For George Lucas, semi-retirement means a relatively quiet life away from the spotlight. Ever since Star Wars was acquired by Disney in 2012, the man behind one of science fiction's greatest stories has spent most of his time away from Hollywood. That's not to say that George Lucas isn't still working on projects, it's just that much more of his life is removed from show business.

If anything, it's easy to assume the Lucas has quite a bit more time on his hands -- after all, he's not working on the new Star Wars sequels, so what's a man with that much time and money going to do?

Apparently, go to the comic shop: Lucas surprised the shoppers at Midtown Comics on Monday with a short visit (and a few purchases).

 George Lucas stopped by Midtown Comics today! #StarWars

A photo posted by @midtowncomics on Mar 9, 2015 at 8:25am PDT

According to one of the store's employees (via Page Six), Lucas wasn't in the store for long, but it's easy to guess what he was there for:

"He came in and was browsing the store, looking at the 'Star Wars' stuff ... He was only in for about 15 minutes, his driver was waiting outside. Fans were pretty excited to see him and he signed a comic book. He was saying he hadn't read any of the new 'Star Wars' comics."

It is a little surprising to see Lucas picking up new Star Wars merchandise, especially when it took him so long to watch the trailer for Episode VII. That being said, it is nice to see the creator of such an important franchise dabbling in its newer works -- for a while, it seemed as if the father of Star Wars would have nothing to do with anything that Disney put out.

One interesting tidbit: the new Star Wars comics weren't the only thing that Lucas picked up over at Midtown Comics. The final item he purchased was a single issue of Heavy Metal, a comic that single-handedly created the "naked women riding dragons and killing zombies" genre that started way back in the '70s and '80s.

It's certainly a unique choice, though Heavy Metal doesn't really mesh with Star Wars all that well ... maybe Lucas just wanted to see what everyone else was doing back when he was working on Star Wars?

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Photo: Nicolas Genin | Wikimedia Commons