August 8, 2013

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Dark Horse Comics will release its eight-issue graphic novel mini-series based on George Lucas’ original vision of Star Wars monthly starting in September that runs through April 2014.

The plot is based on a rough draft the original screenplay, titled “The Star Wars,” Lucas wrote in 1974. LucasBooks executive editor J.W. Rinzler adapted that version for Dark Horse’s mini-series, with art by Mike Mayhew.

Darth Vader is a general in the Imperial army; Han Solo is a six-foot tall lizard, and Luke Skywalker is an older Jedi general. There is also a character named Annikin Starkiller, evil Sith Knights and the use of “lazer swords.”

The comicbook publisher has released a trailer for the event, revealing its interpretation of how Lucas imagined the characters to look.


The graphic novel will be collected in hardcover and be released in June 2014. A trade paperback will be released later in 2014.

yeah I have been chomping on the bit to get this for months! (really for decades when I saw the images of stormtroopers with lightsabers)

also a new cgi story also based visualy on the ate of ralph mcquarrie is in production!

I love the art. This is going to be so awesome!

Yeah this is way cool. Can Not Wait.

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Luke Skywalker, a military general, shows young Annikin Starkiller the ways of the Jedi in The Star Wars.(Photo: Dark Horse Comics)

ufoclub said:

Those original drafts are horribly dry of character personality and plot coherence. Kind of like the new trilogy!

from what i gather we have only seen parts of the drafts and DH is going to flesh them out as well.

From what was reported a few months ago what is being used was more detailed that anything that had been leaked prior to now. Granted that could be just because what is known is as you said... lacking polish.

[Edited 8/9/13 7:47am]

I'm not gonna buy it, because it's not the real way Star Wars happened.

^Really? Im more intersted in the pre 77 stuff than anything that came after ROTJ.

lazycrockett said:

^Really? Im more intersted in the pre 77 stuff than anything that came after ROTJ.

I don't like anything after ROTJ either. I don't even like ROTJ; I just tolerate it because about 30% is good and because it wraps the story up. But honestly, my love and appreciation for Star Wars encompasses the first two movies; no more, no less.

NB: My first post was just a dumb joke. I get into similar discussions with comic-reading friends a lot where we'll be talking about some incredibly stupid comic book thing and one of us will say something like, "No, that was retconned out, so it didn't really happen!"

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An Exclusive Interview W/ The Writer and Artist of The Star Wars Mini-Series

August 2013

Luke Skywalker as an old, gray-haired general? Darth Vader as just a dude? Han Solo — secret-agent lizard?

The new Dark Horse Comics series The Star Warssounds like alternate-universe weirdness for fans of George Lucas' influential sci-fi franchise. Instead, it's just the filmmaker's first pass at his galaxy far, far away.

The eight-issue comic launching Sept. 4 is an adaptation of Lucas' first rough draft from May 1974 of a story that imagines galactic drama between an all-encompassing Empire, the fledgling rebel alliance forming to fight it, an ancient order of Jedi and the evil Sith warriors tapped to wipe out those Jedi.

"You can teach a college course on how he got from that story to his first Star Wars film" in 1977, saysThe Star Wars writer J.W. Rinzler, an executive editor at LucasBooks.

"Francis Ford Coppola read the rough draft and thought it was pretty good. He wasn't really sure why George was changing it."

If it were made today, says series artist Mike Mayhew, The Star Wars "would hold its own against The Avengers and Avatar."

Compared to the original Star Wars blockbuster, it's a much different beast.

Overall themes and archetypes are similar, but there are some tweaks: Princess Leia still needs saving; the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 (who actually talks) are around, as is the Wookiee Chewbacca; and the Jedi mentor-apprentice relationship of Obi-Wan Kenobi and farmboy Luke Skywalker is replaced by that of wizened war vet Luke Skywalker and farmboy Annikin Starkiller.

Mayhew likens it to a prototype screenplay for Citizen Kane written by Orson Welles where Charles Foster Kane is a railroad tycoon instead of a newspaperman. "But, the prototype version was just as engaging, if not more so, than the masterpiece that Welles filmed."

The comic shows definite evolution between that first draft and when Lucas rolled film on the first Star Wars. "He wouldn't really revise scripts as much as rewrite them," Rinzler says.

There is an Emperor, but he's a politician and not a Sith lord. Same with Darth Vader, a general in the Imperial army — the infamous bad guy moviegoers know is actually an amalgam of the military figure and two other characters in The Star Wars, including a "man-machine" and a Sith, "who all have elements of Vader we all know and love," says Mayhew, who is working with colorist Rain Beredo.

Lightsabers are nonexistent — in The Star Wars, everybody wields "lazer swords," Rinzler says. "They're just like swords in a Robin Hood movie. The Jedi and Sith just happen to be a lot better at using theirs.''

