The Star Wars

The Star Wars #0-8

by J.W. Rinzler, Mike Mayhew (Artist), Michael Heisler (Letterer)

Collects The Star Wars #1-8. Before Star Wars, there was The Star Wars! This collection is the official adaptation of George Lucas's rough-draft screenplay for what would become Star Wars, the film that changed motion pictures and the world. You'll see familiar characters and places--but not all is the same in this long-ago and faraway galaxy. Still, strap yourself in for high adventure and lazersword duels, Jedi Knights, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and a battle to defeat the evil Empire!

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Comic Book

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 22, 2014

About the author

J. W. Rinzler has authored over 20 books including two New York Times bestsellers and a #1 best-selling graphic novel. With more than 600,000 copies in print, his books have been translated into seven languages.

J. W. Rinzler grew up in Manhattan, New York City, and then in Berkeley, California. He fell in love with old monster films, such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as Robin Hood and other adventure movies. He was an avid comic-book and novel reader, an intrepid moviegoer, and had his mind blown by The Beatles, Star Trek, Bruce Lee, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Frank Frazetta, Michelangelo, and Mad Magazine.

Rinzler drew his own comic books (badly), then, in his 20s, moved onto figurative oil painting (okay-ly, but self-taught). He lived in France for almost 10 years, where he began writing. Back in the USA, he worked as executive editor at Lucasfilm for fifteen years, chronicling the work of George Lucas and his genial collaborators in a series of books about Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

During this time, Rinzler also directed and wrote an animated short Riddle of the Black Cat, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which was accepted into several festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival.

His latest book is an epic historical fiction thriller called ALL UP, an epic about the first Space Age, published in July 2020. The sequel will be out in a year or two...

Meanwhile his book on Howard Kazanjian, producer, is due in May 2021; and on Kubrick's The Shining in fall 2021.

Rinzler is married and has two daughters and one grandson. He lives on the northern California coast.

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhere, deep inside of me, a piece of an eight-year-old boy died a horrible death. This is a graphic novelization of George Lucas' original rough-draft screenplay for what would eventually become Star Wars. Now, the eight-year-old me that originally saw the movie might actually have liked this version, given the intense action sequences and . . . and . . . *SOB!* - this book is a hot mess!

Do not read this graphic novel if you are looking for:

1) Good dialogue.
2) Clear differentiation between characters.
3) Familiar names associated with familiar faces - "Biggs," for example, is one of a pair of twin brothers of Princes Leia. "Darth Vader" is not a lord of the Sith and, in fact, the Sith knight presented in this story ends up allied with Jedi Anikin Starkiller fighting against Vader (who, incidentally, doesn't wear a mask and is only a tiny bit cyborg, as opposed to Anikin's father who is a human head and right arm grafted to a cyborg body and who opposes the Empire of which Vader is a part). Confused yet?
4) Love stories that make sense, with real motives and reasons behind their unquenchable love.
5) Nostalgia.
6) Reasons not to cry because of the Lucas sellout (of which this might be the most damning piece of evidence).

Do read this graphic novel if you are looking for:

1) Confusion.
2) A shattering of your childhood memories.
3) Clear indicators that Lucas had a lot of editorial help with the original movie.
4) A way to regurgitate that cleaning agent you accidentally swallowed.

That said, there was some pretty cool art. And it was interesting to try (not too hard, now) to figure out how this turd was polished into the final movie. For the academic interest, I'm pushing this up to two stars being held onto by a fraying fingernail clipping while dangling over the edge of the abyss.

This book provides clear evidence that you should never, NEVER publish a rough draft, even if a later version of the work was something special. Oh, that I wish Lucas would have followed Kafka's lead in manuscript preservation. I hope that there is a place, an alternate universe, perhaps, where Lucas and Kafka switched roles, with Lucas destroying all of his old manuscripts and Kafka preserving his, maybe some place that really exists:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In years past, while sleeping, my mind would come up with "alternate" versions of movies, and show them to me in my dreams. They may have had characters and locations in common with the original films, but, as soon as I woke up, I knew that wasn't the way the film went. This alternate version of A New Hope is like one of those dreams. While I'm glad this wasn't what we got in celluloid form, it's still fun to see a very different take on Lucas' space opera.

