For the past three weeks Star Wars Action News has been continuing their March into the EU, celebrating the release of Aaron Allston's novel Outcast this Tuesday, beginning the new Fate of the Jedi book series. But one question that keeps coming up is: can a newcomer to Star Wars books read Outcast? Taking place 43 years after the original Star Wars movie, so much has happened between the movies and this book (the New Jedi Order, the Legacy of the Force series, and more) can someone jump into the EU with this new book series? That is discussed on this week's Star Wars Action News.

Also this week we have a spoiler-free review of the new book to see if it's worth jumping onto.

And finally rounding out this week, we go on a hunt for Wal Mart and Target exclusives, a review of eFX Collectibles' Studio Scale X-Wing, a UK Collecting report, and a Hasbro Q&A, it's all this week on Star Wars Action News!

1) Recently you made the Spacetrooper figure from A New Hope and included the likeness of A New Hope concept Artist Joe Johnson under the helmet. How much back-and-forth is there with Lucasfilm licensing regarding what faces you can put under the masks of Stormtroopers? A Jango Fett head here or there makes sense given they descend from clones, but when you do things like the flip-up visor Scouttrooper or this Stormtrooper, what is the approval process?

2) In a recent magazine article it was revealed that we would be getting R5-H6 as a Build-a-Droid figure later this year, with the associated text going on to identify this droid as being present at the pod race on Tatooine in Episode 01. The problem is, at least as far as we collectors know, that red and white droid was actually R5-X2. To our best knowledge, R5-H6 was a grey and purple background droid from Episode 02, a very different looking astromech. Can you please clarify which droid we can expect to see as a BaD release and can you say whether or not the dome has been newly tooled to reflect the unique appearance of all the prequel trilogy R5 style droids or is it a reuse of the same R5 dome sculpt that is currently available on the yellow R5-A2 Mos Eisley BaD toy?

3) Recently figures have taken another price jump at retail, htiting fans, collectors, and kids hard in these tough economic times. I can't find a less blunt way to put this, so here goes: who's to blame? A lot of people are shaking their fist in your (Hasbro's) general direction, but is this strictly set 100% by retailers? Did Wal Mart and Target just coincidentally decide to jump prices, or did some other factor come into play?

To find out the answers to these questions, listen to this week's episode!

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