Comic Book fans have long raised eyebrows at Salvador Larroca’s work on the Marvel Star Wars line. He’s been criticized for taking still images from the movies and tracing them for his comics for a long time. Still, with the new Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi comic adaptation out on stands, something’s gone far worse for Star Wars comics, as it looks like the still images are now directly being copy-pasted into panels and then changed slightly in Photoshop.
During Kieron Gillen’s main Star Wars run, fans first started noticing the issue with Salvador Larroca’s art. In issue #38, Salvador Larroca clearly took famous still images from The Empire Strikes Back and traced them into panels of the comic.
A reader can see in a side-by-side comparison of both Princess Leia and Han Solo that Salvador Larocca grabbed these images and inserted them into the story.
Photo references have been standard in art and used by professional comic artists since the dawn of the medium. Still, a professional artist usually takes a little bit of time to make the image his own, which Salvador Larroca didn’t do in these Star Wars books.
It’s up to editorial to notice these errors and, at the very least, fix them for future issues. When fans outcried about the images from Kieron Gillen’s Star Wars, nothing was done. Salvador Larroca continued to get Star Wars assignments, and nothing seemed to change in his processes.
Now, in the Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi comic written by Jody Houser, Salvador Larocca is back, and the images copied from the Disney+ T.V. show of Ewan MacGregor and others look even worse than the original Star Wars run the artist was criticized on.
Several panels of Salvador Larroca’s art have an uncanny “real” quality to them, to where it looks beyond a tracing job, but simply copy and pasting an image from Photoshop and putting on a filter to try to blend it in with the comic book art and background colors.
The colorist on this Obi-Wan Kenobi comic is Phil Noto, who didn’t do Salvador Larocca any favors. At least on the older Kieron Gillen Star Wars run, it still looks like matching comic art to the rest of the book, but the comic appears to be even lazier of a job from the already controversial artist.
Comic creator and X User @VanguardComic noted the poor job in Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi #5, posting images from the book and saying, “From the upcoming comic Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi #5. We’re straight up tracing over scenes from the TV series now? This is absolute drek.”
The creator has his own superhero webcomic, Vanguard, in which he puts meticulous effort into drawing himself, which adds to the offense that Marvel would hire someone on Star Wars to do such a poor job.
Fans replied to this image with disbelief, as Disney Marvel seems to sink to new lows with their inability to pay talent to get someone on books like Star Wars, which deserve to have better quality art.
What do you think of Salvador Larroca’s art in Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi? Leave a comment and let us know.
Boy, do those images from the Obi-Wan Kenobi comic book look laughable.
An artist who is married to an opaque projector cannot see what is front of him.