Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

Here’s a variation one one of the escape-pod scenes. And now… with an Swa9 SPECIAL EDITION version of this page – for fun! Watch out for more of these.

SWa9 Special Edition image [View full size]

Art Notes

Loved these!

Another of my favourite, very early pages. Any pen would do the job. Green ink. This was probably one of those big chunky novelty biros with buttons for selecting different colours!

I lived in a small – tiny – village in Ireland in 1977 (what a culture shock that was!) in which many people including a best friend aka John S. didn’t even have telephones. The local newspaper shop was the front kitchen of a cottage. When they weren’t eating dinner, the family table was up under the front window with all the magazines, papers and comics spread out on it. There was a biscuit tin to the side with the money in it. Strange times indeed.

Anyhow, if you needed a studio pen or something – or even a proper pencil it wasn’t as if you could nip down the road to thestationery shop. To be honest though, I didn’t know any better.Ballpoint pens were just the business at that age. They inked reasonably well too, on the type of paper shown here, which had an odd waxy sheen to it.

I LOVE this page, it really brings me back. And I couldn’t resist seeing what it would be like if I coloured it like the movie itself.

Film Notes

Mouse Robot? Wasn’t that the little trapezoidal Death Star Droid?

Possibly my favourite section of John Williams’ score happens during the actual Life-Pod scene in the film. Stirs my heart-strings. Funnily enough, on the soundtrack album it was entitled ‘Mouse Robot and Blasting Off’.

A very early, first version drawn onto the paper record liner sleeve in thick, soft black pencil crayon. [larger view]

And on the flip-side, later on, I had another go. [larger view] This reminds me of the hidden drawing on < this page

An Alternate Take

This is another scene that never happened like this! Oh well, my mind was a muddle of all sorts back then. Tell you what though, it’s not a bad device to use for heightening the tension before Artoo makes his own bid for escape in a life-pod.

Master of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock would certainly approve of my 9 year old approach! He said that you can very effectively place in the viewer’s mind the idea that something dreadful might or evenwill happen. Then the tension builds and builds – the possibility made more tangible by the viewer’s having seen it happen already – in this case harmlessly, to an empty pod.

He said he made a terrible mistake once for which he never forgave himself. It was the film 1936 film Sabotage. There was a bomb being carried on a bus -unknowingly – by a child. He built the tension so meticulously for about a minute – the audience is waiting for it to go off – and what did he do? “I let the bomb go orf. You see, once the bomb goes orf you’ve given the audience a release – from the tension. I killed it.” Or words to that effect.

Hitchcock eh? Bloody useless.

Next: Luke at Anchorhead