Russ Manning had been illustrating the Star Wars comic strip since it started running in
newspapers in 1979, but terminal health issues forced him
out of the job in mid-1980. After a seven-month period in which Alfredo Alcala
took over, the project officially fell onto Al Williamson’s drafting table.
With all due respect to Manning, who’d done a more than capable job, Williamson
was the best person for the job. While Manning’s artwork was less cartoony than
the work illustrators such as Howard Chaykin and Carmine Infantino had been
doing in Marvel’s comic books, Manning didn’t make much effort to really capture the
likenesses of the likes of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford or the
costumes of Darth Vader and Chewbacca. When Williamson delivered an
adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back
for Marvel, comic book readers received the closest experience to watching the
movie at home in the days before its VHS release. With an illustrious
background that included work on E.C.’s sci-fi titles and Flash Gordon, Williamson was not surprisingly George Lucas’s first
choice for the job even before Manning got it.
With their simple emotions and motivations, instantly
recognizable appearances, and thrilling derring-do, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca,
and the rest of the Star Wars gang
were just at home in the comics as they were on the screen. Founded by an
unabashed comics junkie, Lucasfilm recognized this immediately and dispatched
Charles Lippincott to sell the idea of Star
Wars comics to Marvel, striking a deal that would see the books hitting
shelves just as Lucas’s film was hitting screens.
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