Michael Golden - The Emperor - Star Wars Shattered Empire 001 sketchcover

Drawn at Star Wars Celebration, in Anaheim, CA May, 2022.

I picked it up from an Instagram claim sale. I'd previously only seen a brief video of Golden working on it, which was posted to his art rep's Instagram during the Celebration con.

Apparently, the original commissioner got Ian McDiarmid, who played The Emperor in the films, to sign it at the show, as he was a guest that weekend.

I'll admit, I'm not crazy at all about the signature, considering it's drawn right over Golden's beautiul art. Every time I look at it, I see a big red 'Cancelled' stamp. I've thought about asking Golden to draw over the sig, filling in the blacks and whiting out the areas where the red sig covers empty ground.

The feedback from folks on Facebook was to leave it as is, which is what I'll probably do. But I couldn't resist at least seeing what it would look like if it was cleaned up, so I did that in Photoshop and added it in the additional images.