Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

That’s no moon, it’s a giant green tennis ball. And I actually wrote “HOLYSHI- – -“? Well, I must have been growing up when I did this page, and feeling a bit more confident at home around my mum and dad!

Youth in Revolt

I still remember describing something as ‘crap’ when I was 7 or 8 in Scotland and my dad said—very seriously:

“John, you shouldn’t use that word. It’s nearly as bad as saying ess—aych—eye—tee”.

Allegedly, the originalDeath Star model. An interesting living room centre-piece. (From the collection of Tim Williams, Patrick Franklin, and Todd Franklin)

I was really scared. But by 1981 or ’82 I’d obviously got over it! Though, on the other hand, I might have thought that they’d never see this page. Now I didn’t grow up in a Quaker household or anything, but we never ever swore—like The Osbournes.

Art Notes

More far-too-thick black felt-tip.

Tell you what I do like though—the red arc behind the little TIE Fighter. Or more specifically, the way it changes direction.

In panels 1-2 it sweeps right—then sweeps left in panel 3, and back again in panel 4. In this series of panels – that Scott McLeod in the classic ‘Understanding Comics’ would call Moment-to-Moment transitions, so popular in Japanese comics; the action works simply, but well. The Death Star also gets larger and the Falcon gets smaller—an exaggerated inverse-relationship that works well.

Howard Chaykin’s Marvel version. He copied mine—obviously

I’d like to say it was all down to my own early brilliance—but Howard Chaykin did it first. I did make the frame for the bottom panel all explosive looking though. I even made the stars shake. I can imagine how I was excitedly drawing that. I used a different layout to him, which might have been because the A5 size I was drawing on was just so small—or, I might have wanted to try something a bit different.

Well that that was a bit boringly technical wasn’t it? Tell you what though, later in life I became an animator for several years.

Next time: things are really getting exciting!