George Lucas Finally Attends Comic-Con
The creations of filmmaker George Lucas have been staples at the San Diego Comic-Con almost from its beginnings. Lucas’s first film, THX 1138, released in 1971, wasn’t a huge hit at the box office but generated a lot of excitement among science fiction fans of the day.
When the con first launched as a three-day event called the San Diego Golden Gate Comic-Con in 1970, the small crowd in attendance couldn’t have known about it. But by the convention’s second effort, held August 6–8 on the La Jolla campus of the University of California, San Diego, it’s a sure bet that the attendees were aware of writer-director Lucas’s movie, which had been released on March 11 of that year.
With the success of the Star Wars (1977) and Indiana Jones (1981) franchises, Lucas’s prominence in the overlapping worlds of entertainment and pop culture scaled new heights. Characters he’d created or had a hand in creating were regular subjects for Comic-Con cosplay (as was Lucas himself, on more than one occasion) and served as the basis for tie-on novels, comic books, and fan art. But although Lucas’s work was ubiquitous at Comic-Con, Lucas himself was absent, until this year.
On Sunday, July 27, the 2025 con’s last day after opening to the public on Wednesday, George Lucas finally appeared in person. The crowd waited in line for hours to get seats in San Diego Convention Center’s massive Hall H for a panel entitled Sneak Peek: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Inside, rapper/actress Queen Latifah introduced the all-star panel of Lucas, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, and Star Wars production designer Doug Chiang.
The Latest Lucas Project – A Museum
But those men weren’t there to talk about Star Wars or any other film franchise. Instead, the panel focused on what Lucas called “a temple to the people’s art,” a new museum Lucas is opening in Los Angeles to showcase his own collection of narrative art and artifacts. Lucas has founded the museum with Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments, a director of JPMorgan Chase, and former chairman of Starbucks Corporation. Both Lucas and Hobson have signed the Giving Pledge, a promise to dedicate the majority of their wealth to education and the arts.
Lucas has been an art collector since he started making money in the motion-picture business. In his early years, he said, all he could afford was comic art. That will form a significant part of the museum’s holdings. But as his fortune grew—Lucas is one of the most financially successful filmmakers in the world—he added fine art.
Along with original pages from comics and graphic novels and original comic strips by Jack Kirby, Winsor McKay, George Herriman, Mike Mignola, R. Crumb, and Jaime Hernandez, the museum’s collection will include work by Frank Frazetta, Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, N.C. Wyeth, Jessie Willcox Smith, among many others. Not only will the entire Historic Lucasfilm Archive find a home there, but so will design work, storyboards, costumes and props from Lucas’s movies.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open in 2026 in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, already home to such cultural institutions as the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California African American Museum, the California Science Center and the Theodore J. Alexander Science Center School. The 300,000 square foot building will include exhibit space, two state-of-the-art theaters, and spaces for learning and engagement, dining facilities, and retail and event spaces.
