MM: In the meantime, though, in 1980 you did a Star Wars story. MICHAEL: Star Wars, oh yeah! I forgot about that one. MM: Yeah, Archie Goodwin wrote it. But you did the plotting, and you also did the coloring. I don’t know if that was your first interior coloring or not, but that might have been—at least credited. MICHAEL: Yeah, possibly, I think it was. Well, the one that I got credited for, yeah. MM: So on that work, did you just come up with a plot and pitch it? MICHAEL: Actually, I think right after the first movie Archie had.... During the first movie, I think Archie was editor-in-chief, or had just had been or something. But he was feeding me little eight-page back-up stories at that point. And I just walked in one day, and we were just sitting around talking, and I said, “Well, I’ve kind of got a science fiction story in my head that might work for Star Wars,” and I just told it to him. And he said, “Yeah, go ahead and do it.”
And so basically I just sat down and I drew this twentywhatever page the story was, and turned it in. And it sat around for a while—quite a while, actually. I guess there was some sort of hang-up with the adaptation to the second movie and they needed something to stick in there real fast. And Archie called me up one day and asked if he could just write the dialogue and get it out. And I said, “Sure, go right ahead.” And he wrote just this incredible dialogue, just tied the whole thing together. It ended up being a real spooky little story. And meanwhile, Terry Austin was inking it, and I asked Archie for the favor if I could go ahead and color it, and he said, “Sure, but we need it really fast.” So, like, in two days I turned the color guides in, and off it went to the printer. [laughs] MM: Were you a fan of the movies at all? MICHAEL: I liked the first one. MM: Not the second one? MICHAEL: Well, the second one was okay. The 20