Roy Richardson (writer and cover artist of #84, "Seoul Searching"):

"That issue of Star Wars was the very first comic that I ever wrote. I was 24 years old at the time, and had just moved to New York with my then-girlfriend (now wife) June Brigman, co-creator of the Power Pack comic. I was privileged to collaborate with artist David Mazzuchelli on that issue, which I believe was only his second penciling job. I drew the cover, and it was beautifully inked by Tom Palmer, who also inked the interior art. I have it framed and hanging on my wall.
     I had also wanted to color the cover, but it had already been assigned to staff artist George Roussous. I had a particular green color scheme in mind, but was told "George won't do green covers!" When I went down to George's cubbyhole to find out what that was all about, he told me about a cover he had colored green over two decades earlier that Stan Lee had rejected, telling George "NEVER SHOW ME A GREEN COVER! GREEN DOESN'T SELL!" George had not done a single green cover since. When I pointed out that Stan was now in California, and that editor Louise Simonson had said green was OK with her, George went to town and produced a green cover that really stood out from all the other comics on the stands.
     As for the story, it was my homage to legendary sci/fi author Andre Norton, who I think Lucas and many others owe a huge creative debt to.  I read her most famous novel "The Zero Stone" in the 4th grade, and never looked back. I've read it many times since, and maintain that her fiction has aged much better than most of her contemporaries such as Asimov and Heinlein. It's a dream of mine to adapt the book into a graphic novel format. Just as an aside for completists, I also inked backgrounds on several issues of Star Wars, with Palmer as principal inker. What issues they were exactly I can't remember; all I can recall is that they were penciled by Ron Frenz, and that I really hated inking the Millennium Falcon (too complicated!) June, Louise & I also collaborated on a Star Wars mini-series for Dark Horse, "River of Chaos." The villain of the mini was originally supposed to be Boba Fett, but Lucas decided that the character was overexposed, and declared that we couldn't use him in the series literally just as June was drawing the first panel he appeared in. We had to quickly cobble up an appropriate bad guy, and I think we did a good job, but I still believe the last-minute removal of Boba hurt the sales on the series. June also illustrated three juvenile SW novels with Karl Kesel as inker. And she did an SW trading card for the Topps series. So you can see that we've had a long association with the SW U. And while we haven't been asked to contribute anything lately, we do keep busy in the field. We do the art for the Brenda Starr comic strip, as well as some educational comics, and we are currently involved in a mammoth graphic novel adaptation of "Black Beauty" for Byron Priess. Also, another sci/fi comic that I wrote for Marvel, "Tomorrow Knights," is being adapted as a roleplaying game, due out in Feb. '05. Check it out at www.tomorrowknights.com.

Bob McLeod (artist for several issues):

On his expressive faces: "I started my career working in Neal Adams' Continuity Studios, and Neal said comic book artists should always try to make their characters good "actors". I also was heavily influenced by Mort Drucker, who does caricatures, and I learned a lot about facial expressions from his work. " On the Earth-like backgrounds on the planet Herdessa: "I'm afraid the backgrounds were just a result of deadlines, and not enough time to be creative."

Donald Glut (dialogued #10, "Behemoth From the World Below"):

"I "dialoged" an issue or two, as Roy Thomas calls it -- but the plots were already written and drawn by the time I had a hand in them. By the way, I was supposed to write some scripts for the Star Wars newspaper strip that my good friend Russ Manning was illustrating. But that never came to be...in part because I got busy writing the Empire Strikes Back novelization. I may have submitted a plot or two...and that's when the Lucas people told me to stop writing any "minor" Star Wars projects and focus only on "Empire.""

Joe Rubinstein (inked the covers for #106 and #107):

"Like most everything I ink, I admired Cindy Martin's work,and wanted to stay as close to her intentions in the pencil drawings as possible."

Mike Vosburg (artist for Annual #1):

"I can barely remember the work on the Star Wars comics...The only thing I can recall is that the winged people were definitely a carryover from the John Carter series I was working on at the time."