Interview Feature: with Cinemania Magazine, Spain
A New Hope
By Manuel Pinon – Cinemania Magazine
In 1977, a 9 year old boy drew a 200 page comic book of his favourite movie. Its rediscovery more than three decades later has become a source of inspiration for the disillusioned adult who created it.
Rescuing more pages from an attic full of moths and from luggage in which there were even birds’ nests…
Original ‘Star Wars Age 9’ (comic) autographed by Kenny Baker, the man inside R2-D2.
A long time ago in a very, very small village in the east of Ireland (Ballymore Eustace, population 800) a lad of 9 years, profoundly affected after seeing Star Wars in the cinema, began compulsively drawing the comic of the film. A work of 200 pages, it was an obsession of over four years. However, for more than three decades those recycled pages from his dad’s office, drawn with biros and cheap markers, rested on the top of the wardrobe in the family home. “My parents kept them all this time” says John, 43 year old graphic and web designer from Dublin, to Cinemanía.
“I was very surprised at what I could do as a child, and what I had now forgotten as an adult, so I decided to put them together and upload them onto the internet before they disappeared or burned in a fire.”
“My parents kept them all this time”
Rescuing more pages from an attic full of moths and from luggage in which there were even birds’ nests, they are now accompanied by hilarious and lucid comments in a website StarWarsAge9.com, that is according to John, more than a geek’s fantasy. “Gabrielle, my wife, says above all, it’s a way of connecting with my childhood dreams. Sometimes I imagine myself at 9 years old observing my actual job, quite a bit more routine and less artistic than what I did as a child, and I see myself responding (to him) ‘with this, I pay the bills’.”
Will the galactic saga continue? ‘The thing is that I have some pages around of The Empire Strikes Back…..”
Immersed now in the rescue of the comic about Alien, the eighth passenger, which he drew at 11 years of age without seeing the film! (“It was rated over 18 and my parents would not let me”), (it) lives a moment of unexpected fame on the Internet. “Just the day before my web site crashed because of the amount of people that entered to see it, I was thinking of giving up”.
Will the galactic saga continue? ‘The thing is that I have some pages around of The Empire Strikes Back…..”
—March 2012