EDIT: A Star Wars page I follow on Facebook recently did a post about how George Lucas "retconned" his original script before A New Hope was released; if you read this, you'll see that his draft version of "a galaxy far, far away" was very different than what viewers everywhere saw onscreen.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting graphic novel. "The Star Wars", as opposed to Star Wars, is an adaptation of the first draft screenplay George Lucas wrote years before the iconic film was ever made (with illustrations based off the earliest concept art).

It's kind of an alternate universe story, not a multiverse thing but another version of our world, in which this other movie came out. There are familiar names, but they belong to different characters, and with spaceship designs just slightly off. So many fascinating deviations; there's the Jedi-Bendu order, Annikin Starkiller mentored by old Luke Skywalker, who teams up with the alien Han Solo fighting General Darth Vader who calls on a Sith villain Valorum, a pair of droids including a feminine one ala Metropolis and an Artwo that talks, weird Wookies on their forest moon, and everybody from lowly trooper to padawan gets a lazersword...

It's also a testament to why writers need to multiple drafts to get it right. There's a lot in there that needed to be cut, plenty that really doesn't work. For some reason there are little kids in the story who are mostly forgotten about, an awful and problematic love story with Princess Leia, and a plot that seems to be missing a MacGuffin and I frankly don't understand why the evil empire is chasing these heroes. Meanwhile, they sure do crash on planets a lot.

Let's be honest, George Lucas has a great imagination but he was never that good a writer. He always needed editors to fix his works and turn them into coherent stories. This book probably needed less deference to the original screenplay, and it could have turned into something that was good on its own merits.

Still, the flaws are besides the point. The well-crafted art of the comic is there to show what might have been, but was simply impossible due to budget constraints anyways. The grand landscapes of alien planets reflects the science fiction of the 1960s and 70s, almost like Dune but less serious, or Heavy Metal but less adult, still something that fans of that bygone genre would appreciate. If the names were changed, it almost would work as a pretty decent scifi epic in itself.

I'd recommend this book to anyone familiar with Star Wars, which basically is everyone. It's not just for the hardcore fanboys. Definitely a fun experiment, and one day I'd even like to see a sequel returning to this timeline.

[Diz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a graphic novel adaptation of an early version of the script that eventually became Star Wars. Honestly, the plot was a mess. It's a good thing that the Star Wars script went through a few more rewrites before Lucas went into production. To give an idea of what kind of ridiculous things happen in this story--the Wookies are a primitive species in this story, similar to the Ewoks in the eventual movies, but Luke Skywalker is able to teach them flying in an afternoon and they man the fighters that take on the Empire's orbital battle station. Crazy, right? This was way more Flash Gordon than Star Wars.

It's not totally devoid of entertainment value, though. The art was bizarre in a way that was really funny. The facial expressions are comically exaggerated to the point that you can't help laughing. So, if you enjoy having a laugh at goofy art, you might enjoy this.

Oh, by the way, Chewbacca gets his medal in this version. . . and C3-PO. . . and R2-D2. . . and a Sith. . . and two kids that were being protected by Skywalker, even though they didn't do anything to advance the plot. That just made me laugh. So, I guess it is possible to have fun with this, but it is by no stretch of the imagination a good book.

[Peter Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't normally explain a rating. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine. "This is really a 3.5". Great. In this case, an explanation is needed.

THE Star Wars is an adaptation of George Lucas' original rough draft for Star Wars. When rating, it's hard to say what's horrible because of the source material and what's horrible because it's horrible. Benefit of the doubt, it's a competent comic, but good god is the story all sorts of fucked up.

I don't know what happened to the Star Wars screenplay between George Lucas writing it and the thing hitting the screen, but thank christ it happened. Because this thing was all sorts of flavors from Episodes 1-3, the episodes we don't speak of.

Is it really that bad?

Yeah. The characters are confusing, there's too goddamn many of them, and for some reason we have some real trade law nonsense and chrome is really important.

Some of my favorite bits:

+A male character punches a female character in the face because he needs to rescue her but she refuses to leave space college. Yep. That happens. That's a hilarious old thing that I haven't seen in some time. In what scenario is it preferable to knock a person unconscious and then just slump them in a car? That's some crazy shit.

+A character is mistakenly worshiped as a god. Oh, wait. That happens in the third movie too. Okay, how about this-

+A guy dramatically rips open his clothes to reveal his robotic body. Twice.

