Mike Baron: In the Tim Zahn books, there are these Imperial, super, deep-space, battle suits. They can put them on for one-man, extra-vehicular activity. In our story, the Imperials are actually flying around in space with these things, shooting cannons. I didn't create those, but I used them and I think they are going to have a pivotal part to play.
Michael Stackpole: One of the things which is interesting is that West End Games has done a ton of source books, so anytime I find I want a bit of new tech, I go to those books and either I find it or I find something I can extrapolate pretty easily. I've gotten some cool stuff out of them.
Bruce Costa: Mike Baron, how do you enjoy working from Mike Stackpole's plot?
MB: It's a very roomy outline, so it gives me lots of opportunity for character development and places to plant those little plot threads. The main one is this creature I introduce which is just a nasty, screaming, catlike animal. I don't know how [penciller] Allen Nunis is going to interpret it, but it's kind of like a cat with a slinky body that springs at you off this spring that coils up; it's kind of half-cat and half-snake. [Laughter.] It makes as much sense as a vornskr -- the two vornskrs named Sturm and Drang in the Timothy Zahn books.
MS: I saw that and I just started laughing. I thought that was hilarious.
BC: Mike Stackpole, what's different about writing for comics as compared to writing for a novel?
MS: Well, I think the first and very obvious difference is that comics are a very visual medium. You have to plot things out so that you can allow for visually exciting stuff, like an air combat. In talking to [editor] Ryder Windham, he said, "Whatever we do, let's open this issue somehow with an X-wing/TIE fighter dogfight." In the outline I just wrote that we are going to open with a dogfight, and that this should be the box score at the end or something close to it.
MB: I had a lot of fun with that dogfight.
MS: That's what people want -- they want that visual impact. Also, each issue, for me, was very much like the equivalent of a book chapter. I like to end chapters on those cliffhangers that keep people reading the next chapter. In comics they have to wait another month until this thing comes out. I like taking on that challenge. I think it is a lot of fun. I had to worry about making sure that the dots connected, but I really didn't have to worry about the overall shape of the story. I'm looking forward to seeing what Mike Baron does with it.
BC: Speaking of connecting the dots, Mike Baron, I am sure that when you write about a TIE fighter dogfight, you hear that trademarked "WHURRRRRRRRR" sound effect in your head, and that all of the action you're imagining is as dynamic as what we enjoyed in the films. Yet comics certainly are more static than film, and you're forced to choose specific "snapshots" of a motion-filled sequence. What's involved in writing a good dogfight for a comic page?
MB: It's easy if you keep a couple of principles in mind. Number one is a reader reads from left to right.
Number two is, in an action sequence, you hold your camera steady and let the characters do the moving. Nobody likes artsy close-ups or a swirling camera in the middle of a fight, 'cause you can't tell what's going on. A fight is, by definition, chaos. But readers and movie-goers don't want chaos. They want to understand the action.
Number three is, I had these wonderful props. I bought models of each ship and I set them on the table in front of me. When I get to write the sequence, I work out combat techniques unique to these vehicles. For example, at one point, Janson is being chased very closely by two TIE fighters and they are at treetop level. He simply puts the X-wing into a corkscrew. He's spinning along doing a 360-degree barrel roll, which sets up tremendous turbulence behind him, and the two TIE fighters lose it and slam into each other and blow up. That's just one little thing that I did, but there are a couple of tricks like that.
BC: So you think that the visuals that we have all come to love in the film aren't lost on the comic page?
MB: No, not at all. I think it is even enhanced. In the movie, it goes by. You've got to wait 'til it comes out on video to stop it and back it up and go over it in slow motion. But in a comic, you just stand there, you stop, and you look at the visuals and see if it makes sense, right then and there. If it doesn't make sense, you take that comic, you rip it in shreds, and you throw it down.
BC: Tell me about the TIE fighter/landspeeder combat.
MS: With that I was visualizing shooting from bumper height in front of a landspeeder while watching TIEs crisscross around buildings, take hard turns, with laser blasts everywhere, and stuff like that. The sort of thing you would expect to see in a Lucasfilm film: high speed, some snappy patter, and those narrow escapes.
BC: Do landspeeders do anything more than hover over the ground? Can they run up a wall or something?
MS: Well, they've got repulsorlift drives and I've certainly had X-wings use their repulsorlifts to bounce off of things. They could probably bounce up and pop up over a wall and stuff. There are actually two different crafts. There are landspeeders and there are airspeeders. The airspeeders are a little bit more acrobatic, I suspect. You can get some cool movement out of those things. You know, banked turns off of a building, and stuff like that.
BC: Cool! What do you think Mike Baron?
MB: [Laughter.] I'm so stoked, I'm going to start on issue number three tomorrow! Now I'm thinking about the ground speeder chase...
MS: That should be fun. In preparation for this interview, I was reading over the outline again and going, "Yeah. This will be cool. This is going to be a lot of fun."