video

The Daily Show returned to the airwaves last night after a two week holiday break with little hard news nor media coverage having occurred in the last week to dissect. So host Jon Stewart turned to his not-so-wayback machine, and recapped President Obama‘s stunning string of legislative victories that came in the last week of the lame duck session. Stewart compared Obama to a young Jedi known as Luke Skywalker, hero of Star Wars, in a funny, clever and somewhat ham-fisted analogy.

I’m guessing even if you haven’t seen the childhood-shattering Star Wars prequels, you know enough to not be pleased by them. Whether he made them for his children, for himself or for his greed, George Lucas disappointed generations of moviegoers with his second Star Wars Trilogy. When the most beloved franchise in film was revisited decades after its inception, it was just missing that… something.

Like vampire or zombie bites, geekdom is infectious. But this year it really seems like something has changed. Everyone seems to be talking about Comic-Con. With an entertainment industry that is interested in sequels, franchises and the already-proven value of any new investment in an entertainment property, Comic-Con has become the center of both the entertainment-industrial complex as well as the countless fan-universes that each franchise has created.