Lit The Star Wars Comic Adaption is now complete!

The Star Wars rough draft's comic adaptation is finished, yet I noticed that there wasn't as much conversation about it beyond the thread for issue #5 IIRC.

I had always meant to read the rough draft, yet never got around to it, even when I knew I was going to commit to reading the comic once all the issues were out. The comic seems to have made the story more real, hasn't it? While I recognize there are issues that needed to be ironed out with the story, which eventually lead us to the movie that started everything in '77, I have to say that despite it's structural issues and dialogue issues, I'm glad that the story has been told in this way at least, and been given life and a visual identity beyond just words on a page. I feel like, it's flaws not withstanding, this early concept of SW is a story that deserved to be told.

My own interest in reading it was out of interest for the writing process, seeing the different stages a different story can be at before it's locked in to a particular version. When I skimmed through the comics, I did note that there were a couple of points where the action being depicted wasn't clear for me, did anyone else have that issue? Like the moment when Annikin is expressing enthusiasm for a lady, and gets "caught" in a way that wasn't clear. I ended up reading the comic with a print out of the rough draft to consult for clarity's sake, although I wonder if maybe that was always going to happen anyway. Sometimes my consultation of the print out would make clear to me that a comic really justify conveying all possible information of a script, and even if this script had been the shooting script, not all of it's material would have been used. That makes the rough draft script still very much a richly detailed document, and a credit to GL as great at ideas, worldbuilding, ect. My eye drifted at one point while consulting the printed document and I got a look into the details of Aquilae's cloning tech; fascinating to see a different approach to the usage of that technology (it reminded me of how similar technology is used throughout Frank Herbert's Dune novels and made me wonder if GL read more than just the original Dune).

I was surprised by all the different POVs and characters that are followed early on. It reminded me of how Tom Clancy shows so many different levels of a building conflict, from politicians to political advisors to intelligence analysts to intelligence agents in the field, and then we get to the fighter pilots, soldiers and warship crews. That's just in the first half, the story becomes more focused an stays at that level for the rest of it. The ending seems rushed, yet that's part of the script itself.

It's nice to seeing the version of the story that belonged to the wookies, and interesting to see that they're not homogenous, and there are distinctive tribes. This is something that isn't there with the ewoks either; Threepio says at one point in RotJ, "We are now a part of the tribe," but dialogue on-screen doesn't draw our attention to that facet of ewok culture. Yet it is here in the rough draft, dialogue that elaborates on at least two tribes of wookies, easily implying more.

What is most fun for me is examining what is essentially a very unique and different universe and imagining all the story-telling possibilities that can emerge from it. The character relationships and situations suggest so many potential prequels, sequels, character one-shot stories and so forth. There's so much history implied here (which was great about what we got to start with in '77), and it's interesting to imagine where these characters are headed with their further adventures.

That's all I've got for now, and I don't want to overload a single post. Now that we've got the complete story, what does everyone else make of it? What did you like, what kind of stories would you have bought and read if they had come from this particular fictional universe?

 

Personally, I feel they copped out some when they didn't use the original female concept for Starkilller. If you are going to tell the story different, tell it different. It's not like we haven't had some strong female leads in recent years, or interesting ones. Seems odd, when exploring the original concept, they would once again just go with the male hero. It would have been interesting to see. I'm sure i'll get around to reading it at some point, though my interest is limited, due to it being a stand-alone project.

http://www.oafe.net/yo/sw4mcsh.php

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It's because they were using the original draft, of which that was not a plot aspect. Seems kind of odd to criticize an adaptation for not straying from the source material.

 

I'm not unsympathetic, Alixen. Hopefully maybe we'll finally see this with the new movie. As Steve Brule says, and consistent with what one of the comic's creators said in the letters column of one issue, they were drawing directly from the rough draft, which is distinct to a certain extent from even the first draft. And the rough draft has Annikin Starkiller as a guy, and he his interaction with Princess Leia forms an attempt at a relationship/character arc for both characters, and at certain points motivates Annikin for romantic reasons. Both characters are highly impractical and choose their moments badly, so at least it's equal opportunity there...I didn't keep score of which character outdid the other for nutbar moments. It still comes down to her having to be saved by him, but they were using the rough draft document; and I don't know if GL ever wrote out an entire draft that reversed those roles (as far as I know, he may have jotted down a few conceptual notes and asked for concept art, without going so far as to make an entire draft of the screenplay to play that out).

I would love to see a lead female hero in Star Wars Episode 7 save some hapless dude from the bad guys dungeons, though. "How can I repay...!" "Whatever."

 

I'm not criticizing so much as a little disappointed, is all. Perhaps my wording was badly chosen with 'cop out', but that's just the disappointment talking. It's been years since I saw the original concept of a female Starkiller, before things like Knight Errant, Legacy part 2, and so forth, and I always wished something had come of it. This series was pretty much the only chance of that, and it wasn't to be.

I see, and understand it wouldn't work based on what they did.

She doesn't have to be rude.