George Lucas Loves the New Han Solo Comics!

Han_Solo_Cassaday_Sketch_Variant-674x1024George Lucas has been pretty quiet since he sold the keys to the Star Wars Universe and the rest of Lucasfilm in 2012. The few comments he’s made have ranged between unpleasant, comparing Disney to a divorcee or “white slaver”, to chilly diplomacy, never really giving an opinion on The Force Awakens other than saying fans will enjoy it. Mark Brooks, accomplished comic artist whom Star Wars fans will recognize from his recent (and excellent) work on the Marvel Han Solo comic series, seems to have caught the eye of Mr. Lucas.

 

 

 

 

Imagine opening that email. As of today, there are only two issues of Marvel’s Han Solo out, so I think it’s safe to say George Lucas is a fan of this ongoing series. Of the comic series Marvel has put out dedicated to individual characters, Han Solo is one of the best. Between my fellow comic reviewers, Jordan and Jelena, as well as Cantina members, it’s been a pretty big hit. It’s nice to think of George reading along with the rest of us, not knowing what’s going to happen next as Han and Chewbacca lead a daring extraction of a Rebellion spy. Mark Brooks’ art has been superb in the two issues, so I’m not at all surprised George would want to add it to what I’m sure is already an amazing collection.

 

mark brooks original frame

 

As you can see above, Brooks has done an exceptional job of not only capturing the iconic demeanor of Han Solo, but also the many aliens he finds himself surrounded by. If you haven’t taken a look at the first two issues, I highly recommend you head down to your local comic shop and see if they have any copies. The artwork alone is worth the cover price, but I assure you that a great Star Wars story accompanies it as well. Stay tuned to Star Wars News Net for the review of Han Solo #3 later this month, as well as all your Star Wars news!

 

 

+ posts

Kyle Larson lives in Portland, Oregon. When he's not running trails, he's reading and writing.

Kyle Larson

Kyle Larson lives in Portland, Oregon. When he's not running trails, he's reading and writing.

37 thoughts on “George Lucas Loves the New Han Solo Comics!

  • August 3, 2016 at 10:27 am
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    George has good taste I guess. Han Solo comics, Kanan and Shattered Empire have awesome art. I still don’t understand some of the series getting really low quality illustration. Darth Vader series, for instance, has horrible body proportions. Also, Luke looked like a monkey at the beginning of the regular series.

    • August 3, 2016 at 11:44 am
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      It all depends on the artists working on the issues. It’s not the same artists for every issue. For example Mike Mayhew has the super near photorealistic style as seen in the Journals of Obi-Wan Star Wars issues, while Dodson who did the Princess Leia comics has a more anime type style.

      Marvel only has so many artists so they spread out the pencil and coloring artists to multiple comics. It would be nice to get as high of quality as Mayhew’s style on every comic issue but that’s just not possible. Plus, many people like different types of styles.

      • August 3, 2016 at 12:25 pm
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        Among all, art is a very subjective thing. I like the fact that different styles are on the board, and in general they fit well with the story, which is the most important. A good example of singular art that fits the story well is Lando. Nonetheless, Marvel has some artist that I just find too low. I give you a couple of examples that I think are quite representative: Cassaday’s cover for SW #3 (Just look at Luke’s hand) and Larroca’s cover for Vader 21 (the bad perspective of the girl is insane). Those are examples that go beyond the tecnique.

        • August 3, 2016 at 1:27 pm
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          Dont think Lukes hand is worse then the stormtrooper face. Looks like someone painted it on the back of his helmet.

        • August 3, 2016 at 1:42 pm
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          Aphra’s arms/hands look weird like they are too short and the droid head on the table needs to be angled more to match the perspective.

          I don’t care about the covers as much as the art inside, but I know that some people really care about the cover art.

        • August 3, 2016 at 5:08 pm
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          Wow that Vader cover is bad. I’ve been reading the collected editions so I hadn’t seen it before.

    • August 3, 2016 at 8:35 pm
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      Pepe Larraz’s art in Kanan has been my absolute favorite by any comic I have read every. He did a variant cover for Han Solo #1 that I have framed.

  • August 3, 2016 at 2:16 pm
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    It may be for his museum….

  • August 3, 2016 at 2:55 pm
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    Plus George did visit the set of Rogue One.

  • August 3, 2016 at 2:56 pm
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    As of today there are only two issues out, not three. Issue three is scheduled to be released on 31 August.

      • August 3, 2016 at 3:11 pm
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        The writer of the article. I quote: “As of today, there are only three issues of Marvel’s Han Solo out”

        • August 3, 2016 at 3:45 pm
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          Oh, I see. But you can see later in the article that it is mentioned that only two are out. Many people expected issue 3 to be released today hence the confusion. I will fix it.

