George Lucas stepped into the San Diego Convention Center’s cavernous Hall H and stepped into history, because the legendary creator of Star Wars made his first ever appearance at Comic-Con, the favored arts convention that has partially been built off his stories and creations.
It was the biggest ever Sunday panel for the convention, in accordance with sources, which often sees its marquee presentation headline on Friday or Saturday. But such is the facility of Lucas.
1000’s waited hours simply to get inside, chanted “Lu-cas, Lu-cas!” while they waited, after which gave a wild standing ovation because the filmmaker took to the stage, introduced by rapper-actress Queen Latifah, and sat down next to filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and Star Wars production designer Doug Chiang.
If the 6,500-strong crowd was dissatisfied he didn’t talk a whiff about Star Wars or Indiana Jones, it wasn’t shown, as cries of “I really like you, George!” and waving lightsabers punctuated the air several times.
Lucas even received a standing ovation when he left the presentation, which was devoted entirely to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He, together with museum board member and fellow art collector del Toro and Chiang, were there to not only give a primary have a look at the museum but in addition make a case for the importance and validity of narrative art, which incorporates comic book art, as an important type of expression.
“This can be a temple to the people’s art,” Lucas said, speaking in regards to the idea for his museum. His first words in Hall H were about how he began acquiring art while in college, but all he could afford was comic book art. With success, he expanded his art collection to now over 40,000 pieces.
“What is significant to me, what’s magical, isn’t a person and his collection, it’s a lineage of images,” explained del Toro. “We’re in a critical moment by which one thing they prefer to disappear is the past.”
“And that is memorializing a preferred, vociferous and eloquent moment in our visual past that belongs to all of us. And the museum celebrates this,” he added.
A video presentation showed interior looks on the museum — there are not any right angles anywhere, Latifah underscored — in addition to images that will probably be in the gathering.
A canopy of DC comic Mystery in Space, featuring the primary appearance of Adam Strange; the primary ever Flash Gordon comic strip; a canopy of Nineteen Fifties EC comic Tales from the Crypt; strips of Peanuts and Garfield; art starting from Brian Bolland and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola to underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, Windsor McKay and Moebius; art of Astro Boy and Scrooge McDuck. But there have been also images of art by Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and Frieda Kahlo.
Also within the museum will probably be concept and storyboard art from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark by Ralph McQuarrie and Jim Steranko, in addition to the props of starships and speeders from various Star Wars movies.
Chiang explained that comic art particularly had long been discounted. “It’s not taken seriously,” he said, and when he was younger was told, “You’ll outgrow it at some point.”
“I’m so glad I didn’t,” he said, before driving home the purpose that one in all the strengths of narrative art is that it’s driven by story. “Story comes first. Art comes second.”
The thought of narrative art being a driver of community and customary belief systems was one to which Lucas, in sometimes elliptical ways, kept repeating and returning.
Del Toro also got into the heady and philosophical, denoting differences between art for myth-building purposes and art for propaganda purposes
“Myth belongs to all of us, propaganda belongs to a really small group,” he said. “Myth unites us, propaganda divides us.”
The museum, which has had its opening pushed back several times, is slated to open in 2026.