As we reported earlier, Dark Horse Comics announced at the Star Wars comics panel at WonderCon a new title coming this fall: The Star Wars, based on George Lucas’ original 1974 screenplay. This eight-issue arc, written by J. W. Rinzler (of The Making Of Star Wars books) and Mike Mayhew will tell the Star Wars story as it was in the first drafts, and using imagery that first appeared in Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art. We’ve got a preview page to help get you excited for the series, starting in September:
From the official press release:
“I’m not sure where I first read about The Star Wars—it was years and years ago—but the idea of Luke Skywalker being an older Jedi General, and Han Solo being a six-foot-tall lizard, turned my Star Wars fan brain on its side,” said longtime Star Wars editor Randy Stradley. “I always assumed this would be one of those stories that would be ‘lost to history,’ so getting to work on bringing it to life is kinda like a dream come true.”
“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,” said writer J.W. Rinzler. “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.”
Rinzler is definitely the right person for the job when handling the adaptation of the rough draft into a full story – as LucasBooks’ executive editor and the author of several Making Of books, he knows the source material (and has access to it), and has written a story or two as well.
Check out this preview page from Matt Mayhew (click to enlarge):
This is definitely one of coolest things we’ve heard for awhile
I really have no idea what to expect from this, but I’m super excited about it.
I really love that first script. Looking forward to this.
Very intriguing. I’m not sure how it will stand up to the classic hero coming-of-age tale of Ep. IV or the enemy as hero’s lost father revelation of Ep. V; those are hard to top. But, I’m definitely gonna pick up this TPB.
Give DH points for trying something new. That said: what da hell?