INTERVIEW: Dark Horse - James, Cooper, Adair
George 'Jake' Tringali
Editorial Interview,
Peter Janes, Bob Cooper, Lynn Adair
conducted June 28, 1995 by Michael A. Martin
I had an opportunity today to spend a little time with some of the editors
responsible for the Dark Horse Star Wars titles. What emerged was, for me
anyway, a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of the Dark Horse
editorial department, Lucasfilm Licensing, and the ongoing crafting of the
modern epic that is Star Wars. First you'll meet Peter Janes, the man who edits
Droids and Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina. He's also the editor who oversee
upcoming issues of X-Wing -- Rogue Squadron series in July and he has a few
other surprises up his sleeve.
Next, comes a conversation with Bob Cooper, who also gave generously of his
time. Bob supplied the lowdown on Tales of the Jedi - The Sith War and Empire's
End. Lastly, Lynn Adair gave me the skinny on a couple of very special Star
Wars projects.
Mike Martin: Tell me about Mos Eisley. Is the place really a wretched hive of
scum and villainy?
Peter Janes: Well, we contracted with Topps to do short stories in their new
Star Wars magazine [Star Wars Galaxy], and they were interested in these Star
Wars pastiches, eight-page stories, either gag strips or neat little adventure
strips, that started out in the Mos Eisley Cantina and would move from there
out into the universe. These stories are all tied together by the characters
sitting around in the cantina, telling tall tales over exotic alien drinks.
Otherwise, they're not too terribly tied in to the Star Wars continuity. This
was how the Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina got started, anyway.
MM: What about the creators?
PJ: They're scripted by Bruce Jones, who's pretty well known for scripting some
Venom material over at Marvel and a lot of horror work for the Pacific Comics
group years before that, sort of pulpy-style, science-fiction stuff. He's been
doing a lot of work in Hollywood nowadays. Bret Blevins was the Tales from the
Mos Eisley Cantina illustrator, and he fit in very well with Lucasfilm's visual
ideas. He's got a good sense of exotic aliens and he and Bruce had worked
together before, so there was definitely some magic there.
MM: So the Mos Eisley Cantina will be populated with all the weird aliens that
fans are accustomed to seeing?
PJ: Oh, yeah.
MM: Tell me a little bit about Droids. The first series seems to have been
aimed at a younger audience...
PJ: It originally was. The first six-issue miniseries was definitely aimed at a
younger audience, and, to be completely honest, I think it suffered for it. The
tack that we decided to take with the new series that we've just completed with
the "Droids Rebellion" in Droids #4, was to make it accessible to younger
readers but to also boost the "intelligence quotient" of the script a little
more to give it greater appeal to the more typical, older, comic-book reader.
It still has a great deal in it that appeals to a younger reader, and it's a
relatively "bright" book rendered in a rather loose, cartoony style with Ian
Gibson's artwork.
MM: Ian Gibson does have a sort of cartoony style, but I suppose fans have
associated his particular style with sophisticated fare and hard action stories
for a long time now.
PJ: Yeah, with Judge Dredd and Robo-Hunter and so on. We get oodles of fan mail
complimenting Ian's work, saying that he's perfect for Droids because his loose
style is very good at breathing life into mechanical beings. We've been told
that his renditions of C-3PO and R2-D2 are now the standards against which all
other Droids artists will be judged.
MM: What about Bill Hughes?
PJ: We're bringing him back for the next Droids story arc, in fact. Bill Hughes
did most of the work on the first Droids series. His style, in that one, as he
was directed, was to aim for a child-oriented audience. For this new story,
which is written by Jan Strnad, and is a little more biting and satirical, Bill
is now bringing the level of illustration up to a higher level of
sophistication.
MM: I understand that there will be a free Star Wars comic made available to
purchasers of Apple Jacksreg. cereal later this year. What can you tell us
about that comic? Specifically, how does it fit into Star Wars continuity?
PJ: When we took on that project, we were trying to find a particular project
for it. Kellogg's gave us a free hand. So we said, okay, let's make the best of
this by making it something to do with one of the titles that would be coming
out during the time that this book would be made available. The natural choice
was X-Wing - Rogue Squadron, which begins in July.
MM: So what happens?
PJ: The X-Wing series follows the adventures of Wedge Antilles, who was one of
the popular "dark horse" (so to speak) characters from the Star Wars mythos.
MM: He was one of the guys who was right there alongside Luke Skywalker when
the first Death Star exploded...
PJ: ...And the Battle of Hoth, and the second Death Star. Wedge is the only
other character who's been in all three films who has remained a kind of
peripheral character. So we took this opportunity with the Kellogg's book,
which definitely had to appeal to a much younger audience, to do two things:
one was to promote the X-Wing series, and since kids these days seem very
attracted to intensive mechanical detail, we brought artist John Nadeau on
board to make sure all the details on every X-wing fighter was perfect (he's a
real Star Wars geek like the rest of us). The other thing we wanted to do was
give details about Wedge's career with Ryder Windham's script. The art is
fabulous and the story refers back to events in the films, which we think is
important. We've noticed that in some of our titles that don't refer back to
the films, the fans have more trouble relating to them.
