Like many of you, I was a child of the 80s who really liked science fiction, so you can bet I grew up on everything Star Wars.
Frankly, I’ve always assumed the original Star Wars movie followed the exact script that George Lucas wrote. Interestingly, the polished film significantly differed from the original script.
Recently, word surfaced that Dark Horse Comics will be producing a comic adaptation of the original 1974 script George Lucas penned for Star Wars: A New Hope. However, rather than being a single volume, the adaptation is slated to roll out as a short, eight-issue series based on the original screenplay.
Fans of the original Star Wars film should note that there will be some rather notable differences in this comic series compared to the original film. For example, Han Solo is no longer human but an alien, light sabers are called lazer swords, and Skywalker is Starkiller. The last point almost makes perfect sense, as I’ve heard in the past that Lucas had agreed to alter Luke’s name to Skywalker for the sake of the film.
The first issue of the comic series remains on track to debut in September. The series is being written by an executive editor from Lucasbooks and illustrated by Mike Mayhew, who previously worked on Marvel’s Avengers: End Times. The artist has promised that the comic series will be completely faithful to the original screenplay.
“[The comic adaptation is] incredibly action packed with complex characters we’ve never met before,” Mayhew said.
If the artwork is any indication, even the spaceships are significantly different. The spacecraft in that image above looks like the Millennium Falcon but is somewhat altered from the final ship depicted in the original film. In any case, perhaps the series will be interesting enough to hold over hard-core Star Wars fans until 2015 when the first films are expected to land from Disney.
