Age 13/14/15? | 1981/82/83? A scene which only features in the Marvel comic—I think—with Han and the medical droid 2-1B discussing the mysterious death of a tauntan.

Shure S55s skeleton microphone

2-1B’s Shure S55s skeleton microphone snout!

I added a bit more dialogue, which reminds me of the scenes in ALIEN (which I also comic-adapted) between Ash ad Ripley, and Ash and Dallas: “Unknown as yet.” I almost expect the droid to say, “I’m still… collating.”

That old-fashioned Shure microphone in 2-1B’s face makes me grin whenever I see it. I suppose it’s inline with George Lucas’ idea of using things that look familiar to us present day earth beings.

Art notes

Hatching and tones

There’s some especially nice drawing in this page. It looks as if I was really going for realism and using photo and Marvel comic references. There’s no colour except for the blue biro ink, but I did lots of hatched tonal work. I strongly suspect that I did this when I was 14 or 15—or even older. I like the shading under the corner of Han’s mouth on the 2nd/middle panel. It’s very naturalistic looking.

Rookie Mistakes

I really wanted to draw Solo well on this page and too 3 goes at side views. However, the 1st glaring rookie mistake here is doing 3 almost identical panels in terms of composition. Solo on the left, droids on the right, droid replaced by a rebel soldier in the same position. It’s almost as if the whole world is centred around Solo—somewhat bit like this funny looking page from my earlier ‘Star Wars’ comic « adaptation with its mysteriously moving—or photo-bombin—landspeeder and suns!

I’ll overlook the weird foreshortening on Solo’s arm on the last panel here, because I was just a kid. Obviously we have to do a lot of overlooking at Star Wars age 9!

I’d love to read your comments below!