ZkinandBonez

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Wouldn’t this be easier?

On a TV budget it would be much too time consuming (and therefore more expensive) to CGI everything like ROTS did. You could argue that the same applies to most movies also.

I’d imagine a Kenobi series would be much easier and cheaper than the two series currently in production. Plenty of desert in California, and places like Mos Eisley is hardly the craziest locations in the SW universe to build as sets.

SilverWook said:

I may have missed something, but I don’t think Luke having to live with a mechanical hand was dealt with much in the post ESB storylines?

It being mechanical did (no pun intended) come in handy several times (like in Heir to the Empire), but I can’t remember him ever talking much about it beyond a little in Shadows of the Empire and a few issues immediately after ESB. I guess he just got used to it.

SilverWook said:

Maybe the original Westworld had something to do with it? 😃

Androids were very familiar to general audiences by 1977. The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman were often menaced by them, especially fembots. Maybe Lucas wanted to avoid androids for that reason?

With those two examples, as well as androids appearing in Star Trek a few times, the whole concept probably didn’t quite fit in with that whole “lived-in” universe vibe that Lucas was going for. Androids probably just seemed too futuristic.

It’s still a little bit weird that both Tardi & Guri exist in the same world as Artoo, Threepio, Gonk droids, and this clunky-looking thing.

SilverWook said:

I think emphasizing Viscount Tardi (thanks for the reminder!) being non-sentient might have been so the Rebels don’t look bad sending a droid on essentially a suicide mission, which is kind of silly since regular rebel droids often are often in the line of fire. There was another issue where Artoo was badly damaged, and Luke lost his temper at a Rebel tech who suggested it was more trouble than it was worth to fix him when parts for other droids were already in short supply.

Marvel was probably concerned about how the kids reading the comics would react to the idea of droid suicide mission, especially since Artoo & Threepio were clearly meant to be seen as sentient being. Plus, Leia, just like Luke, was always a lot more sympathetic towards droids.

SilverWook said:

Why don’t we see androids in the SW universe? Given Luke’s prosthetic hand, a life like android ought not to be a stretch. Is there a canonical reason?
I know at least one appeared in the old Marvel comic, which they went out of their way to say was non-sentient for some reason. And Valance the Hunter was able to conceal his half cybernetic face when it suited him.
That cyborgs were routinely discriminated against might be one factor against androids, but that could purely be a Marvel invention.

We know there are anti-droid sentiments held by some in the OT, but there are scenarios where an android might be useful on both sides of the conflict.

Guri from Shadows of the Empire was an android meant to mimic a human, and unlike Viscount Tardi (from the Marvel comic story you mentioned) she had emotions like other droids. She even got her own miniseries.

The reason androids so rarely appear might simply be because they feel a bit out of place in SW, despite the fact that we’ve seen Luke with a pretty real-looking robot hand. People kind of associate SW with that retro-look (like Threepio) so adding androids to the movies would probably feel a bit weird to some people. Luke’s hand I imagine was to avoid having to replace it with an effect all the time.

(As a side note; as a kid I always thought that Lobot was meant to be an android. I’m actually still a litle bit disappointed that he’s just a human with cybernetic implants.)

SilverWook said:

How do these constant renumbering schemes not drive collector’s and comic shop employees insane?

From what I’ve gathered it pretty much does.

Ironically it’s meant to make the new issues more “collectible” as they’re officially first issues. Though actual collectors mostly just seems annoyed by this gimmick. They usually print the real number on the cover underneath the new one anyway.

Some times they also do it to pseudo-reboot a series that’s not selling as well as hoped. Don’t know if this is the case here though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

“A McGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or another motivator that the protagonist pursues. The MacGuffin’s importance to the plot is not the object itself, but rather its effect on the characters and their motivations.”

So the DS plans still count as a McGuffin.

Well, that was certainly unexpected. I love that Simonson cover, and I like how they’ve re-purposed Infantino art for the UK comic as a variant cover.

I wonder if this will be a kind of flashback story, since it says it’ll be a sequel to Crimson Fever, or if they’ve actually found a way to cram Valance, Jaxxon, Amaiza and Domina into a single story.

So while I was looking through a list of canon books I came across these “Chose Your Own Adventure” type of books; http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Choose_Your_Destiny

I’m actually quite surprised that no one thought of making this until now.

