COMIC LEGEND 1: Walt Simonson had to re-work an unused issue of Tarzan into an issue of Battlestar Galactica! Marvel got the license to Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle hero in 1977 but by 1979, the book was finished.

The book was canceled abruptly enough that the book's regular artist, Sal Buscema, already had an issue in the bag.

So Simonson and Steven Grant were given the task of re-purposing the issue in Marvel's series based on the TV series Battlestar Galactica (about a large spaceship protecting the remnants of a human space fleet as they search for the mythical planet of Earth while trying to keep away from an evil race of warrior robots called Cylons).

Their first step was to write an issue (drawn by Simonson) of Battlestar Galactica where they could set up the concept - a jungle "planet" as well as a group of creatures who happen to look like apes.

COMIC LEGEND 2: Walt Simonson and Chris Claremont re-worked an unpublished Carmine Infantino issue of John Carter of Mars into an issue of Star Wars. In 1977, Marvel tried to re-create their Conan licensing success by licensing Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars character.

Even though the series had a lot of strong talent working on it (Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane launched the title, and Chris Claremont, Walt Simonson and others worked on the series), it was over by late 1979. The last issue published was the third Annual.

However, when it was canceled, Marvel still had some fill-in work by Carmine Infantino in their files. So a year or so later, Walt Simonson and Chris Claremont were given an odd task - take a fill-in Infantino did for John Carter and turn it into a Star Wars story!

And really, they did a marvelous job, with Simonson drawing a few pages as a framing sequence (aping Infantino wonderfully) and then adapting Infantino's art where need be. The first two pages are just Leia thinking back upon her home planet of Alderaan's destruction.