Age 12/13? | 1980/81? Luke gets walloped by a Wampa! Hence explaining those little changes in poor Mark Hamill’s face that appeared since the previous film.

Movie Trivia

Funnily enough, last night I found a 1980 clipping from one of mum’s magazines. It was inside my old Empire Strikes Back Storybook. The picture—which excited the hell out of me as a kid, seeing some of my first images from the new film—shows Luke walking through that cylindrical corridor on cloud city during his fight with Vader. But guess what’s on the back? Part of a long interview with Mark Hamill, and it’s the part in which he describes his terrible car crash and surgery.

Luke and Tauntaun attacked by a Wampa—Star Wars comic page detail

There’s something vaguely comical looking about this!

I was sure that I remembered him describing in an article how part of his nose was recreated with tissue from his ear. And there it is! He also says how his nose was basically wiped from his face. My God! What a terrible thing to happen to young actor who’s on the brink of worldwide success. And he was: the accident happened during post-production on ‘Star Wars.’ Before the film was even released.

If you’ll recall, if you read my earlier ‘Star Wars’ comic adaptation, most of the images of Luke have retrospectively added scars—at least, what I thought were scars. I think they were actually just natural facial creases. I was going for extra authenticity, even though post-accident scars had absolutely no business in being there! You read more about this here ». And you can see where I added them to pages, here ».

Anyway, enough talk of that terribly traumatic period of Mark Hamill’s life. I think he’s subsequently played down the seriousness of the injuries, even though the old article says he had 3 bouts of reconstructive surgery. Just goes to show how he’d prefer to forget about it.

Art Notes

I wonder why I used a mix of black and blue biro on this page? Was it an artistic decision, or was my blue biro just running out?

I think panel 3 looks pretty funny. The Tauntaun looks every bit as human as Luke does. It also kind of reminds me—dunno why—of this funny pic…

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