Star Wars was the perfect movie to grow up with. The original trilogy, okay I know people have their problems with Return of the Jedi, but the original trilogy is so full of imagination and excitement, and you have to remember, before computer shit came along, it was impossible to make anything look even a little real. Except Star Wars. That shit looked real. And it's easy to undervalue 6 hours of entertainment in the era before the internet, before Netflix. During the time when a video game lasted 6 hours because you played it 10 times in a row.

Fuck me, I don't know who it was out there that saved my childhood from George Lucas, but I owe you hundreds of beers.

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting bit of history, but quite the mess from every other standpoint. It neatly demonstrates why authors write about a million drafts of their works before they can consider them even remotely finished.

The only reason we got to read this one at all is the sheer magnitude of the story and its presence in our hearts, the fairly common knowledge of just what kind of a mess its creation actually was and what a miracle it is it ended up as good as it did, and of course, because a big franchise such as this one will need to vomit out as much products as possible in order to feed itself.

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story is terrible, to be frank. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is because of its historical interest and because the art by Mike Mayhew is really quite good.

I can't really be too harsh in judging this mess of a story, with its overly busy plot, lame characters and clunky dialogue, because it is a rough daft, after all, and George Lucas never intended for this to be seen. At least, I hope not. Even by the standards of the early 1970s this is pretty ridiculous. It's not even a decent attempt at a Flash Gordon pastiche, honestly.

But the most interesting thing about it is the comparison to the final version of the story, as realized in Star Wars.

Here R2D2 speaks English and is a crabby little tin can with arms. Han Solo looks remarkably like DC's Swamp Thing, Luke Skywalker is essentially the Obi-Wan Kenobi character while Annikin Starkiller plays the role Luke did in the film. Everyone, including the Stormtroopers, wave lightsabers around, and Darth Vader doesn't wear a face mask, although he does have a robotic eye. Chewbacca is some kind of Yeti and the rest of the Wookiees live as the Ewoks did, with a whole "Battle of Endor" type set piece.

You can see how Lucas rearranged and recycled various bits and pieces, even reusing specific lines of dialogue and whole scenes, but there's no real way to see the direct lines of continuity between this and the final product. I find it impossible to puzzle out the thought process Lucas went through to get from A to Z, other than the fact he must have watched some John Ford movies and a couple pirate movies to filter his homage of Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress through.

This version of the story is far less epic than the movie and the story beats come at awkward times. It's also a lot bloodier, with people and pets dying left and right throughout, generally cut in two by a lightsaber.

The Force is called The Force of Others, which makes even less sense, and they apparently run on a VERY long day, as the time is generally given in incredibly high increments like 55 and 64 o'clock or something. I honestly just glazed over when he threw in technical jargon, because it literally doesn't mean anything.

So to sum up: not good in and of itself, worth reading only if you're interested in seeing the original version of this story. Even then I would buy it.

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Star Wars is an unusual book. Only because it's Star Wars does it make sense to anyone to say, "Hey, let's make a graphic novel based on George Lucas's original rough-draft script!" For almost anything else, the original rough draft is simply what gets revised into the final product, and while it may be interesting to note differences from the first pages to the screen, it's not worth fully realizing the rough draft on its own. The whole reason it was revised before filming, after all, is that it had problems that needed to be fixed.

So, the concept is kind of intriguing for SW fans who know a bit about Lucas's original ideas. But as it turns out, the execution of this book is not quite as rich as that concept might promise. What works well here is Mike Mayhew's art, and especially the color work by Rain Beredo. It's a vibrant, colorful book with great depth in a lot of panels, all very cinematic. Because I love Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, I liked seeing the little bits that this book's team brought over from those beautiful images.

But: the story.

I think it would be confusing enough just on its own, with no knowledge of the finished SW movies. It's scattered, with characters traveling seemingly at random to a variety of planets and locations. Character motivation is incomplete at best. The political machinations are obscure. There are pairs of characters (Luke and Kane; Annikin and Whitsun) who look and act so much alike that it's very difficult to tell them apart. There are a ton of ideas here, most of which have by this point been developed and explored in the first two SW trilogies. But in this version, nothing holds together in a very compelling way.

What further heightens the confusion, though, is that the names used throughout this draft are the same as names used in the first two SW trilogies—except here they are often given to completely different characters. Bail Antilles is some kind of space trader; Luke Skywalker is something more like old Obi-Wan (but not quite like that, either); Princess Leia has incomprehensible motivation; Darth Vader isn't a Sith lord, but there's another character who is, but his name is Valorum, which is the name of the chancellor in The Phantom Menace, who doesn't have Force powers at all. On and on it goes. It's like reading an alternate universe graphic novel (the Spider-Verse series, for example), where part of the fun is in seeing familiar characters in different settings, or perhaps being totally opposite to their normal-universe selves. In The Star Wars, however, this is not fun. It's just annoying.

