's Star Wars: Poe Dameron comic arrives in stores next month, it will be the first official glimpse fans have had of the dashing flyboy hero since his introduction in The Force Awakens --- and with Episode VIII still a couple of years away, the ongoing series may be the only fix of Poe we get for a while. That means there's a lot of pressure on writer Charles Soule and artist Phil Noto to satisfy the fans. Judging from the preview pages released by Marvel, we can at the very least expect entertaining skybound antics, Poe Dameron looking handsome, and some probably adorable interactions with BB-8. That's pretty good for four pages, but it does leave one big question unanswered.

There wasn't much new on hand for Star Wars at Hasbro's Toy Fair preview event, which is becoming the status quo for the brand. Given that there's so much to be secretive about with a new movie coming out every single year for the rest of eternity, it's likely that will the be the case for the foreseeable future. What little Hasbro did bring to the convention did look good though, particularly insofar as Rebels in concerned. While we might not know what lies ahead for Rogue One, at least we've finally got more Sabines coming. That's not to say Hasbro didn't tease a little of its Rogue One plans. Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Rogue One series will make its debut as an exclusive figure at San Diego Comic-Con this July. That's about all there is to say about that. Given that the Stormtroopers didn't look all that different in the suggested time period the upcoming anthology film takes place in, it's likely this will be an all-new character popping up for the first time. Don't hold your breath on any of the film's numerous leads making the cut though. Those are too important to be merely considered an exclusive figure.

Baby-fied versions of pop culture characters aren't anything new. Chibi-inspired art has been around for a loooooong time, and we've had the X-babies and Muppet Babies and Skottie Young's Marvel babies continually reminding us that everything old can be made new again just by turning it into a child. The same can be said of Hot Toys' Cosbaby line, which appropriates the company's various licenses for highly-detailed adult action figures into itty-bitty versions with exaggerated features. Given the popularity of the Star Wars franchise, it was only a matter of time until Hot Toys turned its chibi-loving eyes towards The Force Awakens. Yes, soon you'll be able to enjoy miniaturized figures of your favorite members of the First Order, rendered with the same affection of the caricature artist from your favorite amusement park. Twelve different figures will comprise the first two series of Hot Toys' Star Wars: The Force Awakens Cosbabies, including that rapscallion Kylo Ren and his bestest of friends, FN-2187.

The new Star Wars expanded universe is about to drop some knowledge in an unexpected place. When TT Games' Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives this summer, not only will you be able to relive the memorable moments from the sequel 30 years in the making, you'll also get to play through sequences that take place prior to the movie for the very first time. While video games helping to expand on the Star Wars universe is nothing new, most of those experiences (Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Knights of the Old Republic) were wholesale adventures and not just side-missions in a larger game. It is a little bit shocking to learn that this expanded content will appear in a game aimed at kids, particularly given how not so seriously the Lego video games take their inspiration. That said, there's so much new material to mine with Disney and Lucasfilm wiping the previous expanded universe slate clean, and so much desire for new Star Wars details, injecting it in some unlikely places does add another element of excitement in discovery. In an interview with Game Informer, members of TT Games' development teamed dished on just how and where these additional story missions will take place in the grander scheme.

After teasing a major announcement yesterday afternoon, WB Interactive and TT Games officially revealed Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens this morning with a new trailer, showing there were still plenty of jokes to make at the Force's expense. While the film version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was decades in the making, the wait for a new Lego Star Wars video game has been nearly as long. It's been five years since TT Games last visited the brick galaxy far, far away, and while it's not quite a 30-year wait to see how the Skywalker saga would continue, the gaming landscape has changed pretty drastically since Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars hit shelves. TT Games has been incredibly busy with the Lego franchise over the course of the last half-decade, developing a dozen different licensed Lego games, including the recently released Lego Marvel's Avengers and Lego Dimensions. If that seems like a lot of games for one developer to tackle, you'd be right. However, that hasn't stopped the Lego series from continuing to adapt the biggest blockbusters into humorous adventures of brick-sized proportions.

Poe Dameron is probably only accidentally a gay hero. He wasn't originally meant to survive the first act of Star Wars: The Force Awakens according to writer/director J.J. Abrams, so he doesn't have a real arc of his own. On paper, Poe Dameron is just a device to advance the plot. It's in Oscar Isaac's performance that he becomes something special, and someone Abrams knew he had to keep around. Isaac gives Poe Dameron his charisma and smoldering intensity, and because his primary (human) relationship in the movie is with John Boyega's Finn, he gets to direct that charm and intensity towards him. In one of the characters' most pored over scenes together --- a scene that only exists because of Poe Dameron's reprieve from death --- the pilot gives Finn a look that's indistinguishable from lust, even biting his own lip as he tells him to keep the jacket they've come to share. It's one of the gayest things I've seen in a blockbuster movie, in the most positive and celebratory sense of the word, and it gave us reason to hope that Poe Dameron could be Star Wars' first onscreen gay hero. But is Poe Dameron actually gay, and what happens to our hopes and dreams if he's not?

They almost killed him off in the first version of the script, but it looks like the decision to keep Poe Dameron around in Star Wars: The Force Awakens has paid off. The hunkiest hero ever named for a Teletubby, Poe Dameron is going to be make the leap from the screen (and fan's dreams) to the pages of a new comic from Charles Soule and Phil Noto this spring. Announced by USA Today, Star Wars: Poe Dameron will launch in April as an ongoing, delivering tales of Poe's time with the Resistance before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While that might mean we won't be seeing any team-ups or (more than) friendly embraces with Finn, Soule promised that this new book will flesh out Poe's character as the hot-shot flyboy in the Resistance X-Wing squadron even more.

We found Rey, you guys. She's here on this virtual pinball table from the upcoming Star Wars Pinball The Force Awakens add-on. Yes, that's right; starting next week, you'll be able to revisit your friends from the latest Star Wars feature --- including the movie's actual protagonist Rey, bizarrely absent from way too much Force Awakens merchandise --- all from the confines of you console/PC/tablet du jour. Provided you have these new Zen Studios pinball tables, that is.

Say what you will about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but you can't deny the awesome power of all the incredible new characters. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and it was largely due to how much excitement the new blood brought to the screen. While Hot Toys has been slowly rolling out figures both new and old for the Star Wars license, its latest announcement brings about a figure I thought we'd never get. Sure, Finn was an obvious choice to get a sixth-scale toy, as he's all over the marketing and the world has fallen head over heels for John Boyega (and his maybe lover, Poe, played by Oscar Issac. I know I ship it.). But even Finn isn't the film's most perfect character. That privilege lies solely in the arms, baton and shield of the Riot Control Stormtrooper, TR-80RZ. I know that's not his real First Order designation, but a if a guy can dream about what Finn and Poe are doing after hours, he can sure dream about the name of a fictional soldier being all too apt.