Grizzled vet Luke Skywalker trains young Annikin Starkiller the ways of the Jedi, but he’ll have to get his lazer sword skills in order and team up with the space lizard Han Solo if he has any chance of taking on the corrupt (but noth Sith, of course) politician who runs the Empire.

No, we haven’t got our facts wrong and lost all our nerd credentials; this is not STAR WARS but THE STAR WARS, the new comic book series from Dark Horse which adapts George Lucas’ original 1974 draft.

Two new promo images and even a video have been released, which you can view below.

Speaking to USA Today, writer J.W. Rinzler, an executive editor at LucasBooks, said: “I’m sure he (Lucas) knew quite well in 1974 that there was no way you could film this script. He changes locales sometimes twice on a page. Any studio head reading that would have just had a heart attack. He would have thrown it in the garbage by the time he got to page 20.”

Series artist Mike Mayhew added that the characters are perhaps more compelling and emotional than those who ended up on screen, as more happens to them “in the first 15 minutes of The Star Wars than happens in the entire Star Wars movie”, ending by stating ”this is the greatest ‘what if?’ story ever in comics.”

In other STAR WARS news, pictures have emerged from Disney’s D23 convention of crates marked “Orange Harvest”. This is clearly a reference to “Blue Harvest”, the production code-name for RETURN OF THE JEDI. What could this project be? A theme park attraction, maybe, or one of the upcoming films? With the convention running through this week, we’ll undoubtedly find out soon…

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