Discovery Series: Star Wars Adventures in Colors and Shapes

Adventures in Colors and Shapes

Author: Uncredited

Illustrator: Uncredited

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: January 1984

Timeline Placement: c. 4 ABY

 

I'm setting this here, post-Return of the Jedi, because I've only ever seen one or two fan-made timelines include it and this is where it or they put it. I'm not out to reinvent the wheel here. Really though it could take place anytime after A New Hope, and probably fits better closer to that movie. Our only chronology indicators are that Han Solo and Chewbacca are members of the Rebellion and the Rebels are still called "Rebels" and are operating out of a "Rebel base," which implies (but doesn't confirm) a setting prior to the founding of the New Republic.

 

Han and Chewie are about to set out on a supply run in the Millennium Falcon, but the Falcon's magnetized Fulstar plate is broken! Without it, any attempt to jump to lightspeed will turn them all into space dust. Eager to impress Han Solo, C-3PO volunteers to find a replace Fulstar plate. He retrieves a round plate from the Rebel supply room, but Han needs a plate with straight edges. He obtains a triangular plate and a pentagonal plate from a guy named Zilnor, but Han needs a plate with four sides. Luke Skywalker gives him a rectangular plate, but Han needs a square one. 

Chewie shows the droids to a storage locker in the Falcon filled with magnetized Fulstar plates, something Han easily could have just done to begin with, thus saving them all a lot of grief. When Threepio opens the locker door, though, the stack of plates comes crashing down on his head, knocking him to the deck. Threepio promptly brings Han a square Fulstar plate, only to be rebuffed yet again: "I need the red plate, no the yellow one! You see, this plate is yellow—like this yellow screwdriver or this yellow sign or the yellow sun or like your empty yellow head!"

Threepio returns to the mess of Fulstar plates, only to realize he can't tell the color of any of them; the blow he sustained earlier has damaged his photoreceptors. Rather than ask Artoo what color the plates are, Threepio decides to take them to the Rebel base's Central Computer and have it identify the color of each plate one at a time. Holding up the first plate, he asks the Central Computer if it is red. "No," the Central Computer replies, "that plate is green. Green is the color of grass and of leaves on the trees and of Greedo."

The next plate is white like a Hoojib, a rare reference to the Marvel Comics series. The third is brown "like this Ewok or a piece of wood or a Wookiee," so by process of elimination, Threepio realizes that the final plate must be the red one. He proudly presents it to Han Solo, who raises his screwdriver threateningly and snarls at him, "Why you stumbling junkyard, this plate is blue! Blue like water! Blue like the sky! Blue like the memory wires I'm going to pull out of your worthless circuits!" Han Solo is so mean in this book, it's awesome.

Threepio finally listens to Artoo, who has been beeping something at him nonstop. The magnetized red plate has been stuck to Threepio's ass this whole time! Everyone has a good laugh at Threepio's expense, and finally the Falcon is repaired.

"I knew I could find it, Artoo," says C-3PO proudly. "I'm quite good at these things. You could learn a thing or two from me."

This book is a lot of fun and I'm not sure why almost no fan timelines seem to acknowledge it. Maybe it's just so obscure that no one knows it exists. It should be more widely known, it's a completely original story with a unique contribution to Star Wars lore. I'm shocked that Fulstar plates were never mentioned in any of the continuity fix-fics they used to put out in Star Wars Insider or the StarWars.com blog. They were finally featured in Ryder Windham's Adventures in Hyperspace #3: The Big Switch, but that was canceled and never saw official publication. It's a conspiracy, I'm telling you. Anyway, Adventures in Colors and Shapes is great, add it to your EU collection today!