NEVER IRON ANYTHING: Star Wars #80

Tony Esmond and I discussed a favourite issue of mine from the Star Wars series of comics published from 1977-1986.

Have a listen here.

WALTER SIMONSON WITH TOM PALMER STAR WARS ARTIST'S EDITION

I was lucky enough to get a copy of this beauty recently:

A wonderful book that presents colour scans of the original artwork from the comics of the 1980s.

Here are a few interesting images from inside, along with the printed versions:

The art has been flipped for this cover! I wonder why? Maybe that old chestnut of the bad guys usually coming into frame from the right. Interestingly, Simonson's signature has not been flipped, and occupies its position on the middle left on both.

A misspelling of "niether" that has been corrected in the final edition.

Tarkin with an "a" has been corrected too. Note the names sneaked into the diagram; Walt Simonson, Louise Jones (editor), and Tom Palmer.

Here Leia originally said, "You new in town?" In the published version, "You" has been excised, plainly showing the space where it had been.

An interesting aspect to these three preceding examples is that the changes are not visible on the original art. There's no liquid paper on these pages. The changes must have been implemented at a later stage in the production.

I wonder what the blue tint on the foreground figure is for. Can't see anything in the printed page that would have required that. It's the only example of this in the entire book.

This one has the lines of red doing a lot of the work in the finished page. Or the "red supprint" as written in the margin. I also like seeing what are obviously fingerprint ink smudges on the original art to create texture.

These books are great, and seeing the artwork at a large scale is definitely the main draw. However, I wish they would not cut off so much of the notes in the margin. This one says something or other "to his ship". Seeing the production process is also a big part of my interest in these.

There is probably a novelty to seeing the artwork without colour for American readers. However in the UK, we were presented with these stories in black and white in the first place.

Let's end with this great image. Lobot punching Lando off of Cloud City. What's interesting here is that the foot on the right overlaps the page border. On the printed cover, all the foot is there, and the lines through the right hand side have been continued, perhaps by some production staff. This also happens to an extent at the top of the image. And the left has the top of Lando's head drawn in. It seems the entire image has been downsized slightly to fit the page. Perhaps the "Columbia Ten-Speed Racer" banner altered the usual dimensions.

An excellent book!

MARVEL STAR WARS #108 (or MUG ME, MARVEL)

Marvel was licenced to make Star Wars comics in the 70s and 80s, creating the original run which featured many creators including Howard Chaykin, Mary Jo Duffy, Michael Golden, Archie Goodwin, Carmine Infantino, Cynthia Martin, David Mazzucchelli, Tom Palmer, Walt Simonson and Al Williamson.

Being a big Star Wars fan, I read all of them. The series ran from 1977 to 1986. The next Marvel Star Wars comic was scheduled to be a series called Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy, but the rights lapsed and Dark Horse picked it up instead. They’ve published Star Wars comics since 1991. Unlike Marvel, who put out one ongoing series with limited related titles, Dark Horse have continually brought out an ever changing roster of series. It was too much to keep up with for me. I still keep an eye out for good Star Wars comics, but haven’t felt the desire to buy them all since after Dark Empire 2 back in 1994.

Now that Disney has bought Lucasfilm, speculation is rife about Marvel getting the licence back. Disney owns Marvel, so it might make sense. However there have been other Disney properties which feature in comics not made by Disney, so it’s not a certainty. And anyway I thought to myself, who cares? Doesn’t make any difference to me who’s publishing Star Wars. But then it occurred to me: Marvel could get the rights back and publish Star Wars #108.

The completist in me would find it very hard not to buy that!