When two of the most successful creators in movies and comic books team up for a series of novels, fans of both genres sit up and take notice.
And bestseller lists everywhere are expected to make way for Shadow Moon, the first in a new trilogy by George Lucas and Chris Claremont.
The success of Bantam's Star Wars and Indiana Jones novels and the prospect of another series of Star Wars movies has Lucas fans eager for almost anything out of his camp. And a collaboration with the man who wrote X-Men for 17 years - turning it into an unprecedented success in the world of comics - makes Shadow Moon as anticipated as an original Star Wars novel. Although Shadow Moon is set in the fantasy world created by Lucas for Willow, it's a work that stands on its own, having little to do with that movie's characters or situations.
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| Princess Elora Danan, who appeared as a baby in the film Willow, is the protagonist of Shadow Moon, the new novel by Chris Claremont and George Lucas |
Claremont, currently making his mark in comics with his Sovereign Seven series for DC (CS #51), became involved when Bantam Books wanted to continue publishing Lucas material. "Bantam has the Star Wars license, and they had just scored a tremendous hit with Timothy Zahn's trilogy," says Claremont. "They were looking for more material. Lucasfilm had expressed an interest in doing more, and were batting ideas around. Lucas had this idea which they thought was a viable possibility, especially since it goes off in a totally different direction from the Star Wars material. One of the selling points of this project was that, rather than being from the Star Wars Universe, it would actually be a co-written work by George and whomever. Apparently, I fit the bill as someone who could do a quality novel that satisfied both Lucasfilm and Bantam's needs for a book."
The writer explains that Shadow Moon takes place several years after Willow. "It is a dark fantasy," Claremont says. "The focus character is Elora Danan [the royal infant saved by Willow in the film, now a teenager]. Beyond that, we're now some years removed from the film's events and half a world away. We're pretty much starting from scratch. It obviously goes through many permutations, because since this is a Lucasfilm project - all my past comments about work-for-hire notwithstanding - they have the right to exercise a significant amount of influence or control over the finished product. In this case, it involves a collaboration between George and myself, so I think everyone's being far more careful and meticulous about thier approach to this project. As I used to say about X-Men, I care about those issues because they have my name on them; there's more care being taken with Shadow Moon because it has George Lucas' name on it."
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| Shadow Moon is set in the same world as Willow, but as Claremont points out, "We only saw a very small corner of that world in Willow." |
Claremont worked from materials supplied by Lucas, and the filmmaker was closely involved in the project. "From Lucasfilm is a standard editorial review from George Lucas himself," says Claremont. "We talked very extensively - it was a collaboration."
Fantasy Worlds
For Shadow Moon, Lucas and Claremont have developed an entire world to serve as a backdrop for their fantasy. "It's Elora's 13th birthday, when she will assume the powers and privileges laid out for her in prophecy before she was born," ways Claremont. "The whole world is waiting expectantly on the cusp of what they hope is a millenium of peace, though there are quite a few factions that would be happy to have it descend into war. Into the middle of these events comes a mysterious, malevolent figure out to screw everything up big time, and he does just that.
"Since this is the first of a trilogy, we're left in a position where the whole face of the world, the political and social order of the society, has been turned upside down. Elora and her companions are the only ones who have a shot at setting things right. The only thing is, for the past 12 years, she has been a pampered, spoiled princess in a tower. She isn't really trained or equipped for being the hero of the month, even though she's stuck with the job."
Although Shadow Moon adheres to the Willow mythos, it actually has little to do with the film fantasy. "The novel takes place in the same world, but since we only saw a very small corner of that world in Willow, it would be like looking at a movie that takes place in England, and from there going to Arizona," says Claremont. "there's a tremendous difference in attitude and reality - different folks, beliefs, environment. The hope is to weave a much broader, vaster, richer tapestry than we were able to see in the film. That was sort of like the tantalizing hint of what's going on - this is hopefully a far richer banquet."
