I have a passion for collecting vintage Star Wars merchandise from the late 70's. Action figures, comics, trading cards etc - anything related to the first Star Wars movie. But why only until 1980? It's not that I don't love The Empire Strikes Back and beyond (I really do), but there is something about that first wave of Star Wars mania that really grips me, back when it was all fresh and exciting...

Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Star Wars


As well as releasing the first 6 issues of the comic in 2 collections (plus a single collection of issues 1-6), Marvel also did this trade-paperback style anthology published by Del Rey in November 1977. It's much smaller than the comic books so the artwork is a little squashed in there and its all in black and white as you can see in the images below. It also included an intro by Stan Lee who manfully owns that he initially turned down the idea of a Star Wars comic thinking that the world didn't really need another 'ray-gun space opera', but quickly changed his mind upon seeing an early cut of the movie. Then there's Roy Thomas's preface where he details the difficult task of producing a comic book with only movie stills to go on and the frustration at seeing scenes such as the Biggs Darklighter one being cut from the movie.


The issues are called 'chapters' and include the cover image for each issue as well as a nifty bit of closing artwork for each chapter. 






At the end of the book there's some neat pin-up art courtesy of Howard Chaykin and Ernie Chan.






6 comments:

Greyhawk Knight said...

Hi. Do you actually own that book? May I ask what the ISBN is? I'd like to try to hunt it down.
I'd like to see the Chaykin art without distracting colors.

Chris Thorndycroft said...

Yeah, the ISBN is; 0-345-27492-x.

Dex said...

I have that book somewhere. Wherever it is, I know it's sitting right on top of the World of Fire book of the same size.

Will Errickson said...

I never liked the angry, macho Luke Skywalker in these comic book adaptations. Totally wrong!

Anonymous said...

Wasp dudes! Amazing stuff continues the good work. Brooklyns Finest The Film Tips

Anonymous said...

Ha! I remember buying this book from woolworths for 90p,almost 40yrs ago, after watching the original release of star wars this tiny book went everywhere with me until sum ome stole it, gotta try n find a copy again!