2 - Posted on 5/18/2024

Cool page! Love Leia in the third panel. Interesting how a couple panels were switched around for the published page.

2 - Posted on 5/19/2024

As told by Mr. Simonson on his Facebook feed with a pic of issue 53's cover, telling the story of how issues 53 and 54 came to be:

I posted this cover because it represents something to me of the fun of comics back in the day. Maybe this sort of thing is still being done. No idea. But this issue of Star Wars began life as an Marvel Annual of John Carter of Mars penciled by Carmine Infantino. That title was canceled with the issue unpublished. And Marvel, in an effort to save a few bucks, mandated that the issue should be turned into a Star Wars story. It actually became two issues of Star Wars. I drew some extra pages in order to fill out the two issues and convert them into an acceptable SW story.

The basic idea was to use as many of the JC pages as possible with as few changes as possible. So extra pages were done and some panels were altered to a greater or lesser degree to get everything to fit together. That was my job, along with the covers.

Chris Claremont wrote the original Annual and converted the writing in his story to a Star Wars tale. I don't know that it was the best way to make comics, but it was an interesting intellectual puzzle to try to solve in a readeable fashion. And it was the second time I got to do something like that. I'd helped Steven Grant convert an issue of Tarzan into a couple of Battlestar Galacticas a little earlier. It was fun, challenging, interesting and curious to do, whatever the final outcome.

1 - Posted on 5/19/2024

Also, I have page envy!

1 - Posted on 5/19/2024

Nice!

1 - Posted on 5/20/2024

Killer mashup comic!  Seems like a unique practice that allowed Star Wars to be seen in the lens of one of their biggest influences.  Leia could have wound up with this guy!

1 - Posted on 5/22/2024

Great page from an all-star lineup of artists!