Ryder was extraordinarily gracious with his time and patiently allowed a certain advertising and promotions manager to repeat a bungled recording session in the midst of the creative chaos of his office.
Mike Martin: Since your office is the place where the Star Wars books meet the Star Wars comics, why don't we start there? What can you tell me about this interface between pictures and print?
Ryder Windham: We're currently working on two different series that are adaptations of the Star Wars novels.
MM: How do these series fit together? I mean, what's the chronology?
RW: Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye is an adaptation of the Alan Dean Foster novel, published by Ballantine Books. It'll be a four-issue series, and it's a very faithful adaptation of the novel, although it does contain certain new scenes to make certain sequences more readable in comics form. It's been scripted by Terry Austin, who's also inking it. Chris Sprouse is the penciller.
MM: You're saying that you're making it more visual?
RW: Right. There are additional scenes involving Darth Vader. The story is considered to be a strong part of the Star Wars continuity despite the fact that The Empire Strikes Back seems to dismiss the events of Splinter. To Star Wars fans and to Lucasfilm, Splinter definitely is a part of the whole Star Wars chronology.
MM: And it also has the distinction, for fans who don't know, of being the first sequel to Star Wars, having been released in 1978, two full years before The Empire Strikes Back.
RW: I suppose, unless you include the Marvel Comics "continuing adventures," when they started telling new stories that took place after the Star Wars movie adaptation.
MM: Hmmm. There is that. What can you tell us about the other novel-related series?
RW: The other adaptation is a six-issue adaptation of Heir to the Empire, which is the first book of the Timothy Zahn trilogy from Bantam Books. There are tentative plans to do the two other books, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. At present these are the only adaptations we're considering doing because Lucasfilm has encouraged us to develop more original series and stories working with the characters in approved time slots and scenarios. Heir to the Empire takes place approximately five years after Return of Jedi, while Dark Empire takes place about six years after Return. I'll get you a copy of the chronology of that...
MM: Cool! [Editorial note out of earshot of Ryder: This is one of the things that makes working in comics so neat]
RW: Mike Baron is scripting Heir. Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard, a pair of wonderful artists from France, are illustrating the comic. I'd like to mention the colorist Isabelle Rabarot on Star Wars: Heir to the Empire. I think this is some of the most impressive coloring I've ever seen on a comic book.
MM: A lot of fans would be interested in a glimpse into the technical details of that. I mean, what makes her technique so unusual?
RW: It would almost be easier to show a diagram. It's called the blue-line, or painted gray-line, process. The line art is transferred onto a piece of paper, and the colorist paints directly onto that paper. Then an acetate with the line art is laid over the paper, so it looks a lot like an animation cel. Isabelle's rendering and her considerations for light sources and shadows are incredible.
MM: I'm looking at the line art right here alongside the colored pages, and I can see what you're saying. The line art is extremely nice, but...
RW: It's only half of the story. There's the reflections off of C-3PO's face, the clouds...those are Isabelle's touches. I think readers will appreciate the technique and talent if they see the work in progress. Splinter was pencilled by Chris Sprouse, and we're planning on running a back-up feature showing how he works. How he does his breakdowns, from breakdown to finished page, in a very painstaking process. It's really precise work.
MM: Can we digress for a moment into the continuity relationships between these various series?
RW: Lucasfilm doesn't acknowledge certain older stories because of continuity problems. They weren't so concerned in the past about licensees doing stories and adventures, like Marvel's Star Wars comics, which took place in times that might conflict with the Star Wars newspaper comic strip. No one knew how big Star Wars was going be or that the fans would be looking to see whether somebody was actually supervising all of the continuities.
MM: So nobody would care that Jabba the Hutt was once portrayed by Marvel as a two-legged humanoid?
RW: Exactly. In the Marvel comic, you see that's how he was drawn. Years ago, I saw some unused footage with Jabba the Hutt from the first Star Wars film, and I recognized the Jabba character from the Marvel comic. I should mention that Allan Kausch is the continuity editor at Lucasfilm, and for the comics, Allan Kausch is absolutely indispensable because of all of his knowledge, along with Sue Rostoni, who works there on the novels. Between the two of them, they make it easier for all the licensees. At Lucasfilm their mandate is to make everything work together and that there is a continuity between the novels and the comics and the films as best as they can manage. And it isn't always easy.
MM: And that internal consistency really shows, I think, in the resonance of the comic storytelling. You feel from all the care that's been taken that the Star Wars universe has become a real place.
