Fan Expo Vancouver, Vancouver Convention Centre, April 18-20. Three-day event features celebrity guests, autographs, photo sessions, Q&A panels with celebrities and industry professionals, workshops, and retail and exhibitor areas of rare comics and collectibles. For more information visit fanexpovancouver.com.
There is no fandom quite like Star Wars fandom.
Director and writer George Lucas created a world of mythic archetypes, space fantasy, and Chewbacca.
For those Jed-heads who preside over the galaxy far, far away, the suggestion Greedo shot first or the mention of midi-chlorians can provoke rage worthy of a Sith.
Inside that world of Star Wars fandom, Robert Bailey has become a star.
His original drawings of Yoda and Darth Vader and the faces and spaceships of the Star Wars universe have fetched more than $1,000 when sold by dealers.
A fixture at comic conventions, the Stony Plains, Alta. resident prices his drawings more modestly, selling them for to eager fanboys for $140.
The reason Bailey’s success seems unlikely is that up until a few years ago, he had no interest in Star Wars.
Born in Staffordshire, England, Bailey was heir to an artistic eye. Three generations of his family were dishware artists, painting the patterns on the Royal Doulton dishware.
Bailey moved to Canada at the age of 17, staying with relatives at the top of Lonsdale.
Bailey spent much of his working life penning human interest stories for the Calgary Herald.
He interviewed a Titanic passenger living in Vancouver and a survivor from the Wilhelm Gustloff, a repurposed ocean liner that was carrying wounded German soldiers when it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in 1945.
But after 14 years honing his craft Bailey found himself among the newspaper’s 200 layoffs in 1988.
“When I left the Herald I avowed that I would never be in a position where corporate issues would dictate whether or not I would be continuing in employment,” he says. “I decided to take the reins in my own hands.”
Bailey took to crafting Second World War lithographs signed by pilots and ground crews.
“I decided to start at the very top,” he says. “We released about five titles in about eight months, and lo and behold, the American galleries loved them and they were buying them in the hundreds, thousands even — it blossomed to the point where my wife and I were flying all around the world to Germany, Prague, all over the States, to attend reunions of these various fighter and bomber groups from the war.”
Business was spectacular until the market collapsed in 2008.
“It collapsed by about 98 per cent, and that was largely because of the fine gentlemen on Wall Street,” he says.
But just as business ran aground, Bailey discovered a fan.
George Lucas has always had an eye for aviation. The spaceship shootouts in A New Hope are closely modeled on Second World War dogfights.
“I had a call from Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco and they said, ‘George Lucas has been looking at your air combat website and he wants you to start doing Star Wars,” Bailey recalls. “I was totally taken aback and I said, ‘I’m wondering if you have the right person?”
The film pioneer commissioned Bailey to create oil paintings featuring new alien architecture, creatures, characters and ships.
“I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got some homework to do,” because I hadn’t seen a Star Wars film for 20 years,” Bailey laughs.
Lucas eventually shipped Bailey a box “the size of the fridge,” featuring all manner of Star Wars knowledge.
“It was like taking a university course,” Bailey says.
Asked if he ever locked horns with Lucas, Bailey pauses.
“He’s the kind of guy who won’t tell you in a thousand words why he doesn’t like something, he’ll just say no,” he says, laughing.
Bailey would present between five and 10 pencil drawings, and Lucas would select his favourite — which Bailey would turn into an oil painting.
After 18 months, Lucas put his favourites into the book Star Wars Visions.
Equipped with an impressive portfolio and a newfound understanding of Star Wars, an acquaintance suggested Bailey attend the Edmonton Comic Convention, describing it as a Mardi Gras featuring lunatics in costume. Bailey gave it a try.
Within an hour of setting out his drawings they were all gone.
“I thought: ‘Wow, I’m onto something,’” he says. “I also learned very quickly from the comic-cons that the fans are not favourably disposed toward the prequels, so I’m staying mainly with the first three movies.”
The conventions can feel claustrophobic, but Bailey copes.
“I just zone out. I try to decrease my sphere of consciousness to the person with whom I’m speaking and ignore what’s going on in the background. It’s the only way you can survive eight hours a day.”
Bailey also fields questions about the upcoming movies. “Everyone at every comic-con, every second person asks me (if I’m involved). And I say: ‘No, I’m not, but if I was I couldn’t tell you.”