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| "The hope is to weave a much broader tapestry than we saw in the film," says Claremont. |
While they won't be calling attention to Willow, which was a box-office disappointment that never spawned movie sequels, neither will they deliberately downplay the connection. "It has been a few years, but as much as anything else, the hope is to present this as a novel that stands strongly on its own as a contemporary book of dark fantasy," says Claremont. "Part of the reason is that no one wants us to be judged as a movie sequel or tie-in. Shadow Moon is a novel. It is inspired by and derived from pre-existing elements. It's set in a world that was created for another medium, but in and of itself, it's starting from scratch. Where it goes from here is almost totally a function of the writing of novels - it's not a sequel in that sense of the word.
"The novel has a tone of its own. It is a novel, it's not a movie. It's like doing a fantasy set on our world, but looking around and saying, 'OK, we have elves and fairies and brownies, and they're all derived from Celtic mythology,' or Australian aboriginal mythology, or American Indian mythology. The approach from the beginning was that we have this world, and these are its dynamics, these are characters and places that exist in this world. Beyond that, you're on your own!"
Readers also need not have any foreknowledge of Willow in order to read and enjoy Shadow Moon. "The approach from the start was that this is a whole new concept, sufficiently removed in time and space from the film to distance it in the sense that we want it to be viewed on its own merits, not as an adjunct to a previously existing piece of work - which is as it should be," Claremont emphasizes. "The goal is to make it as accessible to those who have never seen the film as to those who enjoy it tremendously. The challenge, the balancing act, is to leave both parties satisfied. Those who remember the film fondly can look at this and think that it is a continuance, in the sense that it's the same world, and there are echoes and resonances that can be cast back to it. By the same token, it is of its own self."
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| From its warm Nelwyn villages to its spooky castles, the world of Willow has all the hallmarks of a classic fantasy realm. |
Fantasy Voices
Although Claremont has several favorite fantasy authors, the novel is essentially told in his voice. "My wife and I have this discussion all the time," he laughs. "Her primal influences are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Mine are Rudyard Kipling, Edith Nesbit and T.H. White. So, we have certain structural differences in form and content right off the bat! As to the tone of voice that the novel has - it's my tone of voice, since I'm the person primarily putting words to paper."
It's very difficult to determine at this point exactly which concepts and events were created by Lucas or by Claremont. "As with any collaboration, we had a starting point, and from there on, things evolve and get tangled and confused," says Claremont. "There are some characters that I've specifically created, just as there are characters that George specifically created. The point is not to catalog who did what, where and when. The point is that if this is a good novel, it's as the result of a synthesis of our creative genius, in the classic sense of the word."
Although Claremont is quite vocal regarding creators' rights in the comics field (his Sovereign Seven is the first mainstream creator-owned work published by DC Comics), he notes that he was brought on to write Shadow Moon strictly under a work-for-hire agreement. There are advantages to working under both systems.
"When you're given the assignment to write, for example, Spider-Man, the concept, characters and environment are all laid out for you," Claremont explains. "Everything is pre-established, and your sole responsibility as a creator is to craft an exciting, entertaining, hopefully original adventure, to add layers and colors to a canon that already exists. When I sat down and started writing Huntsman, for example, which I've been doing through Image Comics in the past year, I had no world, I had nothing but a blank sheet of paper. I had to create the character, the supporting characters, the world they inhabit, and the stories - everything had to come out of my head onto the page. And that's before I ever got to sitting down and writing the first issue!"
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| Willow was originally planned as a series of movies, but the film's disappointing reception left Lucas with plot ideas that are now being used in the novels. |
"On the one hand, the seduction of a work-for-hire project is that you don't have to do that much work - you have to do a lot of work, but it's in a very specific, limited, focused area. On something like X-Men, you can expand that envelope beyond recognition over the course of 17 years, but the fact is, the Marvel Universe and the X-Men premise and the characterizations of the core cast already existed. I was given a tremendous amount to work with.
