Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures

Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures #1-9

by Russ Manning

Collects Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures (1994) #1-9 . Even with less than twenty minutes of screen time to his credit, the most popular character from the Star Wars trilogy is Boba Fett. Read these stories featuring the merciless bounty hunter collected from Russ Manning's Star Wars newspaper strips. It was in these strips, which originally ran in 1979 and 1980, that Boba Fett made his very first appearance in print (dated prior to his motion-picture debut), making this a true must-have item for anyone looking to become a Jedi Master!

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great retro fun, and though the plots are laughable, it is a light hearted read, though not for Star Wars purists.

[Jared · Rating 1 out of 5]

Star Wars Legends Project #246

Background: The Early Adventures, released in May 1997, collects a 9-issue special run of Dark Horse's Classic Star Wars reprints (August 1994-April 1995) of the original Star Wars newspaper strips (March 1979-August 1980). I was so confused by what this was the whole time I was reading it . . . Before Archie Goodwin took over writing the Star Wars newspaper strip in 1981, it was written by Russ Manning until he was forced to quit due to health issues. These are his strips (well, most of them) . . . It's a sort of Classic Star Wars Volume 0, I guess. Manning also did some of the art, along with Rick Hoberg and occasionally Brian Snōddy. Hoberg has done a smattering of other things, but these are the only EU credits for Manning and Snoddy.

The Early Adventures is set about a year after the Battle of Yavin. It's unclear whether the stories take place before or in-between Goodwin's later stories, or whether it remotely matters. The main characters are Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Darth Vader. The stories take place in a variety of locations, including Tatooine and Kessel.

Summary: There's danger around every corner as the heroes of the Rebellion work to thwart a barrage of Imperial plots, plans, and secret weapons. Even routine missions turn deadly thanks to mysterious Imperial operatives and assassins. Luke, Han, and Leia are destined to one day take down the Empire, but first they'll have to survive.

Review: I don't know how to even begin describing how utterly wretched this collection of stories is. I've complimented Goodwin a couple of times on his ability to simultaneously generate stories for both a Marvel comic series and a newspaper strip without feeling like he's getting stale or phoning it in . . . My respect for his skill only grows by contrast with Manning's total lack of effort here.

I mean, I'm making an assumption, certainly, and it would be even worse if this is the caliber of story he produces while actually trying. But I feel safe jumping to this conclusion because of just how poorly-conceived and not-at-all-thought-out each and every one of these storylines is. A few of them get off to a promising start (most don't even have that much to offer), but then quickly derail into just utterly . . . well, I can't even say laughable nonsense, because laughable implies at least some form of entertainment value. They're just grotesquely stupid, and all told with a complete lack of care either for any notion of a larger Star Wars universe or even for their own internal coherence as world-building.

In one storyline, Darth Vader captures a bunch of kids and attempts to leverage them to draw the Rebels into a trap. But one of the kids, a prodigy, escapes and recruits Han Solo and a gang of his drinking buddies to let him lead them into battle to thwart the Empire. In another, Luke and Han travel to Tatooine to investigate a mysterious capsule . . . capsules like this have dropped from the sky on several planets, and a nearby Rebel base is always destroyed soon after. It turns out the capsule contains a deadly virus, but one of the symptoms before death is that the infected beings' eyes turn into . . . "starry windows" that the Empire can . . . look into and use to pinpoint Rebel bases. I promise I'm not making that up. In fact, even my attempt to explain it makes more sense than anything that's actually said in the story. This is the caliber of thought that went into this collection. Run.

