Exclusive Interview With Mike Hansen The Man Behind The 'Star Wars' Epic Collection
Image Source: CultureSlate
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Hansen for an interview. Mike was an assistant editor for Dark Horse’s Star Wars line of comics for two years during the late ‘90s, before moving to Associate Editor overseeing the Manga lines in the early 2000s. We chatted at length about his time at Dark Horse, going to the very first Star Wars Celebration, and his work assembling the Star Wars Epic Collections after Disney purchased Lucasfilm.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I've heard you were at the very first Star Wars Celebration, right? What was it like representing Dark Horse Comics on that stage?
Well, the first Star Wars Celebration was a very unique experience because it was the first time that Lucasfilm had put on a fan convention. Something aimed at millions of fans, and if I remember right, it was in the Denver area, I want to say. It's been a long time. But I remember it was a few months before Episode I came out in theaters.
The Dark Horse booth was in the main part of this giant hall. They rented an old airplane hangar, and it was just this massive room with a sky-high ceiling. So we were one of several different Episode I licensees showing off our Star Wars stuff. We were one of the only people, or booths rather, that had something to give to fans. Because most of these were big companies that were showing off the new action figures or what have you. But the official on-sale dates weren't until it was closer to the movie, so all you could do was show off stuff to people. It was almost like walking through a museum.
But at Dark Horse, we had printed out some promotional flyers and posters and other stuff to give out, so our booth got mobbed. I was there with the Star Wars editor Pete Janes, and two folks from marketing at Dark Horse, and we were rolling up posters and just throwing them at people. Because the crowd was like four or five people deep in front of our booth, and it was a little nuts but it was a lot of fun.
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I bet it was a different environment than they are now at Celebration.
Oh, definitely, it's a lot more fine-tuned now. With the Pepsi Booth, I remember they were the only ones I think that were giving out stuff. They could give out cans of Pepsi to people that had Star Wars faces on the cans. But the most memorable moment of that is a little embarrassing.
We brought some black and white photocopies of the upcoming prequel comics that we were putting out a month or two later, and one of them was an Episode I comics adaptation. There were also some tie-in and one-shot comics featuring each of the main characters. One of them was an Anakin Skywalker comic where he has a little adventure during the movie that we wrote. So we're showing off this preview on the table, and I mean, it's just a photocopy. It's cool at the moment. But in two months, it's going to be worthless. At the time, however, we had to keep an eye on them just to make sure no one was trying to, you know, steal information to get any spoilers.
So I'm keeping a close eye on this one kid, he looks maybe 10 or 12 years old. This little boy flipping through the Anakin Skywalker stuff, and I kind of looked down at him with a big grin on my face and a little condescendingly in hindsight.
I said, "Do you like Anakin Skywalker?"
And the kid looks up at me he was like yeah, and then he walks away with this guy that I assumed was his parent. Yeah, it was Jake Lloyd.
Dark Horse always put out some of my favorite Star Wars comics when I was younger. Like the crazy offshoot they did that I can never remember the name of. It wasn't Tales of the Jedi. It was the series that had Han and Chewie coming to Earth, and crashing the Falcon, and Chewie ends up as Bigfoot.
Yes, Star Wars Tales.
Image Source: Mike Hansen
Yeah! Did you have any hand in that?
I was in the Star Wars offices when that series was created. That came out right after the Episode I stuff, as I recall. We were starting to closely coordinate this Star Wars line with Lucasfilm. But also with Del Rey, the book publishers, so that way we could have some stuff tie into each other and make it a little multimedia thing like Shadows of the Empire was in the 90s.
And Star Wars Tales kind of opened that up where we could tell any story with any creator that would want to work with us. So we were able to get a lot of people who had never worked on Star Wars. Like big-name creators who had their own little Star Wars stories that they wanted to tell.
The first issue was really fun to put together, even though it was way behind schedule. The first story in it was featuring Darth Vader versus, I think they called her the Dark Lady or something, I might be mixing her up with a different character, but we ended up splitting it into two stories because it was behind schedule.
We had to rush to find other stuff to fill in that first issue, which worked out in the end, but it was a mad scramble to get it out on time. And one screw-up with that issue was it was printed on the wrong kind of paper.
Most people don't know this, a little exclusive information for you, but it was printed on cheaper newsprint instead of the glossy white paper that we normally use. And it was just a printing mistake.
But we also worked with Dynamic forces to do a limited edition signed release. where a bunch of the different writers and artists that worked on it would sign it, but to get those copies to them, we did a separate print run that had the glossy paper on Tales #1, and unless they're getting out, there are like maybe a couple thousand signed copies out there that are part of this release. I don't remember how many they did.
