Nov 9, 2008 10:00 AM
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Now that The Force Unleashed and the Clone Wars TV show have successfully demonstrated that there's still life in the Star Wars franchise, it's time to demand the return of the series' second greatest villains - I mean, sure, we'd happily watch Count Dooku and his apprentices cause animated havoc for weeks on end, but why should we have to? Has everyone forgotten about the threat of the Nagai?
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about - which is more than likely the majority of you, unless you happened to be around ten years old in the mid-80s - the Nagai were a bunch of bad guys introduced in the dying days of Marvel Comics' Star Wars series in the hope that they could replace the Empire as the main hive of villainy of the franchise post-Return Of The Jedi. It didn't work, for a number of reasons - not least of which was the cancellation of the comic, forcing a somewhat awkward end to the story that showed that, hey, that warlike race wasn't so warlike after all and just wanted to join the Alliance and hold hands in the end - but the potential was such that, almost quarter of a century later, I want to see more of these albino aliens. And soon, so will you. Here are five reasons why the Nagai deserve to cause mischief again.
They're Ahead Of The Curve In Pop Culture
Created in 1984 by Jo Duffy and Cynthia Martin, the Nagai showed a strong manga influence both visually and in terms of their name - they're named after manga creator Go Nagai - long before it became the cultural force in the US than it is these days. And even if you're afraid of Japanese comics, you can also claim that they were the visual inspiration behind Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Even though it's not true.
They Work With Crooked Wookies
In their first appearance, they worked with Chewbacca's brother-in-law to kidnap Chewie's family - including his unfortunately-named son, Lumpy. You've got to admire that kind of co-operation with other races, as well as the deviousness required to kidnap anything called "Lumpy." I mean, Darth Vader? He would've just killed everyone. Haven't you seen what he does at the start of The Force Unleashed?
Their Darth Vader Is Female, Used A Lightwhip - And Is Luke Skywalker's Ex-Girlfriend
I'm not sure that that needs any more explanation, really; before Lumiya was a cyborg with her own specially constructed lightwhip, she was an Imperial spy who'd gone undercover in the rebel alliance to kill Luke Skywalker... and got closer to him than Sith boss Vader may have intended. In order to restore his wounded male pride - sorry, I mean "correct the imbalance of the Force" - he needed two lightsabers to beat her:
They're All Inclusive When It Comes To Recruitment
Former Stormtrooper for the Empire? Come onboard! Crashlanded Rebel pilots? Welcome! Unstable psychopathtic sadists with a grudge against the universe? Sign here! The recruitment policy for the Nagai was amazingly open; basically, all you needed to join their ranks was to be scum or villainous, and as we all know, the Star Wars universe has whole wretched hives full of them.
They're Curiously Polite When Circumstances Force Their Retreat
What other bad guys say "drat" as they're forced to retreat? If the Stars must always be at War, then let's have some villains who'll at least fight with a reasonable amount of courtesy, I say.
I've been told that the Nagai have made reappearances in various Expanded Universe venues, but that's not enough for me; I want to see them on the television shows and in the video games. I want to see people wondering, as I did, why sharp-faced albinos are quite so terrifying when they sneer. And, most importantly, I want to expose those evil wookies for what they really are.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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