Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

The Empire Strikes Back Adaptation is also… incomplete.

Sadly, I never finished it. Maybe the task was too big for me among all the other stuff that was going on in my life after 1980. I was in Secondary school, probably 12 or 13—or older?—and other things were increasingly taking up my attention like schoolwork, pop-music, girls, and the many other comics that I was also making.

I was at a point in my artistic development where a page would take longer than 15 or 30 minutes to draw, because I was expecting more from myself. This was probably especially true after I’d seen Al Williamson’s amazing artwork on Marvel’s comic adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back.

I think I’d also lost interest in Star Wars before Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, so much so, that I never even went to see it in the cinema. Heavy rock and playing electric guitar were the biggest things for me by ’83 or ’84.

Anyway, today, Jan 2nd 2018, I’ll post the first page of The Empire Strikes Back comic. I can promise you a better average quality of artwork than the in the earlier ‘Star Wars’ adaptation, but less chuckles. I was getting quite serious about being a comics artist and wanted it to be the best it possibly be and as close to the movie, the Donald F. Glut novelisation and the ‘Storybook’ as possible.

But how on earth did I expect to become a professional comics artist in Ireland of all places?

Not one for practical matters, I just continued to dream of being one.

Maybe this year it will finally happen…