The main conclusion after reading this book is that Lucas had a head full of interesting, and sometimes really out-there, ideas; and he was also lucky to have some people who could take those ideas and help him put them into a classic story that we know and love. It could have all been sooo different...

[Erma Talamante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review pending...

[Siona Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really cool!

I liked the artwork a lot, however the red lightsabres kinda threw me off (as in, Jedi and Sith use red ones). It was also weird seeing R2 without his blue paint job.

I wouldn't mind if for the 50th anniversery LucasFilm/Disney adapted this for a film, and maybe we could get the intented sequel to this. I dunno, I think a lot of the casual fans would get confused, but I think it would still be cool to see.

Anyway, if you're not a huge Star Wars fan, this might not be worth your time. I am, however, a huge Star Wars fan, so this was pretty fun to read!

[Scotty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun light read. It was great getting to see the original concept for Star Wars. And it was lots of fun comparing the original ideas versus where they wound up in the movies. Overall I enjoyed being carried into a different universe in The Star Wars.

[Trekscribbler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Behind every great story is obvious a story about that which never got told: namely the original tale. From the script to the screen is one thing, but what about from the writer’s head on to the initial page? That’s what makes THE STAR WARS – a retelling of George Lucas’s rough draft – honestly even worth the time of day. After all, there’d be zero interest in revisiting any number of forgettable films that come out of Hollywood, but this is STAR WARS! This is the film that shaped a generation of filmmakers and filmmaking itself! This is history! Do you really want to know what history looked like before it became – well – history?

(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last three paragraphs for my final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)

From the product packaging: “This is the official adaptation of the original rough-draft screenplay by George Lucas for what would become Star Wars. But this long-ago and faraway galaxy is unlike the one you’ve seen in the films. Strap yourself in for high adventure and lazersword duels, Jedi Knights and Knights of the Sith, a familiar Princess Leia and a very different Han Solo, and a battle to defeat an evil Empire!”

Let me just say this right off the bat: thank GOD for rewrites! Otherwise, if THE STAR WARS is any indication, it’s very unlikely that there would be a Star Wars franchise – the entertainment juggernaut that just keeps on giving to its billions of fans around the world.

Now, that said, don’t get me wrong: I’m probably as big a Star Wars fan that you’ll find anywhere. I’ve seen all of the movies. Read many of the books. Followed both the original Marvel series as well as the Dark Horse properties. Watched the TV shows. Argue about its merits online. Even enjoyed a good deal of the Prequel Trilogy, though I won’t split hairs on how it divided fandom. But the bottom line is that inspiration needs proper cultivation, and THE STAR WARS – this unblemished look back at what could’ve been – is full of blemishes.

Obvious inspirations rise to the surface right away. The work has a very Flash Gordon feel to it – there’s a big universe out there, but much of it seems to revolve around a single world or two, those being managed by Lucas’s version of Ming the Merciless (aka Darth Vader). The Jedi clearly draw similarities to Samurai warriors. And those opening panels have a very Western feel with the heroes being stuck out on the Wild Frontier. The bad guys show up with intent to do some bad things, and that brings our General Skywalker out of retirement, setting the whole tale into galactic motion.

However, it’s rare to find so many flat and dimensionless characters in anything other than two-D, but that’s what so very much of THE STAR WARS is: one heavy struggling for screen (or panel) time against the others. Vader’s basically a charmless thug; Yoga’s a fat guy with warts and pointed ears; and these castles and rooms look far too Earthly for me to accept them as anything other than belonging to this world.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long before Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio to show up and – as they did with the films – give this story some life beyond the ink and page. They still end up second fiddle to a bunch of whiners who spout such heavy-handed gibberish about politics so much that I had to fight to turn the page. (It isn’t hard to see the Prequel Trilogy in this creation; everything from the Original Trilogy outside of the obvious was still several rewrites away.) In many ways, what plays out in these pages almost seems like some crackpot’s idea of what fanfic could be: take all of the elements of one cinema classic, stick it in a blender, and then pour it out in some new shape to see if it tastes the same. Well, the ugly truth is here: it doesn’t.

