Thirty-six years ago the world was swept up in the storm of a movie that broke all records for success. It remains the third top grossing movie of all time(adjusting for inflation), and jumpstarted the most successful movie franchise in history. But  the Star Wars that we all know didn’t just appear as a finished product, like all forms of art, the story went through many iterations and drafts.

Now, Dark Horse Comics is giving us fans a look into one of George Lucas’s first drafts: “The Star Wars” in a series of 8 special edition comics. The series has been in production for a few months, and the first issue was released on September 4th.

The plot summary is available on various websites, and reading such an early draft of the story is a big mix of feelings for a fan like me. It feels exclusive and cool getting a peek at the writing process, and it is also fun and amusing how everything changed, and also how much stayed or was moved around.

After reading the plot, I am quite glad that Lucas continued shaping the story. It is overflowing with characters that seem to all take turns being the main character. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3PO, Darth Vader, and even Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru make appearances, but all with striking changes. New characters include Kane Starkiller and his two sons Deak and Annikin, Leia’s parents King Kayos and Queen Breha, their two sons Biggs and Windy, Galactic Emperor Cos Dashit, Valorum the Sith Knight, and Jommillia the Wookiee.

The settings were also much different: Utapau is the home of the Starkiller family,  Aquilae is the planet threatened by the Space Fortress(later becoming the Death Star) taking the place of multiple other planets in the final version, Alderaan is the capital of the empire and is a gas giant like Cloud City on Bespin, and the jungle planet Yavin is, in this version, the Wookiee homeworld.

J.W. Rinzler, who adapted the draft into comic-form, said in an interview with CNN, “It’s so similar and yet so different at the same time. All the puzzle pieces are there but arranged to form a different picture.”

The pieces sure are different. Luke is much older, and this time he is unrelated to Leia(a twist that developed only after The Empire Strikes Back was written). Han Solo is a big green reptile without a ship, Darth Vader has no helmet, R2 can talk, and Owen and Beru are anthropologists living on Yavin.

My favorite thing about these changes is that many of the things left out or changed show up somewhere else in the Star Wars universe. Many of these deleted characters and settings even get put back into the movies in some form.

The main planet, Aquilae is not brought up again in the movies, but it still exists in the backstory as Duro colony. Utapau makes a return in the third prequel movie as a barren and rocky planet. Yavin ends up being the base of the Rebels and target of the Death Star, the Wookiees moved to Kashyyyk.

Changes to characters also give birth to new creations. Han’s original race of lizard men eventually turns into the Trandoshans like Bossk, one of the bounty hunters that Vader hires in Empire. The name of the original race, Urellian or Yourellien, is changed slightly to Corellian, a race of humans to which Han belongs. Biggs, Leia’s brother, appears in the movie as Biggs Darklighter, rebel pilot and childhood friend of Luke Skywalker. Valorum is the name given to the first Chancellor in the prequels. “Starkiller” is the name given to your character in the popular video game The Force Unleashed and its sequel.

To someone like me who can recognize the way these things reappear, this shows that even just names have a backstory in their creation. It is always fun for me to learn more about the story to which the movies are not even the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone who enjoys seeing how a story develops will enjoy seeing the changes made since the original draft. The first comic in the series was met with positive reactions and fans are excited for the release of the next issue.