Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery
Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Star Wars: Crimson Empire #1, December 1997
Paul Gulacy and P. Craig Russell provide creative storytelling (I love the top sequence) and excellent draftsmanship (of course) for the 1997 Dark Horse Series, Crimson Empire.
This is one of my favorite pages in the first issue, with Darth Vader landing and bowing before his master, The Emperor.
In other words, what’s not to like?
Classic. Just classic.
Star Wars: Empire’s End #2, November 1995
Here’s a stunning Jim Balkie page from the Dark Horse mini-series, Star Wars: Empire’s End, a fitting sequel to the acclaimed Dark Empire saga.
Both stories feature the writing of the talented Tom Veitch, although Cam Kennedy illustrated the Dark Empire series.
Each page — by either artist — is fully painted, and most of the originals I’ve seen, including this one, are terrific.
Nice Star Wars iconography on this page too, featuring Han and Leia, a great action shot of the Millennium Falcon, and of course the Emperor frying one of his officers who displeased him.
How did the Empire ever get anyone to sign up for the officer’s school?
Fun fact: The Emperor “lives” in this 90s saga because of — you guessed it — clones. If this storyline didn’t influence at least some of The Rise of Skywalker, well, we can chalk up to: “Great minds think alike.”
Star Wars #8, August 2013
Once again, Leia takes control in this terrific page from the art team of Ryan Kelly and Dan Parsons.
The Princess grabs a ship and heads off on her own in this final classic saga series from Dark Horse (written by Brian Wood) before the rights reverted back to Marvel.
Even If Lucas retconned his own work in the making of the original Trilogy, and decided that Leia was Luke’s sister after the fact, she’s the baddest ass of the bunch. She’s not to be taken for granted or trifled with, even if she doesn’t have “Force Powers.”
But I will say this: Her resistance to Vader’s torture droid on the Death Star makes more sense if she does.
Back here next week with more Star Wars.
Fun (or not-so fun) fact: We never actually see Leia pilot a ship in the classic trilogy, and we never see her Mom Padme fly on her own in the prequels either. But I guess Princesses typically have drivers?
Star Wars Weekly #109 (UK), March 1980
Here’s a classic era Star Wars page featuring pencils from Carmine Infantino with inks from Gene Day.
It’s from a Star Wars story written by fan-favorite Chris Claremont, which ended up without a logical place in the timeline, as Marvel couldn’t fully predict when Lucasfilm would permit story insight and scheduling approval related to events of Empire Strikes Back.
Infantino drew many of the Star wars stories that appeared in between New Hope and ESB, and many after as well, but this odd continuity duck” didn’t make into the U.S. comics.
Instead, it ends up in Marvels Star Wars Weekly, a combination of “new” and reprint material.
The weekly format featured shorter stories, more serialized, making them even closer in spirit to Lucas’ favorite SF, the classic Flash Gordon serials. Perfect for titles like “Molten Doom!” and “Buried Alive!”
And, except for a slot in an oddball licensed Marvel book collection, the story remained un-reprinted for more than 30 years, until Dark Horse included it in one of its Omnibus collections. (And now, it’s been reprinted twice by Marvel, so it’s a bit easier to find.)
Princess Leia #5, September 2015
Of all the characters in the classic (original trilogy) Star Wars Universe, Leia is the most intriguing.
Nearly all of the other characters in the saga are archetypes found in dozens, if not hundreds of myths, fables and tales. George Lucas revered the late author Joseph Campbell who dissects these concepts ad nauseum in in his brilliant and well-known tomes on mythology.
But Leia… She’s a bit off model, certainly from a Hollywood depiction of a damsel in distress. (Possibly with the exception of Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, who gets her act together in similar but less assertive fashion.)
As one pop culture podcaster put it recently: “She (Leia) hijacked her own rescue.”
And from there, it only gets better. She’s clearly the smartest, most pragmatic member of the Star Wars gang. She’s also strong, decisive and strategic. And she can out wise-ass Han, no easy feat.
After Alderaan goes boom, Leia is the one holding entire rebellion together. No offense, Mon Mothma, Admiral Ackbar, or anyone else in the rebellion ruling class. It’s pretty clear Leia is a — pun intended — driving force of the story.
Here we have a knockout Star Wars page from Terry and Rachel Dodson featuring a lovely half splash of Leia. It’s from the eponymous — and terrific — Mark Waid-authored series, published not long after the franchise reverted back to Marvel from Dark Horse.
More on Leia on Thursday and Saturday.
See you then.
Star Wars #2, April 2015
Well, it’s May, that time of year when thoughts turn to… Star Wars.
Here we have a great page by superstar artist John Cassaday, depicting the very first time Luke and Darth Vader confront each other in the “new”(current) Star Wars continuity.
This story takes place shortly after the (first) Death Star is blown to bits in “A New Hope.” Luke does not know that Vader is his pop, and Vader does not realize that Luke is the rebel that was responsible for said Death Star going “boom.”
Heh. Much to learn, they both have.
It’s the 45th anniversary of Star Wars this month, and perhaps more significantly, the release of yet some more backstory revision with the launch of the new Obi-Wan Television series later this month.
That’s really more of an observation than a knock, but I really hope the show is narratively clever. Because no one (honestly, no one) thought that Obi-Wan would have logically fought Vader yet again. One of them should have been not just toasted, but complete toast.
But of course, let’s see how this all plays out.
