Landspeeder Toy

Check out this little beauty! Luke's landspeeder was one of the first wave of vehicles released alongside the original 12 figures in 1978 (the other two being the X-wing and TIE-fighter). Despite being slightly more brownish in colour than shown in the movie (I guess Kenner didn't think a pink toy would be much of a hot seller to young boys), this vehicle is surprisingly faithful and pretty much to scale. With all the cool Tatooine figures released at that time I can imagine that Kenner's landspeeder went trundling across many a shag carpet, knocking down Jawas, Stormtroopers and cantina scum with Luke and Ben behind the controls.

It's got some neat features too, like the pop-open hood which shows the engine and has room for some weapons to be stored. Also, the gear stick makes some spring loaded wheels pop down which causes the landspeeder to wobble about as if floating. It was often advertised showing R2-D2 and C-3PO sitting on the back as shown in the movie, but they would just slide off as soon as the landspeeder was given a playful shove unless their feet were fixed into the small pegs on the rear of the seats.

These aren't hard to pick up in decent, complete condition for low prices, but there are a few bits and pieces that can go missing over the years such as the dashboard stickers, hood, seats and windshield which has a tendency to yellow over time.

I don't have the box for mine, but here's what it looked like below. As far as I know the landspeeder was only released as part of the Star Wars line (and not repackaged for The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi). It was however re-released in 1984 along with a few other older vehicles as part of Kenner's 'Collector Series'.

Tarkin is Back!

I set this blog up purely as a 'retro' showcase of stuff made over 30 years ago, so it was never going to be a 'latest news' type of blog. But every so often I get wind of a little snippet that, although only connected in a small way, hits all my geek buttons and I can't resist sharing.

www.starwars.com have recently revealed that an upcoming character in the current TV series The Clone Wars will be none other than original Star Wars villain; Grand Moff Tarkin!

Now, The Clone Wars is a bit of a sticky point for most old school fans with many dismissing it as little more than an extension of the often derided prequel trilogy. Personally I think it's far better than that. Where the prequel trilogy got bogged down in politics and huge amounts of 'set up', a TV series has much more room to get back to what Star Wars was all about in the first place - swashbuckling, serialized adventures in outer space! Sure, it's all 'Anakin, Obi-wan and Ahsoka' rather than 'Luke, Han and Leia', but a lot more care seems to have been taken to cater to the fans by working in little bridges to the original trilogy such as this recent revelation.

It is not known what Tarkin will be up to in the series (although he seems to be going under the title of 'Captain Tarkin' so it looks like a promotion is on the horizon). I think the character has been terribly underused over the past three decades seeing as he was pretty much the main villain in Star Wars (the one 'holding Vader's leash' so to speak) so I'm glad he's getting a look in now. I honestly thought he would play a major part in the prequels, but was to be disappointed.

It probably won't happen, but I think it would be really cool for Tarkin to appear in a scene alongside Count Dooku, just for the excuse of reuniting Hammer veterans Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing on screen again. I know, I know; it's not really them, but you can see where I'm going with this right?

Pizzazz #10 (July 1978)

Pizzazz was a magazine put out by Marvel between 1977 and 1979 aimed at teenagers. Focusing on movies, pop/rock stars and TV, the magazine only ran for 16 issues but is a fantastic time capsule of late 70s pop culture. Of course Star Wars would inevitably pop up on occasion and Pizzazz in fact ran two serialized comic strips separate to Marvel's regular Star Wars monthly comic book.

Yep, that's Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees on the cover, taking a stroll around the set of the utterly bizarre and largely derided musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). This was the 10th Pizzazz which began the second Star Wars story entitled 'The Kingdom of Ice'. Frustratingly, this story was never completed as Pizzazz folded after issue #16. But anyway, here is the beginning of what looks to be a pretty good story...

The rest of the magazine has some great stuff and no teen-magazine is complete without an 'agony aunt' column. These are usually good for a few laughs (especially the really dated ones). These kids writing 30+ years ago don't seem to have any problems that would be out of the ordinary today, but it was one of the less than sensitive 'solutions' offered that really caught my eye. When one kid writes that her sister thinks she's fat, even when she isn't, 'Miss Pizzazz' suggests some reverse psychology; "Try telling her she is fat and should weigh herself." - Yeowch!

As always the ads are worth a look too. I can't say that 'Gee, your hair smells terrific!' has ever got me anything but a restraining order though...

