There was an interview with the authors about the book...
http://www.starwars.com/vault/books/news20090911b.htmlAnd my own review back in September 2009...
Recall back to that softcover book "Vader, The Ultimate Guide"...take that and kick it up like 100 decibels.
This is a fairly comprehensive book geared toward the development of Vader from many points of view, including his development as a character, as well as his impact from a cultural, artistic, and collector's standpoint. There is discussion of McQuarrie, Muir, and Prowse and Jones, among others. For the astute Vader experts or enthusiasts here, perhaps a lot of it would be bits of things we've come across on Hyperspace or Star Wars insider, but it is a beautiful book for the Vader enthusiast and I think a worthy addition to anyone's Star Wars book collection, as it brings together more formally much of what we've come to appreciate about Vader over the years. Of course we would all love to see something more in terms of behind the scenes images of the costume development, but perhaps in a later edition (if I have anything to do with it
). There are quite a few fold-outs with tidbits like George Lucas' original handwriting of the gantry scene in ESB, and I was pleased to see both a conceptual drawing and pull out print of our own Darth Jones' 30th Anniversary SW painting "Redemption". Since it takes many people to put a book like this together, including designers, layout artists, etc., and so some things are decided independent of the author or authors, or they get added later on and with copy deadlines are difficult to change. Efforts to put in images with more color, for instance, might conflict with the flow of the chapter, or things like the placement or sizing of images. Sometimes other people would add artwork and ask Ryder to write about it and he didn't even know where it came from.
So it was a challenge. I found it interesting that in the course of writing the book, Ryder, with the help of the LFL image archivist, was able to find some unpublished artwork. For example they found McQuarrie concept drawings of Darth Vader's castle intended for ESB but never used.
I mentioned some of the initial feedback from Probe Droid's RPF thread to Ryder. Any sort of input is greatly appreciated and will be considered for any later editions that may come out. For example, concerns already raised in Probe Droid's thread on the RPF about the lightsaber section I think would be something to target for improvement/elaboration. Keep in mind that the information is presented not for a prop collecting audience but a more general audience. So if for example it is written that the Anakin Ep III lightsaber was made to be an exact replica of the ANH Luke saber, which I think was just a generalization that Ty Teiger's crew made close replicas, it would not be what we as prop aficionados would consider "exact". So there is a bit of artistic license there (or as some critics I expect would say just a lack of research, however you wish to look at it). Also, the photo Probe Droid showed previously of costume patterns was incorrectly referred to by him as "Pattern for ROTJ glove", which led to a bit of confusion. More accurately, they were for the left glove cover, tunic side back, tunic back yoke, and tunic back.
Anyway, here are some more goodies I found in the book...
As a group we've seen so many rare behind the scenes photos, of course one would have hoped this would have been an opportunity to pack a book full of them, but alas not the case...certainly not like the book "Creating the Worlds of Star Wars, 365 Days" by John Knoll. But, one should appreciate that that wasn't the intent of this particular book. I think this book succeeds in what it was intended for, a comprehensive treatment of the development of Darth Vader as a character and motion picture and cultural icon. If there is a future edition, I'll hopefully be able to push for inclusion of more promotional photographs, or photographs taken by the production photographers.