The Star Wars #8 cover painting by Nick Runge (Dark Horse 2014)

I need to start this off by saying that I truly love Nick's work and he is easily one of my favorite painters of modern comics. He is such a nice and humble guy too, in addition to being an incredible artist, and he is absolutely amazing with likenesses and realism. His work (to me) is very reminiscent of the old Drew Struzan movie posters and such, especially Nick's covers to this new Star Wars series.

"The Star Wars" was an 8-issue mini-series that just wrapped last month, based on George Lucas' original 1975 rough draft screenplay of Star Wars. So it is wildly different than what ended up on screen and became the original trilogy. While the story is very similar in a lot of ways, there are a lot of differences, especially in the characters. In this version, Jedi are more like hired warriors to fight your wars, the Sith are many and the universe's best assassins who are hunting the Jedi to extinction. Luke Skywalker is a 65 year old Jedi General, Han Solo is a green alien, and Darth Vader is a Soldier only and not a Jedi or Sith. It's a new and interesting take on the original movie, as envisioned by Lucas and designed by Ralph McQuarrie. This penultimate issue cover painting is HUGE, at 20"x30", and features all the main characters of Annikin Starkiller (the original Luke Skywalker hero), Princess Leia, Darth Vader, C3PO, and R2-D2. Other than issue #2's cover, this would have been the one I wanted anyway, so I was very fortunate to inquire about this to Nick when I did.


When I first heard that Nick was doing the covers for the Star Wars series, I knew I would have to get one. I have been buying his art for years through other collectors and his Rep, Mike, at NSN Art. I saw a lot of great covers over the years and I would watch Mike's site to see what popped up and no new paintings ever seemed to show up. So I finally emailed Mike to ask about that and it turns out that several other collectors figured out how to just buy from Nick or Mike directly before it is even posted to the site, so they never made it there. It was then that I remembered I had Nick's card and contact info from meeting at SDCC a few times, so I reached out to him directly. Sadly by this point, all his cover paintings were sold except for this one, and only because it was the last one of the series and he had just finished it recently. He explained that Lucasfilm gets first crack at all of them, although they had only bought one of the previous 7, but I would need them to pass on it before he could sell it to me. So it was a brutal 2 months or so of worrying before they finally officially passed and Nick told me it was mine to buy. Then it was another 4 months of him letting me make payments over time so I could afford it! It was a long road to get it but I managed to do it. The best part of it was that Nick had moved to the Bay Area since I bought from him last, so now he's just 20 minutes from me! He was very patient with me and was even cool enough to meet up with me this past weekend to give me the piece and another I bought but hadn't picked up yet (The Boy Wonder movie poster painting) in person. We hung out for a while and talked shop and he is just such a cool and grounded guy.

This will be my last major art purchase for the foreseeable future as my daughter is going away to college soon and that will be all my money for the next few years. But for me this is a trifecta piece in that it is a published Star Wars cover painting from the final issue of a great series, a poster-sized painted piece that looks and feels like a movie poster, and the biggest and nicest piece I have gotten from Nick to date (and that's saying something as I have several outstanding pieces by him already). It's the perfect piece to go out on top (and with a bang:) for a while and I couldn't be happier! Thanks for reading this all:)