"The First Draft of Star Wars With Green Alien" Topic

Han Solo Gets Adapted Into a Comic

"fans of the franchise now have something to look forward to in September, when Dark Horse Comics releases the first issue of The Star Wars, an eight-issue comic series that adapts George Lucas' very first draft of his science fiction fantasy tale into comics.

"It's a very different story. It's not like, ‘Oh, this is a new scene,'" comics writer J.W. Rinzler told Wired. "It's totally different, and although the characters are still there, they're also totally different. Luke Skywalker isn't an eighteen-year-old kid. He's an old Jedi general with decades of experience. Leia is a princess, but she's not related to Luke; she has a different mother and father. Han Solo is there, but he's a giant green alien. A lot of the relationships are all there, they're all percolating."

The new series, which will be illustrated by Mike Mayhew, finally brings the near-mythical earliest draft of one of the most successful science fiction franchises of all time to an audience that has been patiently waiting for it for decades. According to Rinzler — who also works as an executive editor at LucasBooks — convincing George Lucas that it was a good idea to let everyone see his first draft wasn't easy.

"It took years actually," he admitted. "I was writing The Making of Star Wars and I read all the drafts, and when I saw the first rough draft I thought, ‘This is amazing, and so different from what the film was.' Each of the very early drafts is very different from the final film, and I thought, it would be nice if this was somehow made into a comic book. It felt like a very natural idea. I mentioned it to George once or twice, and he was a bit hesitant, wasn't very sure if it was a good idea or not."

Years later, after he discovered that Dark Horse had also asked to adapt the draft into a comic book, Rinzler came up with an to convince the reticent Lucas. "We'd recently done a book about his favorite Star Wars comic book art. He said to me while doing that, a few times, how much he loves seeing comic books without the word balloons — that he loves seeing the art tell the story. I said to Dark Horse, if you want George to sign off on this, you need to hire an artist, I'll adapt a few scenes and then I'll show it to George. It took a few months, but when I showed the pages to George, sure enough, he approved the project…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Sweet!

So, not only did Han shoot first, he was big and green. Very interesting.

Sigh…. there are reasons why they are called drafts. A lot more tension with the later edited story, I think.

Check out the first draft of Dune and you should readily see how much more powerful the final version is.

To me, it would be interesting to know why New Hope was done first rather than episode 1 and did Lucas scramble to get it redone for the film.

"New Hope was done first rather than episode 1"

Because, at the beginning, it was just Star Wars, no New Hope, no episode one. Star Wars was by default episode one because there were no others in the works. There was a vague hope by Lucas and friends that if Star Wars did "OK" (no one could have predicted what a huge hit it would be) then they would do another movie.But all his malarkey about it being a nine episode sage from the beginning was just that, malarkey.

WHAT, NO JAR JAR ???

What?

Why?

And Patrick Sexton nailed it; the only "nine episode saga" was in Lucas' notes and musings.

Speaking as one who saw "Star Wars" in theatres in 1977 (many, many times), I can attest to the fact that we never even knew the phrase "A New Hope" until the re-release.

In their wildest dreams, Paramount wasn't going to number a sci-fi flick "Episode IV" when the last space opera to do good box office was the "Flesh Gordon" porn spoof.

Only after the money floodgates had opened wider than the gaps in Uncle george's story logic did the studioes buy into his "oh-it-was-part-of-my-plan-all-along" scam and put "Episode V" on "The Empire Strikes back" -- to the unmitigated, roaring approval of audiences everywhere.

And they were none-too-pleased when he decided to pour his moviemaking cred into "Howard the Duck", et al… but once he'd gotten too big for his Paramount knickers and taken full control, his boredom with, and eventual total ownership of, all things Star Wars allowed him to walk away from his "nine episode saga" – and promised picture deal – and regale us, years later, with the wonders <cough> that were the prequels <cough, cough, gag, wretch>.

But we who were there, remember.