  • August 3, 2016 at 4:46 pm
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    Hey thats pretty cool. Ive also been enjoying some of the new star wars material. Its also nice to see how he’s handing retirement. Glad he stepped away from the company as he seems to be a happier guy now.

  • August 3, 2016 at 5:23 pm
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    I’m weird in that I like buying the paperback editions that collect 4-6 issues together. Because of that I haven’t got to Han Solo yet but it’s the one I’m most looking forward to.

    Shattered Empire: good first issue, beautiful art, disappointing story.
    Star Wars: okay story, mostly good art that has some great moments (I like how Immonen draws Wookiees) and handles action well.
    Vader: pretty interesting story (Vader winning back the Emperor’s favor after the Death Star and finding out the truth about Padme and Luke), middling art that turns every action scene into a confusing mess.
    Poe Dameron: nothing of a story but I like Noto’s art.

    What else should I pick up? Lando? I heard the Leia and Chewbacca titles are pretty bad so I skipped them. I have Vader Down sitting on a shelf but haven’t read it yet.

    • August 3, 2016 at 7:13 pm
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      I do the same, I love the trade paperbacks. It’s cheaper (and Amazon always has them) than buying single issues, and I get a bigger chunk to read at once.

    • August 3, 2016 at 8:20 pm
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      Lando is okay. The writing absolutely nails him as a character but the art style is so weird that I couldn’t get into it. But you want my favorite comic series thus far overall it would be Kanan (despite the fact that I don’t enjoy Rebels all that much). I also enjoyed the Obi-Wan an Anakin story as it gave you some much needed insight into the beginning of their relationship as master and apprentice.

      • August 4, 2016 at 7:02 pm
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        Thanks. I’ll probably pick up Lando then as I tend to like idiosyncratic art styles.

        I’m also not a huge fan of Rebels (I watch it with my kids). I do quite like the characters in it but the stories are not particularly good and they’ve struggled to find a worthwhile villain. I could buy that a Kanan comic might work, though.

        • August 5, 2016 at 6:36 am
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          I’ll second that Lando vote. Thought it was good story & captured the character very well.

    • August 4, 2016 at 12:25 am
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      That’s not weird: that’s smarter and more economical.

  • August 3, 2016 at 5:32 pm
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    By the way, has anyone read film critic hulk’s take on TFA? Its something that for some reason has been thrown at my face for the last month. Thought the review was wayyy offff in his descriptions of rey and finn, and then of course the assumed pretentiousness of how star wars was this perfect encapsulation of youth. ( a point I disagree with as I can list a hundred other movies by john Hughes that does a far better job at this, heck American graffiti is a more perfect encapsulation of that experience) anyone else have an awesome rebuttall towards this essay?

    • August 3, 2016 at 9:05 pm
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      Hadn’t heard of it until you mentioned it there. Hmmm. Well, I think the difference is that Hughes’s characters seem to me to be more about growing up and that liminal period between adolescence to adulthood, whereas what Hulk is talking about is the state of being young. That aside, I found my reaction to TFA has been EXACTLY what he’s describing there – it pleases in the moment, but falls apart upon any kind of examination, and isn’t actually…ABOUT anything. The strengths he attributes to Abrams are exactly where I said I expected the movie would work, and the weaknesses he identifies are exactly where I expected the film to suffer a bit.
      He also correctly I think, identifies another reason I don’t find the film satisfying, and that is that, paradoxically, it is designed specifically to satisfy – it caters, near panders, to fans, which means it doesn’t really surprise or challenge in any way and ultimately feels a bit hollow. Yikes, and that’s just the first half of the essay!
      The second half I just finished reading, and…wow. Just…yes. This is a fantastically concise summation of my feelings about TFA in fact:

      “AFFECTATION FIRST” THINKING OFTEN LEADS THEM TO TRYING TO DO ALL THE SURFACE STUFF RIGHT AND THE SURFACE STUFF ALONE. WHICH IS WHY THESE FILMS WORK SO READILY WITH FACTORS LIKE CHARM AND LIKABILITY, BUT LIKE ANYONE THAT WORSHIPS AFFECTATION ON A PERSONAL LEVEL, IT DOESN’T CREATE A LASTING MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH AN AUDIENCE, AND IT CERTAINLY DOESN’T WORK WELL IN TERMS OF COHESIVE STORYTELLING.”

      I know it’s not what you were hoping to get as a reaction from people, but sincerely, thanks for turning me onto this essay because it’s fantastic and manages to intelligently deconstruct the film without stooping to mean, fanboy bullshit. Great piece.