MM: Because they're less recognizably Star Wars?
PJ: Right. Fortunately, Lucasfilm Licensing is a hound for continuity and
consistency, and rightfully so, since Star Wars is probably one of the most
recognizable licenses on the planet. This helps us to keep our focus on
producing what the Star Wars fan really wants, which is Star Wars.
MM: It's noteworthy that Lucasfilm carefully coordinates its licenses in
various media. Lucasfilm insists that all the ancillary Star Wars stories,
whether from Bantam Books or Dark Horse Comics, all fit together and never
contradict each other from a continuity standpoint.
PJ: Right.
MM: Now how about the X-Wing series itself?
PJ: I think it's one of the most exciting Star Wars launches we've had in a
while. The first series is being edited by Ryder Windham. I can tell you that
the first arc will have a Mike Baron script and Alan Nunis art. I'm editing the
second story arc, which will be written by Darko Macan and drawn by his fellow
Croatian Edvin Biukovic. Edvin is up for a Russ Manning Award for new talent,
and they're both nominees for an Eisner for Grendel Tales: Devils & Deaths.
They've been itching to get into the Star Wars universe ever since they first
started getting published in America. They're both from Zagreb, Croatia, and
both of them are the most thoroughly dedicated Star Wars fans you can imagine,
which is remarkable for being from such a far-off place.
MM: How does their stuff read?
PJ: I've already read two of Darko's scripts, and he really turns in scripts
that have meat on them. He's not just doing the bare minimum to satisfy the
licensor. Darko communicates a lot of feeling in his scripts, and we've
received a lot of praise for that from our liaisons at Lucasfilm. I hope to
keep him on Star Wars projects well after this four-issue arc ends. And the
entire X-Wing - Rogue Squadron series is based on plots by Michael Stackpole,
the novelist who is writing the X-Wing - Rogue Squadron series of novels for
Bantam. He is providing ideas from the novels that the comic will tie into,
creating a greater degree of continuity between the novels and the comics than
we've ever had before. It's very exciting.
Bob Cooper shared a few secrets about Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - The Sith
War and Star Wars: Empire's End.
Mike Martin: You're part two of this Star Wars celebration editor interview.
Can you clue us into The Sith War and its significance to the expanding mosaic
of Star Wars continuity?
Bob Cooper: Well, it's interesting you ask, Mike. The Sith War is the latest of
the series of the Tales of the Jedi, a cycle of miniseries set four millennia
before the time frame of the Star Wars movies.
MM: A long, long, long time ago.
BC: Yeah. We started out with Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, which primarily
tells the story of Nomi Sunrider and Ulic Qel-Droma. Those two characters crop
up again in the Freedon Nadd Uprising and Dark Lords of the Sith, and now, at
last, in The Sith War. The storyline mainly revolves around the problems
inherent in staying on the straight and narrow. The dark side of the Force is
hard to resist and it's easy for a Jedi to fall under its influence if he isn't
careful.
MM: You're talking about avoiding "absolute power corrupting absolutely."
BC: That's very much the thrust of this story. In fact some of the Jedi that
were first introduced earlier in Tales of the Jedi have by this time become
quite corrupt with the dark side. The Sith War focuses on a couple of those
that have fallen mightily and are now in the process of trying to pretty much
take over the galaxy.
MM: What about the creative teams?
BC: The creative team has changed a bit since the last series, Dark Lords of
the Sith, which was co-written by Tom Veitch, who until that time had pretty
much been Dark Horse's lone Star Wars writer. He co-wrote Dark Lords of the
Sith with Kevin J. Anderson, who was at the same time producing the Star Wars:
Jedi Academy novels for Bantam, which chronicled the more familiar Star Wars
post-movie era.
MM: The period following the first film?
BC: After all three, actually. Kevin had introduced some concepts and
characters in the Jedi Academy novels, providing a bit of back-story for the
Tales of the Jedi universe, and Tom had similarly introduced some stuff into
the Tales of the Jedi storylines that Kevin ended up using. So by the time we
got to Dark Lords of the Sith the two of them had figured that they ought to
pool their resources and dovetail these concepts to bring together all these
various threads of continuity into one grand story. At this point with The Sith
War, Kevin J. Anderson has taken over the writing completely, and we have a new
penciller to replace Chris Gossett, who I think did a wonderful job on Tales of
the Jedi and Dark Lords of the Sith. The new penciller, who might not be
familiar yet to a lot of comics fans, is also wonderful and his name is Dario
Carrasco, Jr. I think he's going to blow most people's socks off. Dario lives
in British Columbia and Diana Schutz discovered him at a convention a year or
so ago. She brought him to my attention, I had him do some try-out pages, and
the rest is history. He's building on what Chris Gossett began, a sort of
"devolving" of the Star Wars look.
MM: "Devolving?"
BC: I mean that what you see has to look very similar to what you're familiar
with in the movies, but everything has to look old. Four thousand years old.