It’s hard to believe that such a heart-warming tale as STAR WARS (A New Hope) came from anything so grim, forced, and humorless as THE STAR WARS. Still, stranger things have happened.

THE STAR WARS is published by Dark Horse Comics. The script is written by J.W. Rinzler; the art (which is quite inspired) is by Mike Mayhew; the colors are by Rain Beredo; the lettering is by Michael Heisler; and the Cover Art (which is pretty fabulous) is by Nick Runge. For those of you who grew up on an island, STAR WARS is the creation of George Lucas. There’s a terrific last chapter that fleshes out some of the peoples, places, and things that way an illustrated companion book should. It comes with the cover price of $39.99, a bit steep for my tastes.

RECOMMENDED mostly as a curiosity than anything else. Seeing the kinda/sorta how it all began is definitely an interesting exercise for fans of George Lucas’s legendary STAR WARS, but so much of THE STAR WARS feels incomplete, rushed, and (dare I say?) forgettable from a storytelling perspective. There are obvious seeds of what was to come in here, but – by the time all is said and done – I found it hard to tell how much of that was due to Lucas’s eventual tinkering with his original script or scribe Rinzler trying to throw homage back to the Original Trilogy. All I can say is, “Thank God this isn’t the version which made it to the silver screen!”

In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Dark Horse Comics provided me with a digital reading copy of THE STAR WARS by request for the expressed purposes of completing this review; and their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow. Just. Wow.

What an unutterable heap of shite.

I should maybe have known when the first issue opens up with 'officially approved by george Lucas!' That things were maybe going to be bad. But this was so unbelievably bad that I was reading with just that sense of slow-motion train-wreck.

I'm not even sure where to start. It makes Phantom Menace look like Shakespeare.

Okay, there's a sequence where Princess Leia turns to the Skywalker character, and completely out of nowhere, for absolutely no reason, because they've shared barely any dialogue until this point, declares breathlessly 'I LOVE YOU!'

Skywalker looks at her and tells her to grow up, she's a princess, act like one, they have no time for this.

Then in the next scene Skywalker is talking to some other dude, and suddenly goes, 'OMG I JUST REALISED I AM COMPLETELY HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH HER!'

It makes Padme/Anakin in the movies truly look like a loving crafted romance.


And this is just one example, but, it illustrates the way this entire comic reads like it was written by an 8 year old. And I'm honestly not exaggerating. I've listened to 8 year olds tell me stories that were better than this mountain of garbage. It was embaressing.

'I am embaressed.' As the R2-D2 character might have said, in one of his many lines where he simply states how he is feeling about something for no apparent reason.


The art was pretty good. But really? REALLY? Easily one of the worst comics I've ever read.

[Bert · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you ever longed to see what George Lucas' original story for Star Wars was like: read this comic. And then you'll realize that all of the things that are so crap about the prequel movies is right here: odd pacing, unrealistic timelines, absurd developments,... I wonder how this mess ever resulted in the first Star Wars movie; Lucas obviously must have had a lot of help along the way.

[David Atwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a trip. It's like they took everything about Star Wars, put it in a box, and shook it up hard. Everything is kind of but not really recognizable, and I thought it was a lot of fun.

[Jonathan Maas · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can say is that I am grateful that this exists in the first place!

Great adaptation by J.W. Rinzler and great art by Mike Mayhew - but most importantly - so cool that it is here!

This book, which shows George Lucas's very different first draft of Star Wars, takes a while to get used to. But once you drop all your preconceived notions, it's great. I'd advise it to anyone, especially to that Star Wars fan in your life who has seen it all - but not this.

[Vince · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good comic. interesting to see how the original rough-draft of the screenplay was gonna unfold but I will say that I'm glad he revised and edited it to what we have now.

[Matthew Ardill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dark Horse for around 20 years held on to the license for producing Star Wars comics and in that time created some great Star Wars stories. The Star Wars was one of the final projects Dark Horse Comics launched with this license back in 2014. Soon after the publishing of this series the rights to publish all future Star Wars comics and graphic novels switched over to Marvel who have put out some amazing Star Wars universe building material. I hate to say it, and this is through no fault of their own, this is hardly a highlight to go out on. The concept was an interesting one, take one of Lucas' early drafts of the movie Star Wars (prior to it getting the addendum of A New Hope) and make it in to a comic. Not the earliest of drafts (which was titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller As Taken From The Journal of The Whills Saga I: The Star Wars or the slightly shortered titled version that can be found here - http://www.starwars-union.de/diefilme...). But still early enough there are many aspects that are nigh unrecognizable from the final product we eventually saw (or the modified product shown in the 90s).

