As I scoured through it for the first time in many years, I was blown away not just by Rusty’s extensive Star Wars knowledge but also by what the book said about how fandom, franchises, the concept of canon, and Star Wars itself has changed over the years.
Questions like “Who did Bend fend off at the Cantina?” and its answer “Snaggletooth,” the name of the character that was packaged with the Kenner toy of the character, are a great example of how some things never change. Toys have always played a massive part in determining and revealing canon. That’s something that readers, fans, and filmmakers all still deal with today. But while the struggles of creating art under capitalism are the same, the answer to Rusty’s question is different. Now Snaggletooth is nothing but the nickname of the Snivvian male named Zutton.
This was decades before the internet, so Rusty diligently explored what existed at the time: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and any info he could find about the upcoming third film, as well as the burgeoning Star Wars publishing initiatives. In another delightful time capsule, as many Star Wars lovers know, Return of the Jedi was then going to be called Revenge of the Jedi. That’s what Rusty put for his answer because the title hadn’t yet been changed due to the decision by Lucas that Jedi cannot feel or seek revenge. Hence that word was saved for decades until we got Revenge of the Sith.
That notion of the ever-shifting nature of canon and even titling is present throughout the book. But it also reminds us that despite all of that, some things never change, or at least they change enough to return back to where they started.
When Miller was collating the Jedi Master’s Quiz Book, Marvel Comics was behind the popular Star Wars comics, something Miller included and that which is a factoid that proves true in 2025. However, as someone who has lived through almost four decades of Star Wars fandom, I can tell you that hasn’t always been the case. Many of the most famous and well-known Star Wars comics for instance were published by Dark Horse. But as the tides go in and out, so do publishing trends. After the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, Marvel—itself a new Disney subsidiary at the time—took the Star Wars comic book license back from Dark Horse, only for it to currently be shared by both publishers in the present.
It’s an unwritten rule, but in 2025 to make a Star Wars project is to make a story by committee, with decades of canon and continuity to contend with. Conversely, in The Jedi Master’s Quiz Book Miller seemed almost to be the sole holder of the canon of Star Wars, something most fans could never dream of. His dedication and commitment to a galaxy far, far away meant that for many kids growing up, they too got to open up this tome and become keepers of all the facts and canon within it. In an era before Wikipedia and the internet in general, Rusty Miller became one of the earliest in a grand tradition of fans to take canon, sort it, and define it with his own hands.
