Steve Purcell

Steve Purcell is an artist who was employed at LucasArts during the 1990s. Video footage of Purcell was superimposed over existing footage from Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back to create the commander of Gamma Base in the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: Rebel Assault.

Purcell is most widely known as the creator of the Sam & Max comic book series. It first found commercial success in 1987 as a full-length comic series. Purcell eventually went to work for LucasArts as an animator and began writing Sam & Max: Freelance Police comics for the LucasArts quarterly magazine The Adventurer. Sometimes they parodied Star Wars. In 1993, LucasArts released the first Sam & Max video game, Sam & Max Hit the Road, which Purcell helped design.

The duo consists of Sam, a sentient dog, and Max, a savage and demented bunny. They had made easter egg cameo appearances in several LucasArts video games during the time Purcell worked there, including Star Wars: Dark Forces, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. In that game, Max also made a definite appearance as a non-playable character, and his canonicity was referenced in other sources.

Purcell is the husband of former LucasArts and Lucas Learning artist and game designer Collette Michaud, whose likeness was the basis of Ru Murleen in Star Wars: Rebel Assault.

Text and facts from the “Steve Purcell” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.