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Never Enough... #8 (Al Williamson Star Wars)

Of course I loved Star Wars comics as a kid.  From my Treasury Edition of the second half of Star Wars (I never had the first one for some reason) to Jax the green rabbit to Carmine Infantino's crazy art, it all served to fuel my love of the original Star Wars movie, the characters and the story that Lucas set up.  Other than the Chaykin artwork on the original adaptation (too heavily inked by Steve Leialoha I think,) the artwork by Infantino and one magical issue by Michael Golden is still burned in my mind whenever I think about how Star Wars comics should look.  Their exaggerated and stylistic choices played wonderfully with my imagination and probably helped foster my love of the original stories as much as Lucas' own storytelling did.

And then came Al Williamson. 

His first Star Wars artwork was on the Empire Strikes Back adaptation.  Where Infantino ran wild with the Star Wars visuals, Williamson's photo realistic comic firmly brought the visual identity of the comics right back to the movies.  Everything looked like it was right out of the movie but Williamson's line still added a lot of energy and excitement to the comic book.  He was one of the first artists I ever really noticed who could do such realistic looking artwork without making everything look stiff.  He made it look easy. 

After Empire, he would do other Star Wars comics like Star Wars #50 and The Return of the Jedi adaptation.  He also did a nice run with Archie Goodwin on the Star Wars comic strip, which Cochran Publishing put out a lovely 3 volume edition of years ago.  I recently just got the collection of all of Williamson's Flash Gordon work and it looks just as good as all of his Star Wars comics doe.

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