The art of Mike Mayhew was stellar, incorporating the original designs created by Ralph McQuarrie and filling in the holes in the design by pulling from the sources of inspiration that Lucas used we get a lavish world with stellar colours and art that is consistent throughout. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of writer Jonathan Rinzler the story simply does not give enough support to the art.

I do not blame Rinzler for this, if anything this simply highlights the fact that Lucas' best work was a product of the people he sorrounded himself with. The work this most resembles is in fact the prequel trilogy, obscure and arcane political posturing and long stretches of boring and stilted dialogue are punctuated by brief action sequences while vaguely racist stereotypes but up against very thinly veiled Nazi charicatures.

As a fan this is certainly worth a read, there are a number of interesting elements that we can see and appreciate how they evolved. Alderaan is present from the earliest of drafts but shifts from the seat of power in the Empire to the seat of the Organa nobel house. The Empire is originally a good thing and it's the current Emperor (a Ming the Merciless rip off) that the "Jedi Bendu" have a problem with launching a rebellion. Even the nature of the Jedi and The Force (or The Force of Others as it is known here) is vastly different with Sith being simply a different house of Force Users as opposed to an entirely different tradition and the Sith and the Jedi come together in their opposition of the Emperor (despite the Sith hunting down and killing off Jedi). Wookies have a far more structured society then what is shown in the material with a more discernable language and Han Solo is a giant lizard ape monster. Yes you read that last bit right, Han Solo, that charming rogue was a giant Lizard/Ape monster and in fact this design was reused when creating Zeb Orrelios for the new Star Wars: Rebels TV show. So if you don't want to read this comic but want to see Han's old design check out the trailers for that show.

The evolution is interesting for a fan of the series, some characters like Anikin, Luke, and Leia are here but in very different forms. Names and places and even starships are here vaguely familiar but slightly off in a way that isn't quite comfortable. The serial space-opera origins are worn much more clearly on the sleeve of this work with the Flash Gordon elements very much less of an "homage" and more of a "pilfering". (Lucas had originaly wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie but Dino de Laurentiis was unwilling to part with the rights.) This is a hard read, it's not particularly enjoyable for large stretches but it does make up for this from time to time with some very entertaining moments but unless you are a fan or interested in the creative method there is not much to read here. This clearly illustrates where the inspiration for the prequel trilogy came from and what happens when you leave George alone.

As an archeological oddity this is an interesting and beautiful interpretation of Lucas' original vision. As a stand alone comic, this is a tough slog and I wish that the Force of Others be with who ever should try and read it.

[Dani Camacho · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé qué acaba de pasar, pero me encanta.
Descubrí Star Wars muy tarde pero nunca demasiado, gracias a la insistente recomendación de mi novia que creció con este universo y me hizo ver las películas apenas un par de meses después de conocernos.
Me gustan los mundos ficticios complejos y este no es la excepción; así, a pesar de la cantidad de contenido que existe, todavía me sorprendo con cada pequeñita parte del rompecabezas que soy capaz de encajar en su sitio.
Al leer este cómic, aprendí que todas las versiones que puedan existir de este universo van a enamorarme y a conseguir que me quede con ganas de un poco más.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an interesting follow-up to reading Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the real Star Wars, because while that had some interesting expansions on what we got on screen, this is a messy and kinda crappy prototype of the galaxy far, far away. Now, I will say that the art is generally pretty good, and the fact that I kept getting Whitsun and Annikin confused is more down to having too many characters than anything else. I think the writer and artist did about as well as can be expected given what they had to work with. I do feel like this version of Star Wars might be somewhat better with actors and music, because both things could improve upon what is generally a somewhat messy and confused story. This Empire arose from the ashes of the previous one, after a Great Rebellion of Jedi Bendu knights. The Bendu part, of course, disappears almost completely as soon as the opening crawl is done with, and for that matter, the Force is barely in evidence as well. I did like seeing multiple Jedi here, and I got the sense that the Order, such as it is, is scattered but not quite as dead as it is in A New Hope. Aquilae is the last holdout against the new Empire, defending by an aging Luke Skywalker, who must work with a ragtag band to get Princess Leia off-world after the Imperial Space Fortress appears and starts blowing up bits of the planet. Leia here is rather weaker than in the films, her love interest Annikin is annoying at times but okay, and their love story is even worse than Padme and Anakin. There are a bunch of extraneous characters along for the ride, including a secret agent and Leia's twin brothers, who are much younger. Han Solo is a green-skinned spaceman, and Chewie doesn't show up until near the end. It's clear that Lucas was drawing much more heavily on The Hidden Fortress, and that he cannibalized this script for a number of plot beats in later movies, from the Ewoks at Endor to much of the plot of The Phantom Menace. There are two many characters, some of whom die unnecessary and goofy deaths, the Space Fortress is way less cool than the Death Star, the plot plods and jumps around too much, and as with the ANH novelization, the lack of a proper trench run really kills the climax. I do like the idea of Leia actually becoming Queen at the end, and I love the hints that the Sith and Jedi aren't so different and need to ally to fight the Empire. I can't say that I much cared for the plot here, but I do still find myself intrigued by the alternate galaxy shown in this book, and I almost wish there was a chance we could get the promised Saga of the Ophuchi just to see what sort of weird things happen next. I am glad that I sought this out, because it's an interesting "what-if", but I'm also pretty glad that this isn't the Star Wars that dominated my childhood.

