Lippincott had also made it clear during negotiations that he wanted Howard Chaykin to do the artwork. "He had done a science fiction comic book independently called Cody Starbuck and that's the reason we wanted him," says Lippincott. Cody Starbuck had debuted in the first issue of an underground comic book called Star Reach in April, 1974. The style of the series was clearly evocative of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers genre, but with a more adult sensibility. Star Reach was one of many new underground comics that were gaining ground among comics enthusiasts, noted for their mature approach to the medium and their use of up-and-coming artists. Both Lippincott and Lucas were big fans of Cody Starbuck, and agreed that Chaykin should do Star Wars.
With Roy Thomas doing the writing and editing and Chaykin on board for the artwork, Lippincott turned his attention to the 1976 summer convention circuit. Lippincott admits that the decision to take Star Wars to conventions was influenced by a colleague he had worked for back when he was a publicist at MGM in the early '70s. According to Lippincott, Mike Kaplan had reversed fading box office returns for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey by redirecting their marketing efforts at youth subculture. "In order to build the box office up, he tied in with this sort of young people hippie psychedelic period and came up with the 'star child' campaign. It really turned Kubrick around because he saw immediately that it was the focus that revived the box office." Lippincott took the lesson to heart and designed a similar strategy for Star Wars, but instead of hippies, he'd go after the comic book junkies.
With the first comic books scheduled to hit stands more than eight months away, Lippincott needed something to represent the series for the July 1976 San Diego Comic-Con. Lippincott felt Chaykin's bold signature style would best convey the spirit of Star Wars to comic book fans, and had him design an exclusive poster for the event. "I thought, what a great idea," remembers Lippincott, "I'll go there, do a presentation of the film and sell a poster done by Chaykin on Star Wars to introduce the comic book. Roy and Howard will be there and I'm going to sell it for a dollar, which I think would be a fair price." Actually, fans had to pay the princely sum of $1.75 for the poster, which now commands several hundred dollars on the collector's market.
Because Star Wars was virtually unknown at the time, Lippincott was counting on the reputations of Thomas and Chaykin to draw people to the Star Wars panel discussion. Though Chaykin was well known to fans of independent comics, Roy Thomas was famous for the Conan series he was currently writing, and together they drew in scores of fans that may have otherwise ignored a panel devoted to some 'space comic'. Although they received a lot of positive feedback from fans, most of the 1,000 posters Lippincott had printed up for the event went unsold. "It didn't sell as well as I thought it would but it did help to impress a lot of people."
