International Order of the Jedi Knights

Fan Club
Name:	International Order of the Jedi Knights
Dates:	1977-1980(?)
Founder(s):
Leadership:
Country based in:
Focus:
External Links:
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International Order of the Jedi Knights was an early Star Wars fan club.

A fan's recollection:

I suppose it was only one of a whole swarm of misfit, unofficial and unsanctioned Star Wars fan clubs which sprung up in those fateful years immediately following 1977, but to me, during my tenure as a Jedi, it was the one and only. I never even belonged to the "official" fan club until after it became the All-George's-Other-Indiana-and-Willow-Jones-Movies club. I mean, hey, screw Lucasfilm why should I give them my hard-earned bucks every year for a new Yoda sticker?

The IBOJK was real. Well, maybe surreal is more accurate. We were all Jedi Knights. Really. We had Jedi Names (mine was "Brightstar"), Jedi Colors, Jedi Uniforms, our own personal lightsabers, and enough arcane oaths, ceremonies and bylaws to make a dozen Freemasons puke. It was set up along vaguely paramilitary lines, so it satisfied my deep-seated uniform/military fetish as well as plugging me directly into the Star Wars mythos as a card-carrying junior defender of the galaxy. I totally ate it up: I put up with all the shit my friends gave me, and acquired several new and embarrassing nicknames in the process. I maintained a fever pitch of cult-like devotion for three or four years, despite never meeting any of my fellow Jedi. The club was run almost entirely by correspondence; its president/founder and the core membership were based in Denver. I myself was recruited by mail when a suitably fanatical letter of mine was printed in the fan mail column of Marvel's Star Wars comic. I later managed to con a couple of my pals into signing up, though, as anybody who could keep a straight face through my rank-promotion ceremony (in which 1 was knighted with my lightsaber to the heroic strains of the "Throne Room" fanfare) was potential Jedi material. Around my senior year in high school things started to get weird. By this point, I had attained the rank of Four-Star General, primarily by dint of the sheer volume of articles and cartoons I had contributed to our newsletter, "Jedi Times." I was also serving my second term as a Senator. (The Senate spent its time debating such critical issues as what color trim should go on our uniforms.)

The weirdness developed roughly as follows: Lucasfilm finally took notice of us, and requested— nay, commanded— our president to cease and desist using copyrighted Star Wars terms like "Jedi" in our club name and publications. His excellency, General David Brightlighter, responded by announcing that he was dissolving the club on his own authority, without bothering to consult the Senate. This was tantamount to declaring himself Emperor, and naturally we were obliged to impeach the sonofabitch. He promptly absconded with the entire club treasury and set up his own rival organization, whose titles were free of offending Lucas-lingo. The situation rapidly degenerated into an echo of the Papal Schism of the Fourteenth Century, with two rival popes. Both clubs embarked upon a campaign of propaganda, each wooing new members over to theirs, the "official" fan club while loudly excommunicating the "traitors" of the other. Meanwhile, my side— the original club— opened a dialogue with Lucasfihn and pleaded with them to let us slide on the copyright issue, on the grounds that we were just a bunch of wacky fans who couldn't possibly pose a threat to the mighty Lucas empire. It worked. Lucasfilm let us off the hook. We remained real Jedi Knights, and Brighthghter and his group were declared outlaw scum.

My comrades in Denver took Dave B. to small claims court in an attempt to recover the treasury funds, and it came out in the proceedings that the IBOJK had been a sham from the very beginning. According to our holy club archives, we had been born when two fledgling fan groups merged in 1977. The truth was that our exiled leader had actually created the club around 1981 as a personal money-making scheme, complete with a fabricated history and a newsletter which began at Volume Three. I was required to submit a notarized deposition describing my part in the club government to help our cause in court. That was the beginning of the end for me; my fantasy had spilled over into the real world,

and there was no going back. I quick ly grew weary of the petty squabbling and power games which went on in the ^nate as the club tried to pull itself back together. I had pumped a hell of a lot of my time and energy into the club and my burning Star Wars faith, but with college only a couple of months away I didn't see the point any more. Finally, the ultimate sacrilege crept into my mind, and the truth dawned on me: it was all just a bunch of science fiction. I packed up my lightsaber, took off my four stars, and retired.

If the truth be known, I have never teamed to this day what became of the IBOJK or my fellow Jedi. And it doesn't really keep me up at night. I no longer hoard Kenner proof-of-purchase seals against the day when a new special action figure offer might be announced. My glasses are no longer held together by masking tape. I occasionally get laid. In other words, I now have a life. Still, if any of my former comrades-in-craziness out there are reading this piece, it might comfort you to know that I can still recite my Jedi Oath verbatim. It ends, "...for once a Jedi Knight, always a Jedi Knight."