F

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. Certainly, there are some fun bits here, like an encounter with Grand Moff Tarkin's widow and Luke being forced to return to Tatooine. And the art is generally good, with accurate depictions of the characters and some cool new spaceships and creatures and stuff. However, the plots tend to be kinda goofy at best, and not in the really fun way that the old Marvel comics are. The first three chapters deal with an attempt by Luke, Leia, and the droids to stop an Imperial operation on a gambling planet. There's some dumb stuff that happens and the plot is never actually resolved and there's some weird thing about C-3P0 reporting to a Rebel intelligence computer. It does at least introduce Blackhole, a character that later Expanded Universe material would make actually cool. The rest of the book is one-off stories, which range from Leia crash-landing on a mining planet to Han and Luke stopping a weather-control spaceship from destroying Kessel. I guess my issue is that the stories don't gel very well with the rest of Star Wars, and they also don't really provide a coherent alternate universe of their own, unlike say the Marvel stuff which tells a complete story of it's own. Plus, it's kinda cool to see an early Star Wars spin-off, and it's sure better than another such thing from 1978, but there's not really anything of true historical interest here for this Star Wars fan. I didn't have a terrible time reading these old comics, but I don't think any of them were very memorable and I can't say I recommend them very highly.

[Darren-lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - Not that classic....

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun stories of space opera with some very nice Russ Manning art.

Not trying to re-inevent the wheel, just tell some good sci-fi adventures.
A fun read.

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago, I read the complete Al Williamson run on the Star Wars comic strip. In all three volumes, called Classic Star Wars, there were forewords in each that proclaimed that while the Williamson stories are good, the Russ Manning era of the strips were far superior. Being a huge Star Wars lover, I had to know what the fuss was all about. So Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures was quickly added to my wish list.

After months and months of searching, I finally found a copy of this book which I could afford. Some sites had this book listing for upwards of $80 as this Dark Horse edition was out of print. And don't even ask about the 9 individual issues. I never could find a web site or LCS that carried these in the bins.

Anyways, after finding this book, I immediately took to reading it. It's a mix of several stories that continue the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire. As per George Lucas' instructions, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader cross paths but never officially face-off. This makes for a number of stories that contain close calls and non-canon baddies.

The most memorable of these is a holographic agent of evil code-named Blackhole. It appears that this villain is going to be the main villain in the strip. But after the third story run is complete, he disappears- literally. He's never seen nor mentioned again.

Also never mentioned again is a massive Rebel database named Mistress Mnemos, who promises to investigate Blackhole and just doesn't seem to get around to it.

There's also this lizard Imperial officer referred to as Major Rahz. He's really awesome looking but quite unusual for Star Wars. Remember, the Empire wasn't known to be very accommodating to non-humans. Other than this guy, I think Admiral Thrawn is the only true alien species member to hold rank in the Empire. While very non-canon, I did think this dude was pretty cool!

One neat storyline reveals how the Rebels were able to purchase and maintain a fleet in the shadow of the Empire. This had always been a question to me. And while I am sure that the reveal has been retconned time and time again, the answer I found in this book was forever acceptable.

The main reason anybody would want to own this book is that it contains one of the earliest appearances of Boba Fett! He crosses paths with Luke and Han; hinting at what trouble he'll be giving the Rebels in the Empire Strikes Back. I'm very interested to see if funny pages containing any of the strips from this story are considered highly sought after collectibles from fans of those who wear Mandalorian armor.

I really can see where people would enjoy the Russ Manning stories. But are they superior to Al Williamson's run? Not in the least! Manning's artwork was quite cartoonish. It very fluid and fanciful. But it doesn't come close to Williamson's photo-realistic art that I remember enjoying every Sunday at my Grandmama's house.

I think the reason Russ Manning gets so much love is that the artist was in the final stages of cancer when he accepted this project. I've heard that superstar talent such as Archie Goodwin filled in for Manning during some periods of time from 1979-80. You even get a sneak peak at what Al Williamson will be bringing to the series in the Boba Fett segment!

These artists were true heroes as the kept Manning's name on the artwork so that he could keep his health insurance, even though Manning never even touched the storyboards. Being that Star Wars was Manning's last project, I am okay with the comics legend getting as much love as he did. But I still prefer Williamson's work on the Star Wars comic strip.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea these comics even existed until I happened to pick them up in a complete Legends bundle. I read most of the Dark Horse comics in college (when I first discovered you could get comics online) and at that point made the conscious choice not to go back to the Marvel series. Didn't know I was also overlooking this series.

