BTS DH Comics to release 'The Star Wars' in September

Kind of breaking the rules about discussing the EU here, but I think this has to be a bit of a special case:

http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1349/lucasfilm-and-dark-horse-announce-star-wars

Some additional images (EDITED: original links not working, these are better anyway)

Annikin Starkiller




General Luke Skywalker




Darth Vader




Dying to see what Prince Valorum & the Emperor look like. Really hope they pull this one off, and maybe even do further such series based on, say, SW/ANH Draft 2, the Brackett draft of ESB, GL's Rough Draft of ROTJ, and the first draft of TPM.

Then, of course, they need to go back and do my dream SW comic project - an Old Republic story called 'Three Bad Men in a Hidden Fortress', based on a film by Akira Kurosawa.

 

I've never been one for Star Wars media outside of the films, but I am very intrigued by this. Definitely planning on checking it out once it eventually comes out in a collected format (trade paperback or hardcover).

 

Having JW Rinzler on board is probably the most encouraging aspect - I imagine he'll be keeping things consistent with the actual first draft, rather than letting elements from the later ones have too much influence. The artwork is clearly based around what Ralph McQuarrie was doing between the second and third drafts (not to mention the very familiar shoulder gear on 'Darth Vader', along with the child Deak Starkiller looking like a cross between Luke in SW/ANH & Anakin in TPM), but it's nice to think that someone thoroughly familiar with the source material is calling the shots.

I'd love to think that this mainstream, legitimate release might finally open a few minds to the fact that it wasn't all exactly planned out from the start the way so many think it was, and that the story actually did evolve from something that was quite different in many respects - while also highlighting a number of elements that would eventually find their way into the story in ways that weren't originally intended.

 

kinda curious who is writing and drawing. Ostrander and Dursema integrated a ton of First Draft material into their Legacy comics; the concept of the Jedi being the Emperor's bodyguards made it in in the form of 'Imperial Knights'.

 

I wonder if this will be based on Lucas' script called "THE TRAGEDY OF DARTH VADER," that he totally wrote down for real, guize!

LOL. Seriously though, it could be fun.

 

This is seriously interesting - thanks for letting us know about it!

edit: Is this real? Please tell me this is real. Every story I find about this was released on April 1st...

 

That was my first reaction, but no, it's for real. Stupid date to confirm it, though.

(Although the last couple of comic series I've sporadically jumped on years after being a regular comic buyer in the early 1990s - The Dark Knight Strikes Again, All-Star Batman & Robin - have had a horrible habit of being those series with delays leading to almost entire years between issues, this one better not!)

Really don't know how this release affects or is affected by the Disney sale - I'd really like to think that this might be the first of a new series of Infinities-type projects realising early SW visions that can't be done any other way. That's a pipedream, though, I'm just grateful that this one's happening. Should be appealing to SW archaeology nerds like me, plus the EU buffs after something a bit different, and even the movie purists who won't touch anything without the authentic stamp of George Lucas' input. Win-win-win.

Good call, Dark Horse. Yet again.










(September 1995... advertisement in Bartman comic... 'Sith War'...? Wasn't Darth Vader in Star Wars a Sith Lord...? But Star Wars was crap, I was just a kid... Yeah, but they're making the other movies some time soon... Star Wars was rubbish, 2001 is so much better... You LOVED Star Wars, precious... Kiddie crap. Power converters my arse... You always wanted to see those other movies - Yoda, Obi-Wan, Vader, the Emperor, they abandoned you, nothing but silly Ewoks and then nothing... But what's Sith mean anyway...?)

 

Hmm, little tidbits from early drafts always seemed cool to me for the simple fact of their being exactly that--fragmented snapshots of a narrative's development, a glimpse of the path of history, as opposed to a concrete something lost to history. Can't say I'm really interested in seeing this stuff compiled or adapted as a full-fledged arc.

 

As great as this sounds, does anyone else think that the draft sketches of General Luke Skywalker has GL's hair and beard from the 70's and 80's?

 

Mcquarrie started that, I believe. With Luke concept art.

 

I think you're right. That ship is definately based on McQuarrie's art:
Rest in Peace, Ralph.

 

This sounds really cool!

 

I have always wanted to see this. Can't wait til September.

 

Wow. For the first time since the end of ROTS, I have chills. I'm anticipating this far more than a Sequel Trilogy. An absolutely inspired idea.

Mr. Lucas, Rinzler, Mayhew...thank you.

 

Excited for this.

 

This should be a treat for the fans. The original concepts from the mind of George Lucas, as he imagined, without any of the real-life constraints of actors, sets, budgets or anything. I'm excited.

 

Cool idea to get radically new concepts out there. I am concerned about how casuals are going to take this - wouldn't people who go in looking for the comic called 'Star Wars' from DH accidentally pick up 'The Star Wars', and then be confused about why Han is an alien.

 

If the idea's a hit, they should definately do something similar for Episode I. As we know, there were some radically different treatments of what could have been.

 

I'm honestly almost as flabbergasted as I was at the announcement of the ST (though not as excited). This is a fascinating idea, and something I would have never, ever expected to see happen. It's not even something I hoped for.

Definitely a must-buy.

 

Yeah, I dig The Rinz (he fights for the users, y'know). Mike Mayhew is the perfect choice as well.

