Darths & Droids

Taking a break from roleplaying tips, we thought you might be interested to see some statistics after 2000 strips of Darths & Droids.

We've been working on this comic since September 2007, making it a bit over 13 years and 8 months.
In that time we've written 237,000 words of dialogue. Which is an average of 118 per strip.
The comic image files take 23.55 GB of disk space. That's including layered Photoshop files, which we can edit to do things like change dialogue and move speech balloons around, if we ever need to.

We've written a lot of planning notes. We keep them all in a private wiki, so we can collaborate and edit them from anywhere. We have notes on the story plot, the characters, ideas for specific scenes, and so on. Here's how much we've written (so far):

General overall notes: 29,300 words
R2-D2 conlang and Nute Gunray speech: 15,300 words
Episode I: 6,000 words
Episode II: 8,700 words
Episode III: 15,000 words
Episode IV: 16,800 words
Episode V: 10,000 words
Episode VI: 9,900 words
Rogue One: 18,800 words
The Muppet Show: 2,100 words
Episode VII: 27,500 words (so far)
Episode VIII: 2,500 words (so far)
Episode IX: 3,300 words (so far)
Super Secret unrevealed sub-project: 28,300 words

When we're done, after the end of Episode IX, we intend to release these notes so you can see what went on behind the scenes, and all the ideas we had which didn't end up included in the comic.

You've probably noticed that we sprinkle references to other works or things in the dialogue, as well as in the individual strip titles. We keep track of these (add another 28,100 words not included in the word counts above), and can tell you that as of strip 2000 Darths & Droids contains references to:

163 live action films.
19 animated films.
64 live action TV series.
18 animated TV series.
42 stage shows (plays, musicals, operas).
156 musical artists or songs.
94 books or traditional stories.
14 poets or poems.
14 comics (print and web).
9 sports.
28 tabletop games.
43 video games.
60 specific people not included above (usually famous quotations).

The specific most referenced things (besides Star Wars) are:

William Shakespeare plays: 47 references.
Star Trek (TV series + films): 25 references.
The Lord of the Rings (books + films): 23 references.
The Bible: 20 references.
The Princess Bride: 19 references.
Monty Python (TV series + films): 19 references.
Indiana Jones films: 17 references.
Hamlet: 15 references.
James Bond films: 13 references.
The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy: 13 references.
The Wizard of Oz: 11 references.
Magic: the Gathering: 11 references.
Cricket: 11 references.
Looney Tunes: 11 references.
Harry Potter (books + films): 10 references.
Dungeons & Dragons: 10 references. (explicit references to specific D&D adventures, items, lore - not just references to game mechanics)
Cthulhu mythos: 9 references.
Queen: 9 references.
The Beatles: 8 references.
Les Misérables: 8 references.
Chess (the game, not the musical): 8 references.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

That's an interestingly unique robot for Star Wars; without zooming in, I couldn't tell that the hands were actually attached to the arms. With the rigid legs and bulky top, this bouncer robot reminds me of a number of the older walking robot attempts that we humans have made. If it's like the other Star Wars robots we've seen though, I'd expect it moves reasonably well or is at least able to amble in place. Ambling might be a little useless as a bouncer, but I bet it's got built-in blasters to compensate.

And aha! Nice to have Rey being a Jedi confirmed on the good guy side of the story as well. I wonder if Luke will be showing up in this movie now, either as an old guy or a Force ghost. Or maybe this'll be a one major character "group" from the Original Trilogy per movie thing, with Leia and Luke showing up individually in the next movies.

I rather doubt that Rey will actually end up with a ~~laser sword~~ lightsaber here though. That just seems too much like the joke the comics made waaaay back at the beginning of the comic to be a part of the movie. I suppose this might not be a bar with fancy banner decorations on the outside, but then that'd just raise further movie questions (for me) about why come here at all. If it's a place to meet a contact, why would a lightsaber be available for gifting/sale? If it's a small Resistance base, why land so far away and have Chewbacca stay behind at the ship?

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

[Keybounce's comments will appear here when received.]

Transcript

GM: After 20 minutes of walking, you approach the castle.
Yanni: Here’s the plan. I’ll schmooze Darth Kanata. Finn, you’re on drinks duty. Rey, take BB-8 and get yourself a laser sword.
BB-8: Aren’t those incredibly dangerous?
Yanni: Ideally!
BB-8: ... to the wielder?
Yanni: Not with the right mumbo-jumbo. Every Jedi should have a laser sword.
Finn: Wait, Rey’s a Jedi?!
Rey: In training. Luke was teaching me before he disappeared.
BB-8: Hmmm... What could be the connection?
Rey: I wasn’t that bad a student!