RW: Yes, and I think a good example of that is the X-Wing - Rogue Squadron series, which ties into the upcoming Michael Stackpole novels. The comic books take place a year or so before his X-Wing novels, so that in the novels he could refer to things that happened in the comics and in the comics he can do some foreshadowing for the novels. You'll be able to see a certain development and growth as characters come and go. It'll be an all-around treat for readers of either medium. For the comics series, Lucasfilm has given Stackpole the latitude to tell the adventures of Wedge Antilles following the events of The Truce at Bakura [note: by Kathy Tyers, Bantam Books, 1994]. Generally, the writers are all very conscientious about continuity. They tend to read one another's books and take notes and also take great care not to step on one another's toes.
MM: What about Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire?
RW: This is a big one. Bantam is doing a novel. Dark Horse is doing a six-issue miniseries. Kenner and Galoob are doing lines of Shadows of the Empire toys, and various other licensees are involved as well. The story takes place between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The comic- book series is written by John Wagner and illustrated by Kilian Plunkett. It adapts certain scenes from the novel, and is a definite tie-in, but the storylines that are explored are a bit different from the novel. The novel has a lot of intrigue and character perspectives. In the comics, we tried to put the story on a track that would be more visually exciting. It's the story of Luke Skywalker trying to come to terms with the fact that, at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Vader revealed himself to be his father. Luke also realizes that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda didn't tell him the whole truth. We know already that it isn't until the time of Return of the Jedi that Luke reveals to Leia that Vader is their father. So we knew that in Shadows of the Empire it was important that Luke keep that information to himself, and that it torments him. In the novel, which has a lot of adventure and excitement, too, the reader gets inside Luke's head. But in the comic book, we see what Luke does, we can see the tension on his face. I encourage stories that are propelled by the characters, the words that they speak, and their actions. I don't believe there's one caption of omniscient narration.
MM: It's "show, don't tell."
RW: Yeah. The comic book also involves Boba Fett as a fairly principal character. He's really a very background character in the novel, but in our six-issue series he's in virtually every single issue as a fairly prominent character. I can't say any more.
MM: Okay, but speaking of Boba Fett, tell us anything you can about the Boba Fett: Bounty on Bar-Kooda one-shot.
RW: Okay. It's written by John Wagner, the co-creator of Judge Dredd, and drawn by Cam Kennedy, who worked on both Dark Empire series. I was so impressed by their collaboration with Alan Grant on the Batman/Judge Dredd comic; I thought it was just a really great fight comic. And I had worked with both John and Cam before: with John on an Aliens miniseries, and with Cam on Dark Empire II. I wanted to develop something with John and Cam, and I thought that they would produce a really great Boba Fett adventure story. Cam has nearly completed the pencils as of today [June 28, 1995], and it's an incredible, visually exciting comic. It's swooping, diving, punching action. It's an extremely tough Boba Fett story.
MM: When along the timeline does it take place, since we've established how important it is to make sure everything fits in?
RW: Continuity-wise, it takes place after the events of Dark Empire II.
MM: What about Star Wars: River of Chaos?
RW: River of Chaos, which is written by Louise Simonson, pencilled by June Brigman, and inked by Roy Richardson, is set between Star Wars: A New Hope and Splinter of the Mind's Eye and it's the first comics series that explores the battles of Star Wars from the perspective of an Imperial officer, a TIE-fighter pilot who was sent in as a spy to infiltrate the Rebellion. Princess Leia figures into the story very prominently.
MM: That's a fascinating perspective. Everything thus far has been told through the eyes of the Rebels.
RW: That's right. There have been stories about Rebels who have infiltrated the Empire, with the Dark Forces game, I think, and then you had Han Solo and Luke Skywalker strapping themselves into stormtrooper outfits in the very first film, but we've never seen the Rebellion from the perspective of the Imperials themselves.
MM: Who, incidentally, wouldn't tend to regard themselves as villains, by their own lights. They're just doing a job and earning a paycheck. They're people just like most of the pilots who led the attack on the first Death Star once were. I mean, weren't virtually all of them Imperial officers at some point in their careers before the Rebellion came along?
RW: That's right, the Imperial service was the only way off some of the provincial worlds a lot of those guys came from.
MM: So the Empire must not have seemed like such a bad idea at the time. Hey, it's a living.
