#the idea of michael caine playing han solo is *fascinating*

[cantsayidont]

November 1982. The second Annual in the original Marvel STAR WARS series, published almost a year before the release of RETURN OF THE JEDI, featured a flashback tale of Han Solo with the unusual artistic combination of Carmine Infantino and Rudy Nebres. The credits describe Nebres (whose first name is here spelled "Rudi") as the inker, but looking at the art itself, "finisher" might have been more apt: You can see Infantino's hand in the layouts and character designs, but the finished art looks to be at least 60 percent Nebres:

The assortment of bald guys among the supporting characters and villains is a common Infantino trope, but Nebres makes Han Solo look remarkably like '70s Michael Caine, which is not true of the Infantino SW stories inked by Bob Wiacek or Gene Day:

One of the odd details of this issue is that original colorist George Roussos colored Han's eyes blue in some of the close-ups, something that the digital reconstruction exaggerates:

His eyes are however colored brown in the story's last panel (in both versions):

This raises a complex question: Should digital color reconstruction try to correct coloring errors in the original, or should it preserve them in the interests of fidelity? I increasingly lean toward the latter, but there are arguments to be made in both directions.