"If one were to write a Star Trek novel, the characters of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov and Scotty are already set. You know what the Enterprise looks like, you know what the world of the Federation is like - it's already there! All you have to do is write a really neat story. When I did [the Star Trek graphic novel] Debt of Honor, it was being true to templates that already exist. It wasn't like my novel First Flight, creating a whole world out of nothingness. And that's the difference. It allows you to focus your creative energies in one specific direction, which can often lead to a much tighter, more intense and exciting story. On the other hand, you lose the potentially rich, eloquent tapestry that goes with creating something completely from scratch."
Fantasy Creations
The writer emphasizes that even though his strong preference is to own his creations, he has enjoyed collaborating on Shadow Moon. "My goal for the last four or five years, especially since leaving Marvel, was to de-emphasize more and more the amount of income I derive from work for hire," says Claremont. "I would rather work for myself, and Shadow Moon is a rare exception. I put 17 years into a project [X-Men] and was richly rewarded emotionally, but at the end, it all sort of blew up in everybody's face, because whatever the disagreements between Marvel and myself, we couldn't find an expeditious, mutually agreeable way to resolve them, other than by separation. Once the separation was done, it was, in certain overt respects, as though I had never been there. You don't like being turned into an afterthought walking out the door, especially after you've put that much time and effort into a project - this is a working lifetime here!
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| The collaborators agreed that the new saga of Elora would have more impact if it wasn't treated as a spinoff of a pre-existing universe. |
"The hope is that what we'll be presenting is a book about characters that people come to know and care for, going through moderate degrees of hell, but in such a way that the reader is left rooting for Elora to succeed. Since it is a novel, rather than a movie or a TV show, and since we're treating it from the beginning as if it were from its own source, rather than from a pre-existing universe, we hope that it will please the reader on far deeper and more substantial levels than they might otherwise expect."
Claremont believes readers may not be anticipating anything special, but the writer hopes that Shadow Moon will surprise them all, and points to his track record. "One of the virtues of The X-Men was that it managed to transcend the expectations and prejudices of the medium," says Claremont. "It appealed to a vaster audience than anyone had ever anticipated from any superhero book, much less X-Men. It appealed to women and older readers, and raised themes that some readers felt had no business being in a comic book, yet resulted in stories still in print today. The X-Men transcended expectations and prejudices. The hope is that Shadow Moon will do the same.
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| "There are some characters that I've specifically created, just as there are characters that George specifically created," reveals Claremont. |
"Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride. I hope that the audience that's attracted to Shadow Moon will use that as an entry point to look for other books in the field, to look at the material available in comics, and look at it as stories told in graphic format, rather than dismissing it as comic books. See us and appreciate us for good stories well told. It's the same kind of goal that someone like George Lucas or Steven Spielberg set for themselves when they make a film."
He notes that he's too close to Shadow Moon to point to favorite characters or scenes, preferring to leave it up to the readers. "I've been writing this for so long, I don't really know," says Claremont. "It's like someone asking me who are the breakout characters in Sovereign Seven - I haven't a clue! That's for the audience to tell me a year from now, when we look at the letters and see how people have reacted at conventions. I have my own visions of who the breakout characters are, but that doesn't mean anything. By the same token, I have my own vision of what this story's really keen elements are, but my saying it doesn't make it so - it's up to the individual reader!"
Claremont hopes that Shadow Moon, the first of three novels he plans to write with Lucas, will include strong, real characters that will grip readers and leave them wanting more - the hallmark of some of Claremont's most powerful writing.
"My hope is that people will pick it up and be entranced with page one, and not
be able to put it down until the last page, and come away with the attitude of,
'Holy Toledo, what happens next? I gotta wait a year for this?!' I want to bring
them in, involve them in the lives of these characters and bind them to these
characters so tightly that they want more. If we're successful in that, we'll be
happy. And if we're not as successful, then we'll just try again with the next book!"