A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Cover art by Marvel Comics artist Bob Larkin. © 1980 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In May of 1980, a few weeks before 20th Century Fox released Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in theaters, Marvel's official comics adaptation hit the shelves at bookstores, newsstands and comic book shops in the U.S. and Canada. There were various iterations of writer Archie Goodwin and artists Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon's take on the story written by George Lucas, Leigh Brackett, and Lawrence Kasdan, including five monthly issues ( Star Wars #39-44, labeled as Star Wars but featuring a  cover "blurb" featuring the logo for The Empire Strikes Back ), a large-format "Treasury" edition, and The Marvel Comics Illustrated Edition of The Empire Strikes Back, which was the size of a mass-market paperback (4 1/8" X 7" size) and featured cover art by Bob Larkin. Of all these, The Marvel Comics Illustrated Edition of The Empire Strikes Back was the first to reach cons...

(C) 2016 Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. Cover art by Mike Mayhew In May of 1999, Dark Horse Comics (which then had the license to publish Star Wars comics) released Issue No. 1 of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Written by Henry Gilroy and illustrated by Rodolfo Damaggio (with inks by the late Al Williamson, who had worked on the syndicated newspaper  Star Wars comic strip with Archie Goodwin, plus Marvel's adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi ). the first of four issues covered the first 30 minutes or so of George Lucas's 1999 space-fantasy film.  Later that year, Dark Horse collected all four issues in a trade paperback edition simply titled Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  Like most comic books based on the  Star Wars  movies, the four-issue series successfully taps into the spirit of The Phantom Menace, even though some of the events are moved around or compressed to fit the requirements of the printed...