Has anyone actually seen or read any of these? I generally only keep myself up to speed on the actual novels (and I still mostly read Legends), but I used to read books like these when I was a kid, and now I’m kind of curious about how these work.

Not quite the same type of audience reactions; but EckhartsLadder recently made a pretty interesting video about the how the internet reacted to TPM in 1999 (and onward); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUF1AiKYXQ4

screams in the void said:

I get what you are saying , I use photographic resources from the movies in my own art but try to approach them with a painterly aesthetic and hone them to an illustrative quality , they aren’t one click solutions . I do agree about the new comics from the first year though and that is some of the stiffness I was talking about . If that is the approach , I would rather see something akin to Drew Struzan who traced photographic sources on a projector but understood how to draw and integrate the photographic sources to look natural in their environment and have texture .The examples in the uncanny valley article you posted look very unnatural . Part of that is that they are trying to combine two separate techniques , part pen and ink traditional comic art with digitally rendered photo realistic faces .

Yeah, Drew Struzan is a great example of how to do it right. And even Al Williamson used some photo-reference for his ESB and ROTJ adaptations, but artists like Larroca rely too much on photos and 3D models and it ends up looking lazy. Williamson used photos to guide his drawings, while Larroca basically cheats to save hismelf having to actually draw at all.

screams in the void said:

As for going back to simplicity , I find these new comics far more simplistic and lacking depth whereas the old series was chock full of complex stories and depth , issue 76 being a prime example …the genocide of an entire aquatic and sentient alien species , save a few members , who cut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy and isolate themselves where they were once free and open . Or issue 86 which deals with a stormtrooper who is also a survivor of Alderaan who Leia convinces to switch allegiances only to have him be shot in the back by his C.O. at the end and die . deep stuff man !

Oh, I didn’t mean to say that classic SW didn’t have depth to it, there was plenty of it. Stories like Day After the Death Star is a great example of giving Luke some character development, and there were plenty like it. But I still feel that they were “simpler” stories in that they were more focused on being adventurous before anything else. Old SW is not comparable to something like Soule’s Vader where the plot in its entirety is one long character exploration (and a pretty dark one at that). What I meant by “simple” is that you could pick up almost any issue of the old SW comics and not feel lost. Trying to do that with modern comics is just going to be confusing. I do however think the old comics focused a little bit more on character depth than character growth though. Not that they didn’t change at all, but you could always rely on the main characters behaving in a fairly predictable manner. Though you’re right that thus doesn’t alway apply to the new stuff, and I might have thought more about the EU as a whole in my previous post.

screams in the void said:

I can watch a marathon of all the Star Wars movies and slot the Marvel comics in and not be bothered by 40 years of lore and they still work for me . There may be a few continuity hiccups but they are far and few between and a lot less than reconciling 90’s EU with the current canon . I don’t put much stock in canon anyway . I kind of pick and choose from all of it that works for me personally . I still think prose captions should be a part of modern comics though . Comics for the past few decades have been trying too hard to be movies . If I want to watch the movies , I now have unlimited access to them and will pop in a blu ray , vhs or dvd .

It might be a generational thing? (Partially, at least.) A lot of people nowadays seem quite obsessed with continuity, and will outright dismiss or complain about any little detail that doesn’t fit properly. And considering how movies and TV series works now compared to 25+ years ago, its not that strange really. Most TV shows nowadays are continuous stories where each episode is a new chapter in one long plot, as opposed to before where each episode was (for the most part) it’s own story with a beginning, middle and end. There was of course continuity, but if you missed an episode it wasn’t usually a big deal.

I’m personally a bit of both worlds. I enjoy the EU, and the elaborate connectivity is part of the fun, but I couldn’t care less if a comic from 1979 contradicts something established in a comic or novel from 1999.

New Marvel SW has been quite a mixed bag I think. A lot of the miniseries have been quite good. Nothing spectacular, but there’s some good stories there. The new content had a somewhat rough start, and the ongoing series, with the exception of Charles Soule’s Darth Vader series, have been pretty mediocre story-wise, and, in my opinion, borderline amateurishly drawn. I personally find the “movie accurate” ones from the first Vader series to be the worst of the bunch. It genuinely annoys me as artist literally just traced photos from the movies and the result is this kind of uncanny feeling. This article explain what I’m referring to.

