Lucas & Comics

An interesting exchange amongst the Comic-Con panel, confirming stuff we already knew. For instance, George's interest in the comics (which apparently constitutes his primary intake of EU material).

It's interesting, too, to see how some people in the production staff keep trying to work EU material in, since it is almost absent from the Lucas stories.:

Sansweet: So you guys are pretty familiar with the comics and the novels. What happens when you present an expanded universe character who’s never really had much of a role in Star Wars? How did you come up with the idea of using Asajj Ventress as a major villain?

Gilroy: George is a fan of the comics. He would look through the comics and say, “wow, this is a really interesting character, visually. Let’s see that character.” There’s a few that I think the fans of the comics are going to love to watch the series. You’re going to see some of your favorite characters.

Filoni: We have to bring some of it in front of him too. We would work with a certain idea, and go onto Wookieepedia and print out all the pages and say, are you aware of all this material out there, and See what he wasn’t aware of and wasn’t aware of, and take what we wanted to do and try to do a version of something to keep it all together, because Star Wars has expanded so far. Every now and then you run into a Boba Fett scenario, where we didn’t know he was a clone, and the Jaster Mereel, and now he’s not, and now he’s a clone. And then we call Leland Chee and it’s his problem.

From the sound of things, we largely have George doing his own thing and then various folks bringing in EU stuff trying to get it in, with the exception of when he is enchanted by something from the comics (like hot blue Twilek chicks). Reportedly, a few aspects of EU backstory are going to make it into the show, such as Dooku's wealthy family from Serenno (which, in a similar manner, made it into the RotS novelization because the author was trying to keep EU continuity).

So on the one hand, vast portions of the EU are being trounced (much to the chagrin of assorted EU-philes, as noted in previous postings), but some convenient elements are coming in to the wider canon with George's blessing. Sounds good.