The story of how I found my people in the world of SF fandom AND found a way to finally get my Star Wars comics to an audience, both of which happened on the same day in the same place! (Plus a complete comic story as a lucky special bonus.)

If you've even glanced through the "kid comics" section of ArtValt, you may have been impressed by the number of projects I carried all the way to the finish line as a youngster. To balance the scales, this collection rounds up five separate homemade Star Wars comics that didn't reach their respective finales for one reason or another.

Pursued by a sadistic Imperial admiral, Luke, Leia, and the droids take shelter on a neutral planet where they both find old acquaintances on opposite sides of the conflict. But the empire is ready to bring this refuge down on all of them! I took a LOT of creative steps forward with my third Star Wars graphic novel, created in the summer of 1981 when I was 16.

This tale was inspired by a couple different sources: the original Battlestar Galactica (specifically the Fire in Space episode) and a summary for a sci-fi story (I think) in which a spaceship had to maintain a specific weight to reach a destination at a specific time. Any idea that would spark another Star Wars comic was fine by me.

Here's something I figured out as a fantasy/SF/comic book writer: there are certain cliches you have to work out of your system before anyone will take you seriously. See if you can guess which one I got out of my system with this story.

I plunged into this graphic novel at 15 years old, setting out to create the best Abominable Snowman story ever told, direct a horror movie on paper (with no adult relationship experience), and play with a different storytelling format. Did all comic book pages have to have the same kind of panel layouts? I didn't think so. I still don't.

This was a huge, sprawling adventure story with fun, diverse characters thrown together in a chase-quest. It would have all the things that make a kid say "aw, cool": heroes, aliens, monsters, spaceships, battles, robots, and dinosaurs. The kind of story 15-year-old-me would devour. There weren't enough of them around to satisfy me, so (as usual) I had to make my own.

Luke Skywalker vs. Boba Fett in a race to find a lost city! My second full-length Star Wars graphic novel, made when I was a high school Sophomore. And it represented a pretty big turning point, due entirely to me getting some actual hands-on education.

After a gap of almost two years, I returned to the space heroes I didn't know were inspired by anime robots and threw everything I had against them in two brain-shattering comic book epics that shook the universe! Don't worry if you missed them, they've been waiting for you to catch up ever since!

My first graphic novel! Ever since 1977, the Rebel Alliance had been firmly planted on the moon of Yavin, but as The Empire Strikes Back approached in 1980, we found out that was going to change. As this story opens, the exodus has begun...and is about to get significantly more urgent.

Sometimes I spontaneously took on a project to see if it could be done. Using a cassette recording taken off the TV, I would draw a comic book version of the ENTIRE FILM. Every scene, every line, exactly as spoken. It was going to be a Christmas gift for my sister, and I had less than a month to get it done. You MUST be wondering how this crazy plan worked out...

This early Star Wars novel is a curio now, but when it was brand new, nothing was more important. And one day in 1979 (when I was 14) I took it upon myself to turn it into a comic book. It taught me an unexpected and really valuable lesson.

In 1978, Boba Fett wasn't much more than a costume and a voice. But that costume was such a slam dunk, you could have left out the voice altogether and our imaginations would have done the rest. Since we weren't going to get anything more until he showed up on movie screens in 1980, I did what my brain directed me to do: made my own Boba Fett comics.

When I was 13 years old, I decided to make the dumbest, quickest, sloppiest superhero comic I could. ON PURPOSE. And boy, did I pull it off.

As my comic book horizons expanded as a teenager, I realized that I had "permission" to experiment with formats and try new things. One result was this project right here, an illustrated sci-fi action novella that could have easily been made into one of those lesser-known movies of the 80s. A fighter pilot goes rogue to take down an evil empire. Does he do it? Do you even have to ask?

By the end of the 1970s, I knew for sure I wanted to somehow draw comics for a living one day. It was much more satisfying than watching TV, reading a comic book, or playing with toys. In fact, I didn't even need the toys themselves. Just the sight of one would fill my head with ideas and a story would come spilling out. This was one of my first original SF action stories, a wild, corny ride using a bunch of 1979 artifacts as inspiration.

The second round of my Shogun Warriors comics (issues 4-7) in which I continued to ransack the world of anime giant robots without even knowing it. Two more warriors join the fold, crazy plot points give no warning before they smack you upside the head, and the ground shakes from the battle of the Mecha Dinosaurs! Enter the mind of a 13-year-old boy who wanted nothing more than to capture the pictures in his head and share them with the world.

Looking back now, it’s like my head was secretly invaded and conditioned for everything yet to come. Today, I’m a huge anime and manga fan. Back in 1977, I didn’t know they existed. But evidence was closing in around me. I thought it was my plaything. But I was the one being played. And my strings were pulled by an amazing line of toys called The Shogun Warriors

In the years 1978 and 1979, the Star Wars rulebook didn't really exist yet, at least as it is known today. All we had to go on was a 2-hour film and its implications, which were vast. Overlap it with a steady diet of comic books and SF and you could go in practically any direction. I drew 12 homemade Star Wars comics in this time period, ALL of which are presented here.

It’s hard to believe now, but in the summer of 1977 there was almost nothing to consume beyond the movie itself. Until that Christmas, the only things within reach were a few magazine clippings, the novelization, and the monthly Marvel comics. That wasn’t nearly enough for me. Records and toys and models and other swag arrived in 1978, but that still wasn’t enough. What I learned in 1977 was that if I wanted more Star Wars, I would have to make it myself.