RW: But at the same time, it's more than that. To the Imperial officers, it's more than just a paycheck. Some of these soldiers believe as much in the Empire as the Rebels do in the Rebellion. They really believe that the Rebels are just scum. They think, "how dare they stand in the way of the expansion and the glory of the Empire."
MM: But for this story to work, this Imperial protagonist has to be a sympathetic character. Is he?
RW: Yes, he is very much a sympathetic character. He believes very much in the rightness of what he is doing. It's a very different take.
MM: There's one last peripheral character we haven't discussed: Jabba the Hutt.
RW: We wanted to do something a little different with Jabba. Jabba the Hutt comes out on an approximately quarterly basis now, and the concept is to make Jabba's book a "crime comic" set in outer space. Writer Jim Woodring cued off of the introduction to Return of the Jedi in which Jabba is referred to as "the vile gangster, Jabba the Hutt." Jim said that those words just kind of stuck with him. It's not just that he's some kind of bad-guy alien, he's a "vile gangster." The Jabba stories are self-contained. As with Droids, it takes place in a sort of nebulous time period some 5-10 years before Star Wars: A New Hope. In the Jabba stories, there aren't any references to the Empire, or to the Force or to Jedi. They're really mainly crime comics offset with a real streak of morbid humor. Everyone loved the opening sequence in Return of the Jedi in Jabba's palace with all of those bizarre, frightening creatures. So in the Jabba comics, Jabba is the ringleader, he's the kingpin. He's bossing people around and having skirmishes and doing his best to stay in control. We've got three Jabba comics, two are out, one will be shipping in August and there's a fourth one in the works. In the fourth Jabba story (they all follow one another continuity-wise), Jabba returns to Tatooine. So I think that fans will really enjoy seeing that issue, because prominent characters who were not featured in the first three issues will appear at last.
MM: It looks as though Lucasfilm is having you tread very carefully around the continuity immediately preceding Star Wars: A New Hope.
RW: Well, yes.
MM: Is this because this time frame is going to be the setting for the next three film sequels, or prequels, when they come out in 1998, 1999, and 2000?
RW: I hear things along those lines, and I think that timetable is right. Of course, in 1997 Lucasfilm will kick it off with the release of Star Wars: The Special Edition.
MM: Can you think of anything else upcoming that I haven't asked you about?
RW: We're producing eight-page stories for Topps' Star Wars Galaxy Magazine, and we've also done a number of comics that fans will not find on the comic-book racks. We've done Star Wars: The Mixed-Up Droid for Time Warner AudioBooks, and an X-Wing - Rogue Squadron comic that will be available only through Kellogg's Apple Jacksreg. cereal.
MM: The Kellogg's comic offer will be playing on over 11 million American breakfast tables, probably by the time the fans read this interview...
RW: Wow.
MM: You've worked with a multitude of artists on the Star Wars comics by now. Do you have any embarrassing artist-related anecdotes you'd like to share with an unabashed, inquisitive public?
RW: Not really. It takes a lot of talent to work on these books. The artists that we work with are able to draw likenesses of the characters from the films, they're able to draw clothed figures, and they can handle the technical details of the spaceships, vehicles, armor, and so forth.
MM: In other words, Star Wars artists have to be good all-around draftsmen.
RW: In my experience, most American comic-book artists only know superheroes and characters in skin-tight costumes, flying through the air hitting each other. I get a lot of submissions from artists who think that on the basis of that kind of work they are somehow qualified to work on Star Wars projects. Granted, we're really booked up in advance, and the American artists we work with are immensely talented. I will cite Chris Sprouse and Terry Austin; Bill Hughes, for his work on Droids; on River of Chaos, June Brigman and Roy Richardson; and on X-Wing Fighters Alan Nunis and Andy Mushynsky. But maybe half of our Star Wars creators are from other countries. With Droids, there's Ian Gibson from England; Shadows of the Empire is illustrated by Kilian Plunkett, and he's from Ireland; Heir to the Empire's Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard are both from France; and Jabba the Hutt is pencilled by Art Wetherell from England. Cam Kennedy, working on Boba Fett, is from Scotland. Cover artist Hugh Fleming is from Australia. My supervisors are certainly not pleased about my expensive phone bills, but the important thing is that we do try to hire the best people for the projects. They are not limited to drawing skin-tight superhero costumes. These are the people we go after, no matter where they are.
MM: To quote Yoda, "A Star Wars artist must have the most serious commitment..."
RW: "There is no try. There is only do."