Marvel #17 - The Crucible

Keeping going with the one-shot story format, Marvel brought out this story of Luke's pre-Star Wars adventures in the very next issue where we see him living an average teenager's life on Tatooine; bulls-eyeing womp-rats (not in his T-16, but from his landspeeder this time) and generally mooching about and complaining about how Biggs gets to go to the academy while he has to stay put and help out his uncle.

The artist's depictions of Owen and Beru are pretty far from what we see of them in the movie, particularly Beru who actually looks like quite the cougar here...


Luke heads off to Beggar's Canyon for Biggs' farewell do and they race their Skyhoppers. After the race a landspeeder crashes the party (literally) and a wounded militia scout is dragged from the wreckage, babbling about Tusken Raiders on the warpath with newly acquired weapons after one of their sacred wells was poisoned. This seems to draw some sort of parallel between the Tusken Raiders and Native Americans of the Old West, which I've never really considered before.

The Sandpeople arrive and there is a firefight. Luke and Biggs try to make for one of the Skyhoppers to get help, but are attacked and Biggs takes a hit in the shoulder with a garderffi stick with its tip dipped in sand bat venom. With the poison working fast, Luke pilots the Skyhopper through the deadly 'Diablo Cut' and narrowly avoids being blasted by more Sandpeople. He lands back at his uncle's farm safely where Biggs presumably gets the medical treatment he needs, leaving Luke to gaze at the twin suns and daydream once more. We are then treated to a great one page panel montage of future events...

This Micronaut cruiser here which can split into 7 different vehicles looks thoroughly awesome.

Read Along Book and Record

I don't have a record player so I've no idea how this plays but the vinyl looks in pretty good shape. There were several Star Wars read along records (eventually re-released on cassette tapes of course) covering the movies and a couple of new stories in the kiddified wake of Return of the Jedi. This one is from 1979. I was planning to scan a few pages to give a taste of what the book is like but a quick Youtube search shows that some kind soul has gone that extra mile so we can all enjoy this product pretty much as it was intended complete with scratchy pops and crackles!




Those are some pretty nifty pictures for the young Star Wars fan in the days before home video entertainment and my copy of the book is pretty well-thumbed. With only a few pages to tell the entire story of the movie, there are naturally a couple of cheeky shortcuts, most notably the quick shift from Luke discovering Leia's message to going off to visit Ben Kenobi. There is no mention of R2 running away or of any Sandpeople.

None of the original actors reprised their roles for this despite authentic sounds and music from the movie. It's really odd hearing other people voice Luke, Han and the gang (most especially strange is Darth Vader). But Corey Burton, who voices Luke, does a pretty good job at capturing Hamill in my opinion. Little trivia fact; Burton is still working closely with the Star Wars franchise by voicing Count Dooku among others in the Clone Wars.

Marvel #16 - The Hunter

I hope everybody had a nice Christmas or whatever you celebrate (if anything at all). It's been a busy time so I haven't really done much to the blog recently but I thought I'd take advantage of this odd, quiet bit between Christmas and New Year to do a quick post. So, let's take a look back at October 1978...

Here is the first of the one shot issues. Up until this point we had been given the six-part adaptation of the movie, a four-part arc that saw Han and Chewie running into trouble on Aduba-3 and a five-part arc that had Luke and Leia team up with them on a watery planet in the Drexel System. Now it's time for some evil skulduggery in the form of Valance 'The Hunter'; a brand new villain dreamed up by Marvel to fill the void left by Vader...

This was the first issue that did not feature any of the regular gang (other than in a brief flashback) and instead opens with a gang of mercenaries led by blue armour-wearing baddie 'Valance'. Raiding a medical station, these chaps have not come for loot but merely to destroy everything and Valance seems to have a burning hatred for all droids blasting any that cross him to smithereens.

In a sick bay they come across old Don-Wan Kihotay - the Jedi wannabe (or perhaps he really was, who knows?) who teamed up with Han in the earlier issues. Mumbling in his delirium, the old duffer babbles about his adventures with Han Solo and a gang of Star-hoppers including a young farmboy. Valance is mightily pleased by this revelation, mistaking the 'farmboy' for the one desperately wanted by the Empire for destroying the Death Star.

With dollar signs in his eyes, Valance sets off to track down the Star-hoppers and claim the bounty on the farmboy's head. Poor old Jaxxon (remember the giant green rabbit?) is the first to be pinned and is tortured before being saved by Amazia who blasts all but one of Valance's men sent to do the job. The sole survivor overhears them discussing Aduba-3 and heads off to tell his boss.

