Cavan Scott discusses his next spooky offering, Shadow of Vader’s Castle, as his run on creepy and eerie Star Wars tales continues over at IDW.
StarWars.com: It seems like you’re the resident scary storyteller in Star Wars between Dooku: Jedi Lost, Adventures in Wild Space, and the Vader’s Castle series. How do you mix space-opera with horror so seamlessly?
Cavan Scott: Resident scary storyteller? I like that. Can I get business cards?
For me, horror and Star Wars go so well together as they’ve been part of my experience of the saga from the beginning. When I was a kid I was obsessed with monsters, whether that was classic gothic terrors such as Dracula and Frankenstein or alien creatures I saw on TV and films. And let’s face it, if there’s one thing Star Wars has, it’s creatures. I came to the films halfway between Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and the most thumbed pages of my copy of The Star Wars Storybook were the cantina aliens. That grainy picture of Trinto Duaba the Stennes Shifter literally gave me nightmares with his crazy sunken eyes. Of course, like an idiot after having the nightmare I took to drawing him in my exercise books along with every other patron I could find pictures of. Then when I saw Empire in the cinema, how did it start? With Luke hanging upside down in the larder of a massive abominable snowman. That’s literally horror right there (and of course, this was pre-special editions, so my over-active imagination made the wampa even scarier. There was probably a lot more blood). I do remember being absolutely terrified as the creature’s roars started echoing down the ice-tunnels and that’s before we got to splitting tauntauns in two, giant space slugs, and swarms of mynocks.
So, whenever I need to explore the more horrific sides of a galaxy far, far away, I try to remember what it was like sitting in that cinema, being absolutely terrified that Luke Skywalker wouldn’t make it out of the ice cave in one piece. That’s the sensation I want to get across.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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Cavan Scott discusses his next spooky offering, Shadow of Vader’s Castle, as his run on creepy and eerie Star Wars tales continues over at IDW.
StarWars.com: It seems like you’re the resident scary storyteller in Star Wars between Dooku: Jedi Lost, Adventures in Wild Space, and the Vader’s Castle series. How do you mix space-opera with horror so seamlessly?
Cavan Scott: Resident scary storyteller? I like that. Can I get business cards?
For me, horror and Star Wars go so well together as they’ve been part of my experience of the saga from the beginning. When I was a kid I was obsessed with monsters, whether that was classic gothic terrors such as Dracula and Frankenstein or alien creatures I saw on TV and films. And let’s face it, if there’s one thing Star Wars has, it’s creatures. I came to the films halfway between Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and the most thumbed pages of my copy of The Star Wars Storybook were the cantina aliens. That grainy picture of Trinto Duaba the Stennes Shifter literally gave me nightmares with his crazy sunken eyes. Of course, like an idiot after having the nightmare I took to drawing him in my exercise books along with every other patron I could find pictures of. Then when I saw Empire in the cinema, how did it start? With Luke hanging upside down in the larder of a massive abominable snowman. That’s literally horror right there (and of course, this was pre-special editions, so my over-active imagination made the wampa even scarier. There was probably a lot more blood). I do remember being absolutely terrified as the creature’s roars started echoing down the ice-tunnels and that’s before we got to splitting tauntauns in two, giant space slugs, and swarms of mynocks.
So, whenever I need to explore the more horrific sides of a galaxy far, far away, I try to remember what it was like sitting in that cinema, being absolutely terrified that Luke Skywalker wouldn’t make it out of the ice cave in one piece. That’s the sensation I want to get across.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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Cavan Scott: Resident scary storyteller? I like that. Can I get business cards?