In the meantime, we’ve got a full slate of Star Wars posts for the rest of the month.
May The 4th be with you.
Doom: The Emperor Returns, #2, February 2002
Doctor Doom’s greatest fantasy? Murdering Reed Richards, of course.
And if you have your own planet, you too can make your dreams come true.
Leo Manco nicely illustrates Doom choking Reed on this page from the Emperor Doom mini-series.
Reminds me of a film moment of a certain costumed villain that looks an awful lot like Doctor Doom. Art imitates art, imitates art, ad infinitum, apparently.
Manco, an Argentinian artist, is terrific, and I wish we’d see more of his work in the comic book space.
Fantastic Five #3, October 2007
Doctor Doom — Marvel’s first iconic super villain of the Silver Age* — celebrates his 60th anniversary this year.
And I have a question.
How are the MCU pros going to create a new on-screen look for the character that is true to form, but doesn’t look goofy as hell? These folks are the best in the business, but that’s a hell of challenge. Lesser talents have failed, not once, not even twice, but three times.**
They could go all black (always a safe choice) and make the costume more technological and futuristic, but… I believe George Lucas already beat them to the punch by about 45 years.***
The comic book Doom costume is one of those that almost makes sense in 2D, but three-dimensional? Oof.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the results, maybe even later this year, if we’re lucky.
And, as always, we digress.
Here, the versatile Ron Lim creates a dramatic splash page with the most Doctor Doom you will ever see in once place. You see, the good doctor has this cool hobby of building robots in his spare time.
Lots of them, apparently.
Fun fact footnotes:
Ok, Sub-Mariner beat Doom by a full issue — or more than 20 years, depending on how you count Silver Age vs. Golden Age — but I can’t fully embrace him as a villain. (This despite the fact that Doom and Sub-Mariner later appeared together in a comic book called Super-Villain Team-Up.)
** Two contemporary big budget film releases, plus the officially unreleased Roger Corman version. I probably shouldn’t count that, but I do. Sue me.
*** Lucas has yet to acknowledge that Darth Vader is essentially a mash-up of two Jack Kirby comic book creations, Doctor Doom and Darkseid. C’mon George, fess up.
Star Hawks, Sunday Strip, August 12, 1979
Here is a nice (Sunday) example of Ron Goulart’s and Gil Kane’s Star Hawks, the short-lived SF adventure strip which ran from 1977-1981. (Extra nice in that it includes both the strip header and the color proof.)
“Inspired – as so many things were in the late 70s – by the tremendous success of Star Wars, the newspaper feature syndicate NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) got it into their heads that a space opera comic strip that evoked the cosmic high adventure and swashbuckling derring-do of George Lucas’ movie might be a popular addition to the nation’s comics pages.” — Christopher Mills
Perhaps most interesting thing about the strip was the that the initial dailies were double tier as well as the Sunday’s — a risky gambit that allowed Kane to showcase his strengths in storytelling and layout. Unfortunately, newspapers weren’t in love with devoting that much real estate to the quirky SF adventure, and it ultimately dropped to the traditional one-tier.
Goulart ultimately left the strip and Kane enlisted frequent collaborator Archie Goodwin, who wrote the one above. He also left after a few arcs, and Roger Mackenzie wrapped things up.
All of the series is available in a three-volume set from The Library of American Comics and IDW Publishing.
Worth every penny, but of course, I’m biased.
Continuing our month long celebration of the great adventure comic strips:
Week 1: Superheroes
Week 2: Detectives
Week 3: SF
Week 4: Comic Book Giants
Star Wars: Princess Leia #2, March 2015
Forty years ago today, life was definitely simpler. All I had to do was how to figure out how to get to the opening night of Empire Strikes Back.
Well, maybe not that simple.
Big films often did not open “wide” in those days, which meant ESB would not be playing anywhere near my college town of Binghamton, New York. Closest theater? In Syracuse. 75 miles away.
Fortunately, I had a car. Gas was (relatively) cheap. And finals had just ended.
That was the good news.
The bad? No on-line ordering. (Ha. We were still using punch cards and booking computer time in the lab.) No advance orders by phone. This was 1980. Horse and buggy era, tickets and technology wise. And in those days, no bank was offering credit cards to broke college students anyway.
So we had to wing it. The “we” in this case, my buddy Bob and I, pretty much the only people that hadn’t packed up for the semester.
Off we went. Up through farm country on Interstate 81. Somehow, even though we didn’t leave that early, and the legal speed limit was still 55mph, we made it to the “purchase tickets” line, and then the “entry” line in time, and had reasonable seats.
Good thing, too.
We had waited three years. I didn’t really want to wait another day.
I enjoyed it. A lot. Despite the fact that the story had been “spoiled” for me by the Marvel Comics adaptation, because I didn’t have the discipline to avoid reading it. (Lesson learned there. I never made that the mistake again, including, and especially, for Return Of The Jedi. Hell, I’ve occasionally forced friends who work on films into vows of silence.)
Alex Maleev’s beautiful painted cover features of one my favorite things about ESB: The battle on Hoth. I have a distinct memory of the first time I saw the Empire trailer tacked on to a Star Wars re-release in 1979. The audience absolutely lost its mind at the Hoth tease. (Well at pretty much everything, I guess.) And the finished battle did not disappoint, stop-motion and all.
Where was I? Oh yes. Great cover. Terrific artist. Wonderful memory.
And somehow Bob and I made it back before the cows came home. But not by much, I imagine.