The ships and the technology have to look as though they're from a period four
millennia before the Star Wars universe that everyone knows. I think Dario has
really built upon that concept and taken it maybe a step further. In addition,
I think he's very well suited to providing the kind of detail that Star Wars
fans really clamor for.
MM: The challenge of science fiction usually involves extrapolating forward.
You had to sort of extrapolate backward for these books.
BC: That's right.
MM: Next up is Empire's End. What happens?
BC: Dan Thorsland, who was the original editor of Dark Empire II, noticed that
the plot of the sixth and final issue of that series left several minor and
major plot threads untied. We decided to compromise between just wrapping
everything up in issue six of Dark Empire II and launching a third whole
miniseries: we decided to do a two-issue follow-up called Empire's End. This
title was picked rather than, say, Dark Empire III, because one of the plot
points involves the final and absolute death of Emperor Palpatine. He will not
be revived again or brought back in any way. This is it. We won't be seeing him
anymore.
MM: Sounds like the final coda at the end of a two-act opera, after the fat
lady dies.
BC: And the curtain is not coming up again, at least not for him.
MM: And the rest of the creative team?
BC: Well, in addition to being written by Tom Veitch, we've employed the
talents of artist Jim Baikie, a fellow Scotsman and a close neighbor of Cam
Kennedy's on the Orkney Islands. Jim lives about fifty yards away from Cam, by
a strange coincidence. Jim also has a style somewhat similar to Cam's, although
I think both guys would disagree with me there. But they both paint their work
using the same process. Jim's work on Empire's End will be fully painted, also.
MM: Where exactly does this piece fit into the overall continuity?
BC: Tom Veitch has been very concerned with bringing the Dark Empire saga to a
close, with tying up the loose ends for Dark Empire and also those threads that
then tie directly back into Kevin's Jedi Academy trilogy from Bantam. For
instance, we're using Empire's End to explain Leia and Han's third child,
Anakin Solo, who doesn't appear in Dark Empire but does appear in Kevin's Jedi
Academy novels. So Anakin Solo does not only appear in Empire's End, but also
plays a major role -- but that's as much as I'm going to say about that.
MM: I'm looking forward to it.
Lynn Adair presides over Dark Horse's many special trade paperback collections.
Among these is a special re-release of the Classic Star Wars comics, reprinted
from the original Marvel Comics movie adaptations. Lynn also set aside a
generous amount of her time to bring me up to date on these and other special
Star Wars projects.
Mike Martin: Let's start with the unusual.
Lynn Adair: I think this one qualifies: we're doing a Star Wars pop-up comic
book, called The Battle of the Bounty Hunters.
MM: What is it that makes Dark Horse's pop-up comic different from a standard
pop-up book?
LA: We're bringing classic comic effects, speech balloons, sound effects, and
actual sequential panel-to-panel storytelling, to this project to differentiate
it from regular pop-up books. There are a lot of two-page spreads. It has the
feel of a comic book.
MM: Who is creating it?
LA: We don't yet know who's going to be illustrating or writing the final
script, but I'm working on that right now. We're trying to price this between
sixteen and twenty dollars, although the price isn't firmly set as yet. It
should be available in July of 1996, or just about a year from the moment this
was recorded. Stay tuned.
MM: What about the various Star Wars collections?
LA: In July, we're releasing Classic Star Wars II: The Rebel Storm. In
September, Dark Empire II will be released in trade paperback form. In
November, we're re-releasing all the movie adaptations in re-formatted
editions. Originally, we released these collections as two volumes per movie,
for a total of six volumes. In November, these six volumes will become three
collections. The three movie adaptation volumes are titled as per the films:
Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars:
Return of the Jedi. These will be sold both separately and as a boxed set.
MM: Will there be any new material?
LA: We were able to get our hands on some gorgeous new cover art, commissioned
by Fox for use on their new video packaging. We can't advertise with it so as
not to steal any of Fox's thunder for the video re-release, but we can and will
use it on the books, since they'll be coming out well past the August debut of
the videos.
MM: It's worth mentioning here that Dark Horse isn't going to offer these movie
adaptations again after this, at least not in quite the same form. They'll be
available until Lucasfilm re-releases Star Wars theatrically in 1997, with
restored footage. Then, Dark Horse will do an all-new adaptation of the movie.
LA:...!
MM: Sorry, I got a little long-winded there. What other trades and collections
are coming out?
LA: Let's see. In December we will release the Classic Star Wars III trade
paperback, collecting the next set of re-formatted Star Wars newspaper strips
with a new Al Williamson cover. We're hoping to get a special introduction from
him for this book. And lastly, although this does bring us into 1996, we are
bringing out a Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - Dark Lords of the Sith
collection, with a new Hugh Fleming cover, in keeping with his earlier ones for
the comics series. And that's about it.
MM: That will be a pretty impressive Star Wars bookshelf. Thanks, Lynn.[A
parting note, out of earshot of Lynn: getting to line the shelves in my office
with miles of nifty trade paperbacks is another one of the truly groovalicious
things about this job.]
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