In the familiar Star Wars universe, the Jedi are a mostly celibate group. In The Star Wars comic, Rinzler teases a scene where Annikin sees a good-looking Imperial female aide "and he's immediately trying to flirt with her. He's almost got some of the half Han Solo stuff going on in his character."

Solo is the most intriguing variation of them all. When readers meet this reptilian version of the classic rogue, he wears a vest, but that's where the similarities end. A "worldly" and exotic gunslinger, Solo is already a rebel agent and "a very mysterious pirate that lurks in the shadows," Mayhew says.

Rinzler figures it wasn't just natural selection that made Lucas turn him from lizard to Harrison Ford over the course of a couple years — a hairy Wookiee was hard enough to film much less a giant green alien.

"I'm sure he (Lucas) knew quite well in 1974 that there was no way you could film this script," Rinzler adds. "He changes locales sometimes twice on a page. Any studio head reading that would have just had a heart attack. He would have thrown it in the garbage by the time he got to page 20."

The coolest thing for hardcore Star Wars nuts like Mayhew is seeing the compelling and emotional characters — he says more happens to them "in the first 15 minutes ofThe Star Wars than happens in the entire Star Wars movie."

And for more casual fans, the artist adds, ''this is the greatest 'what if?' story ever in comics."

[Edited 8/11/13 9:03am]

BULLSHIT

George's original vision is the '77 movie

these are only early/tentative ideas and dismissed stuff

ain't gonna read this shit

milking the cow

[Edited 8/11/13 4:33am]

I'm not being ironic when I say I've lost interest in this universe beyond the initial episode 4, 5 and 6 film releases. I think all the poking, prodding, revisiting and effort to contextualize those first three films with supplementary prequel and sequel material has all but killed the frog for me. I kinda just want to recall that trilogy as an amazing part of my childhood -- and leave it be.

All that said, I still genuinely get a kick out of how excited other people get over projects like these. It suggests all the more how much of a fantastic cultural contribution Lucas made so many years ago.

[Edited 8/11/13 6:17am]

Might be cool to see some non-white humans in space, too.

Lammastide said:

Might be cool to see some non-white humans in space, too.

????

are you talking about this pre-77 comic or about the films??

JoeTyler said:

BULLSHIT

George's original vision is the '77 movie

these are only early/tentative ideas and dismissed stuff

ain't gonna read this shit

milking the cow

[Edited 8/11/13 4:33am]

Well my mouth is open and ready so come on George...huh... I mean Micky mouse....milk that "cow" all over my face!

JoeTyler said:

Lammastide said:

Might be cool to see some non-white humans in space, too.

????

are you talking about this pre-77 comic or about the films??

I'm talking this latest adapted work. Seems fairly homogenous, if the posted artwork is any indication. The films had some ethnic variation, which I found heartening as a starry-eyed kid of colour.

Click here to preview the first seven pages of issue one.

Identity said:

Click here to preview the first seven pages of issue one.

General Skywalker looks al helluva alot like the Mr. Lucas himself.

This does look very interesting. Kinda stoked.

Identity said:

Click here to preview the first seven pages of issue one.

Actually, these aren't the first seven pages. They're seven pages from the first issue, but not sequential.

The first issue has a lot of exposition about politics and setting the scene, so parts of it got a little mired down for me. I'm hoping they won't have to do so much of that in future issues, but I guess it's interesting that Lucas had all these political quagmires mapped out so early on. They were wisely left out, in large part, during the first trilogy, but then they were featured a lot in the second, which was a bad idea, in my opinion.

Anyway, it's an auspicious start, and the art is really fantastic. Darth Vader looks awesome. I can't wait to see more.

Aha, I see. I don't have either the digital copy or the physical comic as yet, so I incorrectly assumed the order of the pages. Nonetheless, it's apparent the mini-series is going to provide significant escapism.

Efan said:

Identity said:

Click here to preview the first seven pages of issue one.

Actually, these aren't the first seven pages. They're seven pages from the first issue, but not sequential.

The first issue has a lot of exposition about politics and setting the scene, so parts of it got a little mired down for me. I'm hoping they won't have to do so much of that in future issues, but I guess it's interesting that Lucas had all these political quagmires mapped out so early on. They were wisely left out, in large part, during the first trilogy, but then they were featured a lot in the second, which was a bad idea, in my opinion.

Anyway, it's an auspicious start, and the art is really fantastic. Darth Vader looks awesome. I can't wait to see more.

I think the political stuff will work alot better in the comic books. I always enjoyed the political aspect of star wars, but it just didnt quite work in the movies. I enjoyed the first issue cause of teh political stuff, but that's me.