I’ve really enjoyed Soule’s Vader series. The art may not be realistic, but it is “Marvel” in the sense that its dynamic and colourful. The Han Solo miniseries is a good example of art that is both movie accurate and dynamic.

But I think the biggest problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that modern SW is just a completely different thing than classic SW. It’s nearly impossible nowadays, after 10 movies and 40 years of lore to go back to the simplicity in the old comics. The world itself adheres to more rules now, and even the characters aren’t as flexible ad simple as they used to be.

In the end I think a lot boils down to what your personal perception of what SW is supposed to be like. What “Star Wars” refers to has expanded and changed quite a lot in the past 40+ years, and new content is always going to mostly conform to the latest “baseline”.

Apparently Al Williamson snuck a George Lucas cameo onto page 11 of SW #43 “Betrayal at Bespin”.

The original picture is of Lucas filming ANH in Tunisia.

SilverWook said:

And once again, Marvel got ahead of Lucasfilm’s plans. 😉

Are there any original pages with Jaxxon floating around?

I looked for it, but all I could find was this.

I did however come across this clean art from SW #1 p.31 while looking through Chaykin’s art on comicartfans.com.

One little details that I though was interesting is that the Banthas in the second panel have been drawn on a separate piece of pater, then cut out and glued onto this page. I guess Chaykin might not have had any actual set photos of the banthas when he first drew the page, then at some point later on he had to correct it. Makes me wander what he originally drew? Maybe something like this? Or perhaps he only had concept art to work with at first? Of course he might have just drawn it in a way he didn’t like, but considering his version of Jabba later on its not unlikely that he drew them differently based on a lack of proper reference.

Found this uncoloured version of the splash page from SW #49 on Walt Simonson’s twitter.

“Star Wars 49; Pg 1. Finishes by Tom Palmer​ on Craftint. 10 x 15. 1981.”

It has that same pattern to it that I mentioned when I previously posted the uncoloured pages from “Riders in the Void”, and Simonson identifies it as “craftint”. It’s a pretty fascinating pre-digital way of achieving doubletone. https://blogs.libraries.indiana.edu/craiglab/2018/01/03/craftint-doubletone-20th-century-time-saver/

screams in the void said:

I have been reading on this other forum that after the Empire Strikes Back adaptation , the new editor Louise Jones started having various inkers like Tom Palmer and Carlos Garzon work on Infantino’s pencils to make the comic look more film accurate .After the Empire adaptation , the artists had to up their game . I know you like the charm of Infantino’s more cartoony art ZkinandBonez , and I can see your view to a degree, but he never drew the ships and hardware correct and I much prefer the Walter Simonson Era .Even in the examples you posted of Archie Goodwin’s layouts , I can see a difference in proportion that Infantino brought to bear on them .Goodwin’s characters are leaner in his layouts , and it’s most noticeable in the proportions of R2-D2 . I think part of the problem is that Infantino was primarily a super hero artist and he drew all of his characters with that aesthetic . I think the best we got from him was the water world issues where Terry Austin did the inks .but this is all subjective .oh , and here is the forum I mentioned …http://classiccomics.org/thread/1039/star-wars-marvel-reviews-confessor

Thanks for the forum link, I’ve only looked through it for a few minutes and already found a lot of interesting stuff. They even covered the weird panel from “Droid World” I talked about earlier in the thread.

As for the art, it makes sense that there was more of a push for movie-accurate art after Al Williamson. Adding to this Infantino’s growing frustrations with Marvel and his future offer to return to DC, it makes sense that the last two-ish years of his SW art would be a little weird and uneven.

I do like the Walter Simonson era, but, as odd as this may sound, my admiration for Simonson’s art is the main reason why my reaction to his collaboration with Tom Palmer is somewhat lukewarm. I just feel that a lot of what made Simonson’s art unique is lost in Palmer’s inking. I’d much rather have had pure Simonson art (like we got on some of the covers), or pure Tom Palmer art for that matter. Though I do understand that Simonson probably didn’t have time to ink his own stuff due to the slightly tighter schedules that they had on SW comics. Plus, all of this was before Simonson’s famous run on the Thor comics, so I guess he was just a guy for hire at this point.