[Owen Townend · Rating 3 out of 5]

A vivid example of why drafting is vital to figuring out the best version of a story.

Rinzler and Mayhew do an admirable job of showing how George Lucas's Star Wars could have appeared on-screen. Back when it was 'The Star Wars', Lucas seemed to be writing a love letter to Flash Gordon with a staggering amount of world-building. This iteration of the plot was very ambitious but lacked the viewer-friendly nuance of the eventual screenplay.

In this graphic novel, Luke Skywalker starts the story as a grizzled ageing warrior, a knight of the Jedi-Bendu who doesn't seem to rely on The Force aside from regularly declaring 'May the force of others be with you.' Darth Vader is not one of the 'Knights of the Sith', but simply a tenacious Empire general. Princess Leia draws the eye of Annikin Starkiller, the protégé of Luke Skywalker. RD-D2 is pronounced Artwo-Deetwo, a droid who is just as verbose and cantankerous as Seethreepio. Han Solo is a loyal, muscular green alien who doesn't meet Chewbacca till the last quarter of the book.

While it's clear that characters and motivations changed drastically mid-draft, some key plot points remain the same. The death of Princess Leia's family catalyses the story, Luke Skywalker meets Han Solo at a grungy dive bar where two aliens pick a fight with Luke and suffer the consequences, our heroes make a dashing escape through a waste disposal unit and a group of indigenous furry aliens defeat Empire stormtroopers on a jungle planet. There's even a surprise twist at the end that resembles a creative decision made in The Last Jedi.

Though I'm sure Rizler tidied up certain vagaries in the original script for this comic, the dialogue remains rather stilted in places and the romance between Princess Leia and Annikin Starkiller comes out of nowhere. I'm glad that Lucas learned how to write a more organic love story in the original trilogy.

Rough draft issues set aside, the glistening texture of Mayhew's cinematic artwork deserves to be admired, and seeing how Star Wars could have been made is a revelation. It just goes to show that iconic media does indeed have humble beginnings. I recommend The Star Wars to Star Wars fans and cinephiles curious about film scripts that never were.

[Q. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank goodness the original Star Wars has multiple rewrites. Don't get me wrong, this is a nice what could have been look at George Lucas's magnum opus, but I'm glad we got the film we got.

So here's the main differences present in "The Star Wars":

>Plot-The plot is mostly similar to "A New Hope" with a dash of "Return of the Jedi".

>Characters-There are too many characters without well defined personalities. Luckily most of these characters have were combined with others and given their icon personalities after multiple drafts. But here's a quick description of how they stand in this paperback:
*General Luke Skywalker-This character is essentially an older prequel trilogy Obi-Wan Kenobi.
*Annikin Starkiller-A prototype Luke Skywalker.
*Princess Leia-A slightly less assertive version of the same character. Also by pure coincidence looks like Ren from Episode VII.
*Han Solo-Solo lacks original personality and looks almost exactly like Swamp Thing...I'm not joking. Also the Millennium Falcon is nowhere to be seen.
*C3PO & R2D2-Pretty much the same except R2D2 talks. Glad that was fixed.
*Darth Vader-Vader is an imperial commander that has the top of his iconic helmet but lacks the face plate in addition not being a an intimidating and cunning Sith Lord.
*Chewbacca-Pretty much the same character except he's not good buddies with Han Solo.