Fleeing to Aduba-3, Jaxx and Amazia manage to warn Jimm (the farmboy) that his pleasant farm life is about to be disrupted. They lead Valance and his men into an ambush. Stampeding Banthas ensue and wipe out most of Valance's gang but the blue-suited bounty hunter himself is enraged beyond belief to discover that the farmboy he has been chasing in no way resembles the farmboy on the Death Star security tapes. In a fit of rage, he blasts the Star-hoppers with a gun that seems to replace his hand for a brief instant before taking off in his ship alone. In the comfort of his cockpit, he begins to absently claw at his face to reveal...

An ad for the third 'Bad News Bears' movie here, a series which I've never seen. I love these Marvel toys. There seems to be no end to them. How many different cars do you think Spider-Man ended up with?

Marvel Annual 1979

As I've finished going through the various Marvel story arcs and with only a handful of one-shot issues to go, I thought it was time I took a look at the only Star Wars annual Marvel did in the pre-Empire Strikes Back era. Coincidentally, this 33-page annual was released this month 31 years ago!

So, what's the story? Well with a thicker format to work with (this comic even has a spine!) there was plenty more room to fill with an all new tale of Luke, Han and Leia getting into yet another intergalactic scrape. This time the villain is Kharys, the Magestrix of Skye, a green-skinned winged warrior woman who goes around with a posse of 'Catumen' warriors. She bumps into Leia (deliberately, incidentally) whilst Luke and the Princess are mooching around the planet of Tirahnn, setting off a brawl and a back-street chase between our heroes and the 'Cats'.

Luke and Leia make it back to the Falcon where Han has hooked up with yet another old flame, this time in the shape of superfly, seventies-chick Katya M'Buele. I'll take this time to mention that the artistic team-up of penciller Mike Vosburg and inker Steve Leialoha is superb here and they really capture the likeness of the characters which, to be fair, has been pretty spotty throughout the Marvel series so far.

Upon the relation of their tale, Katya recognises the description of Kharys. And Han knows her too, having severely ticked her off during his smuggling days.

Later on, a strange being enters the Falcon whilst all are asleep; some sort of fire elemental. It kills Katya, making her a totally throwaway character, before trying to take on Luke who dispatches the entity with his trusty old lightsaber. The gang then set off for Skye for a showdown with Kharys but upon arrival are shot down by a squadron of Imperial TIE fighters. Luke and Leia escape in a pod while Han and Chewie carry on in the Falcon and are presumably killed.

Captured by the Highland Clans, Luke and Leia are dragged before the winged council on charges of trespassing. Luke is recognised as an enemy of the Empire (who the people of Skye are subservient to) but his lightsaber is also recognised as having belonged to their 'wingless brother' and the Highland Clans decide to help them rescue Han and Chewie who are alive and being held in the Imperial stronghold.

So begins an aerial assault on the sky-lair of Kharys who has an army of stormtroopers at her command. Leia gets into the palace and blasts her way to the torture chamber where Han is experiencing Kharys' hospitality. Kharys reveals that it was she who sent the 'smoke demon' onto the Falcon and is very interested in handing Luke and Leia over to Darth Vader who she serves. Leia busts in and rescues her comrades. Luke meanwhile tackles the stormtroopers below and soon finds himself up against Kharys herself who also possesses a lightsaber and is very good at using it...

Luke eventually kills Kharys and fulfills a prophecy that states that the 'one' would come and free Skye from Imperial tyranny. He is told that years ago during the Clone Wars, a Jedi called Obi-Wan Kenobi and his two pupils saved Skye from destruction. A few years later, one of the pupils - Darth Vader - returned to say that he had killed Kenobi and the Jedi Knights and the Skye was now under Imperial rule. And the other Jedi pupil? Why, Luke wears his 'saber...

I love it when Marvel incorrectly fills in the gaps like this. Something about the idea of Kenobi gallivanting around the galaxy with TWO pupils, one being Luke's father and the other Darth Vader just amuses me. Also any mention of the Clone Wars in something over 30 years old just tickles my nerd-bone.

The only advert I saw in the annual that I haven't covered before was this Mego Superhero Dolls one. And the last few pages are dedicated to the extra artwork readers in the UK got as the comic was printed weekly there thus requiring extra cover art.