However, I still think Goodwin had a grasp of the characters and a feel for the SW-universe like none other before or after him. Jo Duffy did a great job overall and invented some really memorable characters (like Kiro & Dani), though I personally feel that she did occasionally slip into Roy Thomas territory with other characters like Minka. And, despite my fascination with Infantino’s stylized art, I do think the best pairing for SW comics was Goodwin and Al Williamson on the newspaper strips, and later on; Classic Star Wars. Williamson’s art do lack some of the dynamic qualities which Simonson had, but his old fashioned style just fits so well with that movie-serial feel of the OT.

screams in the void said:

the worms eye view of Vader in ROTJ when he is on the Executor being asked by Admiral Piett if he should hold the shuttle Tydyrium for using an older code is a shot with good framing that comes to mind for me .It is at 3:34 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjkHt3Iw8gk

^ Lighting might not be as dramatic as ESB, but the framing and editing is pretty good overall in that scene. Vader and Piett’s eye-lines are a little bit weird, but it works dramatically and in the context of the scene, especially since Vader’s also in a sense “seeing” Luke.

Although the article gives plenty of good examples, I actually prefer the ROTJ shot in the first comparison with the two Vader shots. Sure, the lighting is a bit better in the ESB shot, but the shot of Vader talking to Jerjerrod is much more dramatic, and the rouned reflections in Vader’s “eyes” in the ESB shot are kind weird. Almost makes him look surprised.

The Hoth/Endor comparisons is also kind of weird, as the Hoth shot is part of a larger action scene, and the ROTJ shot has them simply spying on the Imperial bunker. The ESB shot is more dramatic, yes, but it’s a completely different kind of scene…

I thing the Leia briefing scene on Hoth is a good example on how ESB is generally better. And the Luke/Leia conversation on Endor is a good example of one of ROTJ’s many dull moments/shots. Most of the other examples (with a few exceptions) I think mostly just shows how ESB had better lighting.

paja said:

The Cinematography of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”
http://billsfilms.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-cinematography-of-empire-strikes.html

I can’t say that I agree with every comparison made in the article, he ignored the context of the individual scenes a few times, and I personally think the Palpatine scenes in ROTJ are pretty well shot over all. However, he does make some great points overall, and ESB is definitely a more dynamic and interestingly shot film than both ANH, and especially ROTJ. Though much of that I think simply boils down to the script being better and more exciting than ROTJ.

All in all, I feel that ROTJ is kind of a mixed bag, though it never reaches ESB quality levels, it has several really good and solid moments, but then suddenly you get some really bland and boring moments like the Luke/Leia scene in the tree-village.

ROTJ is the film that I know the least about in therm of what happened behind the scenes, but Marquand’s abilities as a directors seems to dip in and out of of being either somewhat lazy or quite competent depending on the scenes. My guess is that he was just too unfamiliar with working on a film with such a big budget, as I’ve seen similar inconsistent cinematography from other blockbuster films made by directors that previously had only done smaller films.

One thing which I’ve always liked about that ad, especially as it was in a SW comic, is the text which basically encourages kids to make their “own continuation” of the SW saga. I’ve seen a lot of SW toy ads that try to sell the ability to recreate scenes from the movies, but here the focus is on letting the kids tell their own “EU” type of stories. I’m too young to have experienced the Kenner era of SW, but that’s definitely what I did with my SW Lego in the late 90’s.

Also, I’ve had this comic since I was like 11-12 years old, and I’ve never spotted the strings on the X-Wing and Vader’s TIE until now.

^ I like the styrofoam snow, simple, but effective.

They tried something very similar, but with lesser results, in a Norwegian ad from an old “Marvel” comic I recently scanned.

I think they were trying to create a star-field in the background by poking holes in the cardboard, and placing lights behind it, but it’s not very effective. That’s what I find so amusing with these old Scandinavian ads, they had far less money to spend on these things, so it always ended up looking a bit off. This one pretty much looks like it was just made by some fan in his garage (second half might actually be true for this one).

(Also, Yoda is just hanging out on Hoth with a snake.)

It could have had to do with Infantino leaving Marvel (and returning to DC) the same year as this issue was drawn. I don’t know the whole story in detail, but I remember reading somewhere that he was never too happy working at Marvel. In one interview he refers to a lot of his work there as “mediocre”, though he did speak highly of his collaboration with Archie Goodwin.