      • August 3, 2016 at 9:20 pm
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        No that’s fine man. I wanted an interesting response. Thank you and no prob 🙂 I would like to hear an interesting rebuttal from others though.

      • August 3, 2016 at 9:31 pm
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        I offer an different response.
        For all this talk about Earned Moments and Emotional Honesty and Affectation and remembering what happened two scenes ago, and such, I have one very simple question:

        How many times was the destruction of Alderaan even mentioned in the original Star Wars after it happened?

        Let’s see, there’s right afterwards when Obi-Wan has that vision, and after that? A grand total of once, later when someone says condolences to Leia and she brushes it off with “We have no time for our sorrows, commander.” The entire script seems to forget about it, and it seems to think the audience does as well, given that we’re supposed to laugh at the charming character moment when Luke pulls the “…She’s rich” line on Han.

        Actually, wait, I have other questions as well. Why does John Williams’s soundtrack seem to think it’s a big dramatic emotional moment when Biggs dies, when we only even learn who Biggs was in a deleted scene? Why, out of the literally thousands if not millions of people who the Empire is said to have slaughtered in the original trilogy, a grand total of ONE of them has both a name and a personality? What are the ideologies of either side of the conflict other than “‘Enslavement and oppression and genocide for no discernible purpose are awesome’/’Enslavement and oppression and genocide for no discernible purpose are bad'”? And why, if the original Star Wars has such solid and resonant themes that are so integral to it and so apparent if you just go back and watch it, then why does everyone who attempts to articulate what those themes actually are just wind up verbally flailing around repeating vague buzzwords about youth and youthful hopes and dreams?

        (I’d also ask why we’re given a love triangle that turns out to have an incestuous axis that is never commented on, but Lucas was transparently making the whole thing up as he went along and expected the viewers to forget that we’d already seen Leia make out with the guy who turned out to be her brother)

        Here’s the dirty little secret to A New Hope’s “universal” themes: there’s so little to it that you can project anything you want onto it. And make no mistake, Star Wars is very good at cynically appealing to the broadest strokes of the monomyth while carefully avoiding building too much of an actual identity or personality to ruin the illusion of being whatever everyone wants it to be. That’s a delicate balance to strike, and in fact it proves that it is possible to please pretty much everyone, simply by avoiding trying to please any one group in particular.

        That’s being charitable, in fact. The other possibility is that Star Wars was the original Sad Puppy slate item, riding a tidal wave of reactionary backlash to the more complex and thoughtful science fiction and popular entertainment that had started to arise before it in the early seventies. The Evil Stormtroopers all wear identical colorless body armor that covers their faces, and though they massacre countless good guys they never seem to hit anyone who the audience is given any reason to notice or care about, all so we can cheer as they are mowed down by the truckloads without their atrocities ever feeling real enough to distract from the triumph. Even as the final battle scene is intercut with the showdown in the Emperor’s throne room, the moral of which is that killing horrible people is wrong and makes you no better than them. But I try to avoid being that uncharitable towards it, for fear of falling into the trap that seeing the strings makes me immune to their pull.

        • August 3, 2016 at 9:35 pm
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          Just a thought I had (actually a conversation I had a while back with someone else, I might be stealing his writing, but it reflects my feelings over the essay) not hating or looking for a fight though bud 🙂

        • August 3, 2016 at 11:01 pm
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          Son of a bitch – I wrote a lengthy response to you, which Disqus just errored out on. Dammit.

          • August 3, 2016 at 11:02 pm
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            well that stinks. Can you summarize what you were trying to say?

          • August 3, 2016 at 11:05 pm
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            Working on it 🙂

          • August 3, 2016 at 11:37 pm
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            I read all of this… and all I kept thinking was… I liked TFA. lol

            Don’t get me wrong it’s certainly got some wasted opportunities and a ton of unoriginal/rehashed plot points… but I still prefer it to the prequels.

            I’m still holding out hope that TFA was the ultimate safe reboot Disney wanted… and now it’ll take risks with episode 8 and 9.

            I will be disappointed if 8 and 9 are also boringly safe… and worst of all, more rehashing.

    • August 4, 2016 at 12:24 am
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      No, start a blog. This is off topic.

  • August 3, 2016 at 8:45 pm
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    How does George buying some artwork mean he *loves* the series?

    • August 4, 2016 at 12:24 am
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      It’s an implication because people typically do not offer to buy things they despise.

  • August 3, 2016 at 11:12 pm
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    Tbh I couldn’t care less.

    • August 4, 2016 at 12:24 am
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      Then why comment lol? You came here to tell us that? THANK YOU!

      • August 4, 2016 at 8:03 pm
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        No problem.

    • August 4, 2016 at 12:28 am
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      Care enough to comment though

Comments are closed.

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