Too bad this seems like the only Star Wars material worth looking forward to anymore - at the current rate I wouldn't be surprised if it was cancelled before the end of the month. Fatalism aside, excited.

 

There's almost a mythic connotation to this release. Before the franchise is handed off to the next generation, Dark Horse is taking us back to the beginning. The very beginning.

My question: Lucas has often disparaged the original Star Wars, claiming it failed to deliver the scope of his vision. Is it possible "The Star Wars" could blow our minds?

 

This is pretty surprising to me. Always seemed like Lucas strongly denied his original vision for Star Wars being any different from what we got in the six movies. It'll be awesome to see how crazy-different these comics are.

 

I actually don't think so, there's a good number of reasons it had to be rewritten time & time again - but I'm still excited about it, as a comic series is probably the best way to show how it might have turned out, short of an animated or live action feature or TV series. Reading a screenplay isn't quite the same as reading a book, it's written to be seen.

 

I never heard him saying that. Do you have a source?

Also, here's a great interview with Dark Horse where they talk about this series and George's involvement with it. I particularly liked to read this:

And I would love if he did this kind of work on the sequel trilogy.

 

Ya, that's why I held fire when I read about it on April 1st.

If I had my way, I'd banish that day from the calendar. Just start at the 2nd of April.

Grrgh.

Don't bet on it.

It's a neat, serviceable story, but little more.

No, wait, you fool! It's a lot more!! It's awesome!! MIND-BENDING, MIND-BLOWING, MIND-ALTERING, LSD-LIKE SUPER-FANTASY-EFFLUVIUM!!!

Actually, the truth, for me, is somewhere in the middle. But that it's the first completed draft screenplay of the space epic we know -- or think we know -- fresh from a mind gorging on sci-fi periodicals, westerns, comic books, and esoteric life experiences, with some peculiar names and imagery that would last through multiple drafts, and multiple films, and tweaked ideas never to see the light of day (till now), makes it a fascinating filmic flange. Prepare to be intrigued.

I was excited beyond belief to read this news and look over those panels -- and the character illustrations -- when I blindly stumbled onto the news the other day. I'm absolutely looking forward to this, almost in a way you wouldn't believe. For several years, now, I was hoping they'd go back to Lucas' early drafts and do something like this... and now it's actually happening!

Rinzler also strikes me as the perfect person for this job. He's definitely earned his stripes working at Lucasfilm and directly with GL on the set of ROTS. That "Making Of" book alone was and is a superb product, with its messy (but coherent) fly-on-the-wall/production-diary structure and sensibility, and then onto the seminal publication, "The Making Of Star Wars" (from the last of the Lucas-directed SW movies to the first), which is magisterial in scope, and comes close to actually living up to its subtitle, "The Definitive Story Behind The Original Film". As great as the former is -- and it is great -- the latter is an essential purpose for any true Star Wars and sci-fi/fantasy film fan. It's that simple.

Rinzler has got to be the ideal candidate for sequencing the original draft and cohering it into a workable, dynamic, fresh, vim-tastic comic-book mold. He's clearly become intimately familiar with Lucas' methodology and his strange melange of re-worked and discarded ideas; as well as the sort of themes and imagery that interest him personally. The material is in good hands and should be given an intelligent treatment. Visually, I can tell just from looking at those first panels that there's some sharp, informed thinking behind this project. I only hope they don't get too wild or ditch too much of the original dialogue. The original draft deserves a fair presentation.

Of course, if you haven't read the early drafts, and you want to spoil yourself silly, you can easily Google "The Star Wars" and find the original draft online. I've read it twice over now: once a few years ago, and again just the other night, after reading this news and wanting to refamiliarize myself with, well... all the strange, prokaryotic goodness of that first draft. The first -- or, to be totally accurate, ROUGH DRAFT (the first draft is actually a different iteration of the same thing: the rough draft with different names) -- has some cracking scenes, and some nice character interplay, and the "Death Star" assault (two assaults, though the latter is very compressed) conjures imagery that is a mix of what you see in the finished film and the attack on the droid control ship in TPM. In fact, many things (especially the political elements) conjure TPM, as well as the other movies, but in a cruder, rougher form.

Yet the rough draft plainly and simply remains that: a rough draft. Most of the ideas contained within it (if not all of them) would be massively deepened and enriched as Lucas added new elements in his subsequent drafts, growing Star Wars into a true mythological epic with each new facet he deftly incorporated: the Force as mystical energy field, Jedi (and Sith) who can wield it (they're essentially just samurai warriors in the rough draft), a Republic that became an Empire (not just an Empire that has existed for as long as anyone can remember), wise-cracking mercenaries and their shaggy-dog co-pilots, worm-like gangsters and their seedy crime dens, laser swords that only the Jedi (and Sith) carry with them, the humble farmer/slave dwellings of Tatooine, and the dramatic construction of a resonant "Hero's Journey" motif far more poignant and sophisticated than any to be found in this first bash at a functioning story.

And that whole deal about midi-chlorians, prophecies, a good Jedi turning bad, a son discovering the truth of his parentage from under the noses of his sagely guardians, and galactic-scale tragedy and redemption? That would take a while to simmer. It's not at all clear Lucas conceived of Star Wars quite so grandly in "the beginning". But as he tells us the classic teaser trailer for Episode I, his new "beginning"... every journey has a first step. From many small comes a great. And now, with this new comic series, we'll be able to appreciate those first steps in all their ink-paneled glory.