The making of JEDI: YODA
byPaul Myers, featuring preview art by Sergio Jaurez, August 8, 2003

 

It all started one day when I was sitting in the hot sun, bored out of my wits and I began pondering the words of Troy Denning as seen in Insider issue #66, "I would really love to do a butt-kicking Yoda book dealing with Yoda as a warrior," he said. As I thought about this I started wondering what such a novel would be like. How would Yoda think? What would he do? What are Yoda's flaws? But the bigger question in my mind was what became the basis for my story. How do you top the action seen at the end of ATTACK OF THE CLONES? How can you make something more visually entertaining than that first scene where we see Yoda "kick-butt" for the first time? That's the question that I will try to answer with JEDI: YODA. That's the whole premise of the story. How can we get Yoda in a situation where he kicks more butt than he did in the hanger on Geonosis?

But there are many other sides to Yoda as well. The little, green guy has a great sense of humor, and as we see in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, he is greatly affected by what goes on around him. There is a lot about his inner psychology that could be explored. So why a comic? Why not a book? Or some other medium? Well, this particular idea is thanks to veteran STAR WARS comic scriptwriter, John Ostrander. As you might know, I am the founder of The Clone Wars Unofficial Site, and when I first started it I didn't read comics. That was partly why I got other people to write summaries. Well, actually, I had read a few comics, namely VADER'S QUEST and SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE: EVOLUTION, but even those were second-hand. What hooked me on comics was JEDI: MACE WINDU. Ostrander's writing combined with Jan Duursema's art just blew me away. After that, I started buying more comics and looking for places to discuss them. That's when I found John's thread at theforce.net message boards. It turned out he was quite willing to share his knowledge. He has been giving all of us who visit the thread lots of writing lessons. What he didn't teach me about comic writing, I researched on my own after being motivated by his tips. Thanks, John. The more I learned about comic script writing, the more I saw that JEDI: YODA was meant to be a comic.

Now, at that point there was only one problem. I couldn't draw. Well, I could draw stick figures and stuff, but I didn't think that was going to cut it. So I started looking for artists. I tried theforce.net's fan art message board, which led me to the Digital Webbing forums, which led me to the Six Shooter Comics forum, which led me to the Invisible Art forum, but still I got nothing. I seemed to be on a wild goose chase. Everywhere I went no one was interested in doing a STAR WARS fan comic. Then I realized that the whole time I had been barking up the wrong tree. I went to Jan Duursema's thread at theforce.net boards and presented my whole spiel, which by then I had become quite accustomed to doing. One person said they would like to help but couldn't, Sergio Jaurez said he would love to do it, and got the "job," and Jan Duursema herself said that she liked the idea and wished me luck. Not only that, but she even offers to look at Sergio's artwork and give him advice. Of course, for her none of this is anything new. She has always looked at fan art and critiqued it. She just loves to hobnob with us fans, and I think she is really cool for it.

I will not talk at all about the actual development right now, but I will tell you that Sergio's work is awesome, unless you're comparing it to Jan's artwork, but nothing can compare with that. With Jan's advice, Jaurez is getting better and better. I can't wait to see the end result. It will totally rock! Lastly, I would like to dedicate the comic to John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, who make far better JEDI issues, in far less time, than we do, and still take time out of their busy schedules to help us little people.

 

Note: The JEDI: YODA fan comic is still being worked on. Sergio is a busy guy so I have no idea at this point when it will be finished. I certainly hope it will be done befrore Episode 3 comes out. Don't worry, though, it will get finished eventually and it will be well worth the wait!

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