He might have simply gotten tired of the jobs that Marvel was giving him at this point. Droid World can be a little bit sloppy at times compared to his SW work the previous couple of years, and the next issue (The Third Law) is simply plain lazy at times. The previous issue was also barely even recognizable as having been drawn by Infantino, implying that he mostly did layouts. Apart from the aliens (incl. Cody Sunn-Childe) it looks more like it was drawn by Tom Palmer, who’s just credited as the inker. So for whatever (specific) reason, it seems like a lot of artists at this time had to cover for him before he was eventually replaced by Walt Simonson / Tom Palmer as the main artist(s) working on SW.

Shopping Maul said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Does anyone know who did the art on p.28 (see picture below) for SW #47 “Droid World”. The first page only lists Infantino as the artist (which is quite clear from the art itself) and Gene Day as the inker. But p.28 (the second-to-last page) is clearly drawn by someone else with a noticeably different art style. I’ve had the Norwegian version of this issue since I was a kid, and it has always really bugged me.

(PS. This is from the Norwegian version. I have the American version as well but I’d already scanned the Norwegian one recently, plus the art is untouched and the colours are pretty much the same in both versions anyway.)

I don’t have the issue in front of me, but I always assumed that page was Gene Day. I recall a strip he did somewhere amongst the Conan stuff that looked like this. I’m assuming an Infantino page went missing and Gene quickly flew solo for this one. I could be wrong though…

That would make a lot of sense, and having just googled Gene Day’s art it does seem to match the style from the odd page in Droid World. It’s also quite similar to a panel on p.5 which seems kind of like a blend between Infantino’s style and the p.28 style. So you’re probably right about Gene Day having had to either replace a page or cover for Infantino at some point.

(I’m also quite surprised that this art discrepancy is neither explained, or even mentioned, on Wookieepedia, as they’re usually quite thorough about these things.)

Does anyone know who did the art on p.28 (see picture below) for SW #47 “Droid World”. The first page only lists Infantino as the artist (which is quite clear from the art itself) and Gene Day as the inker. But p.28 (the second-to-last page) is clearly drawn by someone else with a noticeably different art style. I’ve had the Norwegian version of this issue since I was a kid, and it has always really bugged me.

(PS. This is from the Norwegian version. I have the American version as well but I’d already scanned the Norwegian one recently, plus the art is untouched and the colours are pretty much the same in both versions anyway.)

And for reference; this is what Luke normally looks like in this issue.

screams in the void said:

^ another awesome find ! that is one of my favorite issues and the one where I felt they started to get the artwork looking accurate to the movies . I love the panel layout in that first scan .

It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that Michael Golden had a copy of The Star Wars Portfolio on his desk as he drew that issue. The second panel is strikingly similar to Ralph McQuarrie’s painting of a TIE pilot.

It’s too bad Golden didn’t do any more SW. He has a great dynamic style that fits the series really well, and like you said, he made it look a lot more like the movies in terms of detail.

(I also really like his Y-Wing-shaped shuttle design; SW #38 splash page )

Not quite as unique as Goodwin’s thumbnail sketches, but I always find these uncoloured comics pages pretty fascinating. (From SW #38 “Riders in the Void”).

I don’t know exactly how that effect in the second panel is done, but the same moire-like patern often shows up in John Byrne’s art and I remember hearing some place that they had this special type of paper that you could scratch off the white surface and it would reveal these fancy patterns underneath. It was apparently an easy way to add some textures to comics without having to add something later during the printing process.

Source; http://marvel1980s.blogspot.com/2014/06/1980-star-wars-38.html

screams in the void said:

I had no idea how detailed and precise Archie Goodwin’s layout sketches were ! He was a pretty good artist judging from this , with a great sense of visual storytelling .

I’ve been googling Goodwin as an artist, and apparently he did start out as an both an artist and an “art assistant”. However, he had quite a range of jobs within comics over the years so it’s hard to single out what he might actually have drawn or helped to draw.

But I did find these letters where he included cartoonish doodles of himself. But that, and the above thumbnail sketches, was all I could find (for now) as far as Goodwin drawings go.

Goodwin/Batman doodle
Godwin/Superman doodle
Bombay Gimlet doodle

Either way, as much as I love Infantino’s art, it’s cool to know that so many elements of the art from those early SW comics is actually attributed to Goodwin.