Mayhew: This to me is the greatest “what if” story in comics. Fans are saying they’re reading it two or three times to take it all in. You have the Tusken raider moment surging in front of the binoculars, except it’s not a Tusken raider, it’s a different character. You see many of the things you love in “Star Wars” but in a slightly different way. Even through my adaptation, you feel his voice. Rinzler: Based on early fan feedback from the first issue, they’re really enjoying this alternate universe, and they’re getting to read a story that’s being told by George. You think you know these characters and then you discover their truer origins.ĬNN: What do you think fans will take away from this book? Here, Vader is really three characters: General Vader, this Lord of the Sith named Valorum, and this mechanical man. Darth Vader is kind of a general, he’s one of the main heavies but he’s not a lord of the Sith. The other interesting thing is you see the origins of the characters we know and love. I’m sure back then they looked at this and thought, “What’s this guy thinking?” Audiences expect all that action and set pieces, and one thing after another. When you look at movies now like “Avatar” and “The Avengers,” it seems prophetic. You can see why some of it was changed because there’s no way they could have done it. This is genuinely George’s first complete screenplay story of this tale, and it’s wildly different. It was just a very well-written screenplay, and that’s what a comic book script is. I’ve been in comics 20 years, and when I read the rough draft, I thought, I can make a comic of this tomorrow. It’s such a great story, George is a great storyteller.ĬNN: Was it difficult to illustrate this story from a script written nearly 40 years ago? When I read the rough draft, it had all those things which made me want to make it into a comic book. You’ve got a planet with twin suns, an imperial city and a cloud city. You’ve got Sith and Jedi, you’ve got a desert planet. All the puzzle pieces are there but arranged to form a different picture. Rinzler: It’s so similar and yet so different at the same time.

Rinzler, who adapted Lucas’ script for comics, and artist Mike Mayhew.ĬNN: What captured your interest when adapting this script?

The star wars comic 2013 dark horse