Now this December, they've teamed up again, along with artist Paul Gulacy, the 24-year veteran of comics responsible for
Master of Kung-Fu; Batman; Turok, Dinosaur Hunter; and The Grackle, on the latest chapter in the Star Wars Galaxy, Star Wars: Crimson Empire. Tom Fassbender got together with these three to discuss the politics of the Galaxy in the wake of Emperor Palpatine's final death.Mike Richardson: I was at Skywalker Ranch for one of their summit meetings and they had people there dressed as Imperial Guards. I' d always been interested in the Imperial Guard; they're characters that nobody really knows about. And they look cool; they're visually striking. I spoke to Lucy [Wilson, Lucasfilm Licensing Liaison] about maybe doing a story about a rogue Imperial Guard, and she seemed to think it was good idea. Then I talked to Randy about it and he liked it as well.
Randy Stradley: Actually, I was excited about doing it because back in 1983, when I got my first job in comics writing Star Wars for Marvel, one of the stories I proposed -- that apparently Lucasfilm did not want to do at the time -- involved members of the Imperial Guard.
Tom Fassbender: Paul, how did you get involved in the project?
Paul Gulacy: I had just wrapped up my contract with Acclaim Comics and called Mike to pitch him a couple of ideas. Neither one piqued Mike's interest at the time, but he called me a couple of weeks later and offered me Crimson Empire.
Fassbender: Has Star Wars been a something you've always wanted to do?
Gulacy: Well, I've seen all the movies several times, but you could probably consider me lukewarm on the comics and novels and such. What made me excited about this project is the fact that it deals with the Imperial Guard. They've always been these cool, mysterious figures that are very popular but who we know very little about.
Fassbender: After the events in Star Wars: Empire's End, specifically the death of Emperor Palpatine, what's the political climate in the Galaxy at this time?
Stradley: With the Emperor out of the picture, there are a lot of different people who want to take control of the Empire.
Richardson: The power brokers of the Empire -- not necessarily all military.
Stradley: A mixed group makes up an interim Ruling Council that's trying to keep the Empire together. And part of this Council is Carnor Jax, who is sort of posturing himself as the next Darth Vader, the next Dark Lord.
Richardson: That's his secret goal anyway.
Stradley: He also wants to take over the throne and run the whole Empire. At the time of the Emperor's death, there's no one person remaining who has the authority or the power base to step in and take charge. If Darth Vader were still around, maybe he could have done it. So these power brokers agreed to form this Council and rule jointly until one of them can come to power. And obviously Carnor Jax thinks he's the guy.
Richardson: This book centers on the Imperial Guard -- it's the first story that's ever been told about the Guard. We've established that these Imperial Guards are completely loyal to the Emperor. Even after the Emperor's death these guards remain loyal to him and not to the Council. But, one of the main players in the Council is Carnor Jax, who has his own reasons to fear the Guard... We have to be careful -- we don't want to give the story away.
Fassbender: That's always the tricky part.
Richardson: Suffice to say that there are a lot of twists and turns. Basically, as a result of treachery, the Imperial Guard comes to an unnatural end.
Stradley: All but the protagonist of the story, Kir Kanos, who escapes to a distant part of the galaxy.
Fassbender: And Jax is after him...
Stradley: Yeah. Kanos knows something about Carnor Jax that could potentially ruin all of Jax's plans, so Jax is out to get him. In his favor, Jax has command of a huge number of Imperial Forces, including some specially-trained elite Stormtroopers.
Fassbender: From the little I've read of this series, I understand that Kanos hooks up with a band of rebels. That's somewhat unusual.
Richardson: Right. It's an interesting dynamic because he's not loyal to them but he finds himself working with them. He has to explain that even though he's working with them, he's not a long-term ally.
Fassbender: Rather a partnership of necessity...
Stradley: United by a common enemy, the Ruling Council.
Richardson: The Council, which was originally supposed to be temporary, decides for their own purposes that they're going to continue delaying any final decision on how the Empire should be managed, thereby keeping them in power as the unofficial permanent Council. Jax of course is playing along with them. And, even though he commits treachery for them he plans it against them in the long run.
Fassbender: And what are Kir Kanos' plans?
Richardson: He has absolute singleness of purpose: to do everything he can to bring down Jax and the ruling Council. He has sworn vengeance on them. All of his training has been to instill loyalty. In fact, there's a flashback scene that illustrates the extent to which this loyalty has been drilled into him.
Stradley: And Jax is out to get him because Kanos is the one man who knows what Jax is about.
Fassbender: Because this is somewhat contemporary to the Star Wars Universe we're most familiar with through the Star Wars films, are there any plans to include any characters from the movies?
Richardson: One of the goals of this story is to set up new characters in an area that hasn't been covered much in previous stories. You will see characters who originally appeared in the films appearing in the second part of this projected three-part series.
Stradley: There is one film character that shows up in Crimson Empire: Wedge Antilles. He's a general in the army of the New Republic now.
Fassbender: There are also a few flashbacks involving both Emperor Palpatine and a younger Darth Vader.
Stradley: Not a younger Darth Vader; The flashbacks take place around the time of A New Hope.
Fassbender: This series is a trilogy; three series of six books each. Will it be the same creative team throughout?
Richardson: That's our plan. We'll see how things work out though. This series takes us through 1999 or 2000.
Gulacy: I'm on the series as long as Mike and Randy want me on it.
Fassbender: How does your writing partnership work?
Richardson: I get a rough idea and discuss it with Randy. He puts it down in an outline form, then I go over the outline, making necessary changes. Then from that outline, which Randy signs off on, I write a rough script , and Randy re-writes it. It goes back and forth.
Stradley: Yeah, that sounds right.
Fassbender: Paul, as the artist do you have any input to the story?
Gulacy: 90% of the time I've been active in the creative process in my career. You can't put your heart into it if you can't participate creatively. And that covers everyone associated on the book. True success comes from a cooperative team effort.
Fassbender: What about the interface with Lucasfilm?
Stradley: The Star Wars timeline is more complicated than Mike, Paul, and I are able to figure out. We rely on them to tell us when we've sort of gone astray so we sometimes make plans for things where they say, "At this point in the Star Wars timeline, Han and the Millennium Falcon are off doing this..."
Gulacy: They sent me tons of reference, mostly in the form of books. And while you have a certain amount of leeway with the world they've created, you can't stray too far. There's a cantina scene where I created about ten different kinds of aliens. The pages were sent back and I had to change most of them to accepted Star Wars aliens. If a military rank on a soldier is wrong it gets corrected. They're very thorough.
Fassbender: The whole story has many of the trappings of a tale concerning Bushido, the Japanese warrior's code.
Gulacy: Undying loyalty and revenge are behaviors usually manifested by pride. I see this story deals with a man on a quest to redeem his soul.
Stradley: It's all about loyalty , honor, and revenge. The tagline we came up for the ad sums it up best: "Loyalty never Dies".