0Posted September 2, 2013 by Troy Lyons
“Longer ago, in a galaxy even further away”
So begins one of the most interesting Star Wars concepts to hit comics in quite a while. Star Wars: A New Hope might have been our introduction to Star Wars, but it didn’t initially spill out of George Lucas’ mind the way we saw it on film.
Dark Horse has taken Lucas’ initial draft for Star Wars, known as The Star Wars when he wrote it in 1974, and has created a mini-series that starts this week. Oh boy, this is some interesting stuff that you are going to love!
Lucas had the character names already fleshed out with a few minor changes, but the embodiment of those characters are far away from what we know:
Luke Skywalker – He isn’t a young farmboy here. He is still a Jedi, but is much older and a General in the Aquilaean military. He is the Obi-Wan of this particular story.
Anakin Skywalker – Big change here. He is Annikin Starkiller and is older than the Anakin we see in Episode 1, but you get glimpses of anger and perhaps jealousy in him.
Princess Leia – We are breifly introduced to Princess Leia and she looks pretty much as we know her with some slight changes to her character.
Darth Vader – From the neck down he looks like the best villian in the history of EVER that we all know, but from the neck up, he looks normal. No mask, or ominous breathing here.
The fact that I have to be concerned about spoilers in a story that we think we all know should tell you that this is something pretty special. With this comic, you really don’t know what is going to happen, therefore there are surprises present and that makes it pretty exciting. It’s fun to see a different take on characters we all know and love. Some changes will be minor, some are major, but they are all….interesting.
J.W. Rinzler does a great job with the script. I don’t know how much was present in the rough draft, but I imagine that there was some fleshing out that had to be done. Things move along at a good pace without feeling too rushed and I was left wanting to read more, which is always a good sign.
Mike Mayhew handles art duties and he does a bang-up job. Again, as with the script, I don’t know how much of the designs were present from the rough draft, but there are some interesting choices here. Luke, being older, seems to resemble George Lucas quite a bit. We see the Jedi as being more military, so they are not wearing the flowing robes we are used to. We see Stormtroopers with a different design and Stardestroyers that are somewhat less intimidating. All together it is beautiful to look at.
With all the buzz around Episode VII, interest in Star Wars is as high as it has been since the prequels were announced. I’m excited to see where it goes and am extremely surprised at how much I liked this first issue. If you are a fan of the originial trilogy, then I think you are going to have a blast exploring this alternate version and see how it all really began.
