LUCAS WARS: THE TRUE STORY of GEORGE LUCAS and the CREATION of STAR WARS (graphic novel) by Renaud Roche (Author), Laurent Hopman (Author), Jeremy Melloul (Translator)

Published in 2025 by 23rd Street.

Lucas Wars is the story of how the first Star Wars movie came to be made. I've read and seen videos on this story before, but I found this graphic novel to be particularly entertaining and informative. I also really enjoyed the illustrations - they are a simple style but capture the look of the real people involved in the story and the scenes from the movie(s).

It starts with George Lucas in high school and ends with the negotiations for The Empire Strikes Back. The story includes the horrible car accident that made him get serious, his film school education, the making of THX 1138 and American Graffiti, his marriage, and the many, many revisions of what would become Star Wars.

I mention the revisions because he had so many of them. His first scripts would have been so long and so complicated that if they had been made into movies they would have been trilogies. Lucas's friends and his wife encouraged him to keep trimming down the story and focusing it. 

20th Century Fox kept getting updated scripts that were radically different and they started to doubt - and they kept doubting until the movie started to fill theaters and became the phenomenon that older Star Wars fans remember. 

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended for any Star Wars fan.

This graphic novel can be found here: Lucas Wars: The True Story of George Lucas and the Creation of Star Wars.