First of All, Sorry for Delay in Sending the Questions, We Wanted to Do the Best Possibles
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http://www.supervivientesdeendor.es/2016/08/veinticinco-anos-de-star-wars- imperio.html (English text of Spanish Star Wars interview.) Hello Mr Veitch… first of all, sorry for delay in sending the questions, we wanted to do the best possibles. Thank you for sharing this moment with us and for answering these questions for our readers. We admire your work and Dark Empire (along with Tales of the Jedi) is one of the best Star Wars comic book series ever published. That’s why we want to celebrate its 25th anniversary with this interview. Thank you for your time. ---------------------- Here are my answers to your Star Wars questions. Keep in mind that I am working from memory here, so I may have some facts out of order or even completely forgotten! I am currently writing a book about Star Wars and my experiences working on Star Wars. By the time the book is finished, my reminiscences will, hopefully, be fully checked for factual details and accuracy! 1) First of all, how the idea of Dark Empire arose? TOM: Cam Kennedy and I got the idea of sending our Marvel/Epic Comics series THE LIGHT AND DARKNESS WAR to George Lucas and proposing a new fully painted Star Wars graphic novel. George loved the idea and asked me to send him plot ideas. My first idea, believe it or not, was to do a series called "The Jedi Chronicles" which would delve into the history of the Jedi Knights. He said he preferred that we take off from the ending of Return of the Jedi and tell the fate of Luke, Leia, Han, et al. So I put together the concepts that led to Dark Empire. Now, it should be noted that we had feedback from Mr. Lucas on the plotting of Dark Empire. And our editor, Archie Goodwin, also had a hand in the plotting. He was "Mr. Star Wars" to us, having written many great Star Wars comics for Marvel, as well as the newspaper Star Wars comic strip with artist Al Williamson. I would send Archie by plot ideas and then we would talk for hours on the telephone about them. We also discussed the story over lunch in Manhattan, with Archie eating sushi and sucking down martinis! :-) And of course the other significant creative element was Cam's sketches. He would come up with visual idea — machines, weapons, characters — and I would work them into the story. 2) At the time, there was much excitement on how to fit your work with Thrawn's trilogy. Did you talk with Timothy Zahn to organize yourselves and put the whole story in the way? TOM: In terms of the creative timeline, our Dark Empire series was proposed, accepted, and scripted about six months before Tim was recruited to write his novels. In fact, Lucasfilm first proposed to Bantam Books that they do a novelization of STAR WARS: DARK EMPIRE. And they said they would rather ask one of their novelist to create a new story. Tim Zahn was hired and he worked very fast. As I recall he finished his book in about two months. (Don't forget, it takes a lot longer to draw a comicbook series than it does to write a novel!) So HEIR TO THE EMPIRE came out, was an instant best-seller, and LucasArts said to me, "See if you can make the comics fit with Heir to the Empire." I rewrote the introductory rollup to make them fit together. Later, when creating Dark Empire II, we took Zahn's work more fully into our plotting. Another interesting fact, generally unknown by the fans, is that Tim was asked to critique the DARK EMPIRE plot and I was asked to critique his book. This led to a spirited exchange which someday may see print. Tim hated the idea of Emperor coming back (and probably wasn't aware that George Lucas had proposed the idea to us). As for me, I found his book curiously uncinematic. I felt (and still feel) that all Star Wars novels need to be highly visual and give you the impression you might be sitting in a theater. I told him Heir to the Empire didn't feel at all like watching a movie. Tim took that criticism to heart and his subsequent work was a definite improvement. 3) How did you come with the idea of bringing back the Emperor? TOM: Our original proposal was to bring back Darth Vader's costume and mask, with somebody else inside it. We felt the Empire would want to maintain the fearsome image of Vader and wouldn't much care who was wearing the armor and breathing mask. George vetoed that idea (although he did allow us to have Vader appear in dreams and memories). He said, no, you can't bring back the Vader costume...but if you can figure out how to bring back the Emperor, that's o.k. The obvious way to bring back the Emperor was with cloning, which George immediately approved. Now, Zahn has said in an interview that bringing back the Emperor goes against the story of Return of the Jedi, where we see the Emperor destroyed by Darth Vader. But Zahn misses something essential about that scene: When the Emperor dares Luke to "strike me down", he seems utterly indifferent to his own death! He feels that whatever the outcome of this confrontation with Luke, he, Palpatine, will conquer. It was my thesis that the Emperor chose this moment to come out of his deep seclusion in the Imperial City, because he no longer feared for the safety of his physical body. His mastery of the dark side had become such that he was now ready to make a transition he had been working toward for many years — namely the replacement of his aging, diseased, and crippled body with a young clone! Tempting Luke to strike him in anger with a lightsaber could thus accomplish two things: It would bring Luke over to the dark side...and it would mark the moment when Palpatine made the transition to his clone body. Luke, as we know, resisted the temptation to kill the Emperor. But then Vader hurled the Emperor down the deep shaft, and we saw a series of blue flashes marking the Emperor's demise. The blue flashes represented the Emperor's living energy, his conscious dark force, leaving his body. And according to our story, his consciousness was translated across the Galaxy almost instantaneously and entered a new youthful body. Using cloned bodies Palpatine could live forever...and perhaps rule the Empire for thousands of years! 4) About Luke’s step into the dark side, were you looking a parallelism with the decisions of his father (Vader)? Did Lucasfilm somehow tell you something about how the Emperor seduced Anakin Skywalker to the dark side to capture this later in the “Dark Empire” storyline? TOM: To tell the story of Luke journeying into the dark side was my idea. But it was inevitable from the films, and had been discussed for years. Consider whose son he is! In fact, as you may know, Mark Hamill has said he proposed it to George back in the mid- 1980s. My central idea is that you can't just kill off all your enemies, who are in fact parts of your own Shadow (to use Jung's term). (And in Luke's case, the Shadow side of himself included his own father!) Another idea is that the dark side can't be destroyed. When you fight it, you just make it stronger. (Which is why the Emperor invited Luke to "Give in to your anger...") In order to really conquer the dark side, you must go into it and understand it from within. You have to risk being taken over by it. And maybe you will be possessed by the dark side, at least for awhile, But in the end, with the power of the lightside of the Force, you will conquer it. 5) About the return of Boba Fett... even George Lucas said that killing him in Return of the Jedi was a mistake. Did you always have in mind to bring him back? What background did you imagined for the character? TOM: There were no problems bringing Fett out of retirement. He was one of the most popular characters and, as you say, George always regretted killing him off. So it was simply a question of saying he was "too indigestible" for the Sarlaac. That's something of a joke, of course. But it was very easy to imagine, especially considering his weaponry and Mandalorian rocket pack. At one point I did write a background for Fett which is somewhere in my archives. 6) Dark Empire showed an important part of Han Solo´s past with partners like Shug Ninx, Salla Zend or Mako Spince, and places of his former smuggler's life. Those elements were developed in the trilogy written by AC Crispin. What inspired you to create the past of Han? Was any idea about Han's past that you would liked to include or develop more deeply in Dark Empire? TOM: Han's past grew out of the creation of Nar Shaddaa, the "smuggler's moon" with its planet-embracing city and criminal underground. We just riffed on Han, letting imagination rule the day, based on that environment and situation. I knew Han should remain mostly a mysterious character, so I didn't go into great detail as to his past. (Didn't he wash out of the Academy?) As with all the best Star Wars characters, it is the viewer (or reader) who fills in the blanks with his or her own imagination.