Notable Problems:
1. Too Many Characters-As I stated above their are too many characters that are underdeveloped in this version.
2. Too Much/Many Lightsabers-Apparently not only Jedi and Sith use lightsabers, but stormtroopers too. Also the iconic weapons are brought out too much and as a result loose their cool factor.

All in all a neat look at history, that I'm glad was addressed at the time. If you're a diehard Star Wars fan this might be worth your time.

[Matt Bromagin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boy, was this bad. While the Dark Horse Star Wars comics have always suffered from pretty shoddy writing, bad dialogue, and art that's just good enough to get the job done, I've always been able to overlook that because there were some decent Star Wars tales underneath all that. The Star Wars is not one of those tales.

The Star Wars is a comic book adaptation of George Lucas's original first draft script for Star Wars. The problem here is if the first draft was any good, the movies would have more closely resembled that draft. Not to mention first drafts need so much more work than just moving parts around and fixing the grammatical errors. It's painfully obvious this was a first draft. If someone was brought in to polish things up, they failed miserably. The dialogue is terrible. I felt nothing for any of the characters. The romance element to the story came out of freakin' nowhere. I never understood what was special about the Jedi or Sith as they didn't seem to have any kind of supernatural powers other than they're highly skilled fighters. Heck, lightsabers were handed out like candy. Even the stormtroopers had them. Lightsabers were, for the most part, the galaxy's weapon of choice, trumping even your classic blaster. I had no idea why I was supposed to care for or admire the Jedi. That's something that might be elaborated on in, I dunno, a second or third draft?

It's perplexing that someone at Dark Horse said, "Hey guys. Let's adapt an unfinished product that the creator wasn't remotely happy with!"

There were points while reading where I said to myself, "Well, as a Star Wars fan, I'm fine with reading this just for the sake of Star Wars history", but once I finished, I honestly wish I'd just read something else.

This is, quite possibly, the worst comic book I've ever read.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, reading this will make you happy that you watched Star Wars & not this on the big screen as a child (if, you know, you did that).

[Víctor · Rating 2 out of 5]

No sé hasta qué punto es justo que le ponga esta nota a algo que es un borrador de guión, pero bah, es mi GR y me lo tiro como quiero (?).
Claramente el guión final se benefició de las sucesivas revisiones y no me refiero sólo a la hora de construir la mitología e imaginería de Star Wars (que también). Los personajes son, en el mejor de los casos, soportables y la trama avanza a golpe de deux ex machina. En cuanto al dibujo, el artista es bastante mediocre. Estoy seguro de que su método de dibujo es buscar una foto de stock que se parezca a lo que quiere que salga en la viñeta y dibujar encima, porque el cante que da a veces no es pequeño que se diga. Hablando de calcos, la traducción parece que esté hecha con Google Translate. Es penoso.

En resumen, es un cómic interesante si tienes ganas de ver qué era Star Wars antes de ser Star Wars, pero no hay muchos más alicientes para leerlo.

[Erick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eso fue decepcionante.
Se nota que este es un primer borrador del guión, habían muchas cosas que pulir, es todo un caos el primer acto por lo tanto el segundo y tercero se ven muy afectados. Hay personajes introducidos casi cada página que avanza la historia. Pasan muchas cosas en poco tiempo, neta me parece un desastre lo planteado aquí. Romance forzado, la dinámica entre Jedi y Sith bien extraña, realmente todo es muy caótico.
Aún así es una lectura entretenida, realmente mi calificación es 2½

[Ken Sherwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

They definitely should not have tried to turn George Lucas’ incomprehensible rough draft of Star Wars into a comic. It stops being interesting really quickly. It’s amazing to see all the terrible ideas that were thrown out of the final product mostly landed in the prequels. I thought it would be fun, but the most fun I had was finally turning the last page to be done.

[K.J. Haakenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can look past the plot holes, rushed romance, and lack of character arcs, this “rough-draft” graphic novel is a interesting look into what Star Wars could have been. A must read for big Star Wars fans!

[Blake · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is interesting but so so bad.

[ramasha ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

props for the effort but this was like.. Not Good. thank god this wasn't the version of star wars we got 😭