I have in my collection an unsigned copy, one of the only unsigned copies of Tales #1. It was just a file copy I had in the office. If any collectors see a glossy Star Wars Tales #1, that's worth big bucks.
Image Source: Mike Hansen
Another question that I wanted to ask you. I assume you were around in '77 when Star Wars came to theaters for the first time. Had you always been a fan, was this the career path you wanted to go, or did the whole Dark Horse thing come up out of the left field for you?
I was always a Star Wars fan that's one of the first movies I remember seeing as a kid I didn't see it in ‘77. I saw it on the re-release in ‘78. And I still remember that opening scene, you know, with the Star Destroyer and everything, and just there's nothing like it. That first moment seeing that on a big screen. I never thought that I would have anything to do with Star Wars.
I just thought this was this unattainable. You know, it was an awesome period of my childhood that was never going to come back. And then Dark Horse started doing the comics. Marvel had done the comics in the ‘70s and ‘80s, of course, and those were popular at the time. They were a little hit-and-miss for me as a kid growing up.
But the way I got my job at Dark Horse is kind of a funny story. My parents, as a surprise, paid for me to go to Comic-Con in San Diego in the summer of ‘96. I was just a college student going to have fun and spend all my money. So I had a great time, I was in the line at the airport to fly back to Portland. I noticed that the suitcase in front of me had a little name tag, and I looked closer at it. It was a Dark Horse business card.
It said Diana Schutz, Senior Editor, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I cannot pass up this opportunity. I just tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Excuse Me, Miss." And charmed her enough to ask her, "Hey do you guys have any jobs up there? I love comics, and I live in Portland, and you know what I can do." So we kept in touch for a few months until something opened up in her editorial department, and that was how I got hired. I started almost like an intern, just part-time, helping out the department with the mail. But within four, five, or six months I got hired full-time. I became an assistant editor and just rose through the ranks from there. I was there for almost five years, and it was a great experience.
So let me ask, as somebody that dropped out of college, did you at least get your degree, or did you leave and go to Dark Horse?
I left and went to Dark Horse.
Smart man.
Well, it depends on who you ask. It was a dream job at the time, you know. There were a lot of challenges that went along with that. I mean comics people are very creative and esoteric people, so there were a lot of weird personalities in the office. But you know every day was memorable and fun.
Image Source: Mike Hansen
How cool that has to have been, you know? especially as you said, for somebody that's been a fan since ‘78. The first time you saw that on-screen you never thought you'd have anything to do with it. And then you end up in Dark Horse, and now you're kind of like the Star Wars comic book historian in a way, by assembling the Epic Collections, right?
Well, I don't know if Marvel necessarily sees me that way, but I'll take it. I do feel a responsibility to try to make these Epic Collections as complete and accurate as possible. So it's almost like an archive of the original Marvel and Dark Horse run, and an opportunity for all the people who weren't there when it happened to experience all that material.
When Disney first bought Lucasfilm, I had already been putting together some books from Marvel. And I just put my hand up and said, "Hey I used to work for Dark Horse. I worked on some of this stuff as an assistant editor, if you guys want, I'd love to be a part of putting the stuff together." So they just said that's your pitch, tell us how you want to do it.
So I broke it all down for them. I put the entire Dark Horse publication history of Star Wars in chronological timeline order and said, "You know, it doesn't matter when those originally came out. If we put it together in this order, it'll be a chance for it to be collected for the first time as a single epic."
I'm just really happy they went for it. I broke it down into eras, and they liked how I did it. And, it's worked out really well.
It shows just how loved it is by the fans. Because Disney's taking a lot of this Legends stuff and adapting it, especially around Timothy Zahn’s. And I know that you are credited as an editor in some of The Last Command adaptations.
I was the assistant editor when the original comics were coming out. My name should be in issues four, five, and six. But I honestly don't remember. Marvel has been collecting this stuff into omnibus hardcovers, usually a year or two after the softcovers come out. Some of those I have helped put together, and other ones they've handled in-house.
So some of them I've kind of helped out in an uncredited role to make sure that if there was anything we happen to overlook in the Epic Collection, we make sure it gets in the omnibus hardcover. So the Omnibus collections, if you will, are the final form of all the Dark Horse material, a chance for everyone to see everything.
In fact, along those lines. I can't say what book it's for because they haven't officially announced it yet. But I just got permission for one of these books to get an additional 32 pages added to it of material that almost no one in America has ever seen. And that's all I can say right now.
If you’ve enjoyed this interview, check out the full video on YouTube.
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