If you grew up when Star Wars was an enormous phenomenon in the 70’s, you may recall Marvel had a comic book series based on the film.
The first Marvel issue of the Star Wars comic is a valuable item today, it’s still one of my favorite comics from the ‘70’s, and I wouldn’t mind having a mint copy in plastic in my collection right now.
As we reported earlier this week, there will be a new Star Wars graphic novel, this time based on George Lucas’s screenplay for the film, for the legendary Dark Horse comics.
Now I haven’t read the original screenplay for Star Wars, but it was always problematic in getting the film sold, because as you can imagine a lot of it looked like gobbledygook on paper. The head of Universal in the 70’s, who turned Star Wars down, said that trying to figure out what C3PO and R2D2 meant on paper was like trying to read hieroglyphics.
The Verge tells us this will be an 8 issue series, and it will indeed be based on Lucas’s 1974 screenplay for Star Wars. In addition, the graphics for the comics so far look more like the original concept drawings for the film, and it will be a trip to see how Star Wars was originally envisioned.
The comic is being illustrated by Mike Mayhew, and he tweeted that the comics will be faithful to the script, which is “incredibly action packed with complex characters we’ve never met before!”
Some of the differences? The lightsabers were first called “lazer swords,” Anakin Skywaker was originally named Annikin Starkiller, and Han Solo was an alien.
J.W. Rinzler, the executive editor of LucasBooks, said in a statement:
“While researching in the Lucasfilm Archives I’ve found many treasures – but one which truly astounded me was George’s rough draft for The Star Wars. His first complete imaginings were hallucinating to read – mind blowing.
“While working with George on another book project, I once asked if we could adapt his rough draft. He was hesitant. Years later, with Dark Horse’s invaluable help, we showed him a few drawn and colored pages of what it might look like. He gave us the okay.”
The designs of the Star Wars universe is what so many of us will always remember about the series. Dark Vader, C3PO, the sand people, Greedo, the Millennium Falcon, along with so many other wonderful creatures, robots, and ships. Still, it should be great fun to see Star Wars as Lucas first envisioned it nearly forty years ago, and we eagerly await the Dark Horse series, which hits physical and virtual shelves in September.
