By David Wharton | 7 years ago

Obi-Wan Kenobi once warned a young Luke Skywalker that he would never find “a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” than Mos Eisley spaceport. That always seemed like a bit of an overstatement to me. I mean sure, you may get a little bit murdered after accidentally insulting a walrus man, but just remember to keep an elderly Jedi on hand and you’ll be just fine. Plus, the cantina has great music, a colorful clientele, and what looks to be a very lenient outlook on corpse disposal, so long as you remember to keep everything lubricated. And if you’re still not convinced, check out that awesome Mos Eisley poster up top, courtesy of artist Rob Taylor. It makes Tatooine look so quaint and charming, I’m going to book a stay and the Anchorhead Bed & Breakfast right away!

“I don’t like sand,” says Tatooine resident and all-around grouchypuss Anakin Skywalker. “It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.” Well, some people just refuse to be satisfied. And also get to marry Natalie Portman. We’re all glad Obi-Wan dumped you in the lava, the others are just afraid to admit it. But nevertheless, just because I’m a classy and generous kind of guy, here’s one entirely sans sand: the ice planet of Hoth.

I love how Taylor has used the letters themselves to pay tribute to unforgettable Star Wars settings such as the Death Star, the jungle moon of Endor, and Bespin’s Cloud City. The way he plays with the shapes of the letters to form or suggest places, characters, or scenes from the movies is brilliant. Greedo’s head makes for a perfect letter C in the Mos Eisley print, but I also quite dig the way he handles the double-o’s in the “Tatooine” poster, and using the cloud car as one of the C’s in “Cloud City.”

All in all, Taylor’s work on these reminds me a bit of what Will Eisner used to with his layouts for his Spirit comics (and that’s high praise). You can pick up prints of these images, as well as tons of other cool artwork by Taylor, via his Etsy store.