The latest issue of Star Wars Insider is packed to the gills as always, and that impressive collection of galactic goodness includes an exclusive interview with Marvel legend Walt Simonson, celebrating 50 years in the comics industry as he discusses his storied run on the original Marvel series.
“My first Marvel Comics issue was Star Wars 16, which introduced Valance the bounty hunter. Archie Goodwin wrote that and asked me to draw it—and anything Archie wanted me to do, I loved doing. He was such a great guy to work with. So, I did that one story, for which I penciled and inked the cover and Bob Wiacek inked the insides. Bob did such a great job. That would have come out after the first film but before Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
After Issue 50, Walt took over the penciling duties for the comic. David Michelinie was the writer and Tom Palmer continued as inker, with Weezie as editor. Their first issue was 51, titled “Resurrection of Evil.” It was a unique story because it featured a predictive storyline that was almost problematic for Lucasfilm. Walt described the rules that were in place back then.
“Now remember, this comic came out after the second film so there were things that we were not allowed to do,” Simonson explains. “For instance, we couldn’t do stories with Han Solo because he was still stuck in carbonite. We could not have Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker meet—in fact, they could not ever be in the same place. We could not have Luke and Leia romantically involved and they did not explain to us why. So here we had a comic where you couldn’t use one principal hero, show the hero with the main villain, and you couldn’t have the main female character have a relationship with the hero. That left us with some pretty severe limitations on what we could do with a story!”
Fantha Tracks were part of the Farthest From Empire 40 online event, which saw myself and Walt discuss his days at Marvel, which you can listen to below on Canon Fodder.
- Hardcover Book
- Williams, Billy Dee (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 288 Pages - 02/13/2024 (Publication Date) - Knopf (Publisher)