Apparently, these were published in newspapers (which is weird) btw 1979-80, before ESB, and only colorized in the 90's. So it's got the classic "Star Wars from before we had locked in what Star Wars really was" vibe, for better and worse. There are some genuine oddities in here, like the way they always say "Empire" as an adjective when Imperial would be more natural. And yet overall it's remarkably consistent with the franchise as a whole. Aside from some egregious contradictions with later canon, like having Kessel be a full planet, spice something you can eat, etc, the universe mostly fits with what we know of Star Wars. It's the storytelling and the art that feel unusual.

It's exactly the kind of campy, aw-shucks, Flash-Gordon-esque scifi storytelling you might guess it would be, and while that is a bit grating at times, it's largely just weird and unique in a kind of refreshing way? It tells a lot of the story through narration boxes, which the recent comics have totally abandoned, but Dark Empire did that too. Like everyone looks super white-bread and 70's, Leia always looks like she's wearing a nightgown or something, none of the characterizations are particularly interesting, and the storylines have no real stakes or interest. But there are some fun and off-kilter ideas, lots of goofy aliens, a few decent joke lines. Especially after Dark Empire, all muddled and bizarrely colored, the bold and bright colors and lines here are refreshing.

It's not necessarily a hidden gem, but I'd say it's definitely worth reading even if you're not a completionist. Plus, for the canon-obsessed, this is the first comic inclusion of Boba Fett, but more importantly it's the origin of Black Hole, the villain from Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor.

[Jaime K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is....interesting, and not what I expected. Now, given that they were initially created for newspapers.the panels and lettering are larger than other comics that came out at the same time.

And that is fantastic.

Something that I didn't like is how few aliens there are. The Empire has some...but not the Rebellion. So it's very strange.

It's also odd how "right" some things are, from unique names for worlds and people (as compared to the original Marvel series) to Boba Fett.
And then we have something like 3PO lying to humans.

- I had to laugh at the "THX alert"
- Vorzyd 5 is a Gambler's world that...is even in Legends canon books
- Blackhole (Cronal) is introduced and keeps giving the Rebels the slip. It's interesting that even the troopers working with him are shaded in.
- Luke has "a lot of luck"...but it's not noted as the Force, which is odd.
- I really like that Massassai One is used as a call sign
- Bledsoe's is a plague (developed by the Empire) that causes discoloration of the eyes. In fact, it shows star systems in certain eyes, which lead Imperials to Rebel bases.
- A ship inventor named Professor Volz develops a unique design that can change a planet's climate. He wants to use it for good; the Empire wants to use it for evil. I really like that plotline, even if Kessel is stated to be a legit home planet and Han runs spice for Jabba.
As if Jabba would hire him back.

So overall, it's different and unique and yet so very "Star Wars."

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent illustrations. The story lines were well written, but definately many of them didn't flow with what we know of Star Wars now. I find it amusing how much things have changed as the saga has progressed. In this collection there are reptile like creatures who are majors in the Empire's service, but later works have made it clear that the Emperor was prejudiced against non-humans and females. Also Kessel was shown to be a very beautiful planet, which in novels it is shown as anything but. Getting sent to Kessel is the ultimate punishment.
Had I read these after only seeing A New Hope I would have thought they were right on target. Either way they were very well written and a lot of fun to read. I would definately recommend this to any Star Wars fan. Didn't have enough Han Solo for me, but other than that, a fun read.

[Michael T. Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so delightfully silly. It is an odd relic from the early days of Star Wars media (this book collects Star Wars newspaper comic strips published by Marvel), and I love going back to old Star Wars media. Before “The Empire Strikes Back” came out, we didn’t know what Star Wars was yet, as a franchise. This series embraces the silliness and campiness that made the first film so popular with kids.
It also features Boba Fett and Luke Skywalker snowboarding together to escape danger. It’s pretty great.

[Aurora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally enjoyable, often laughably bad. They really have a lot of trouble keeping characters looking anything like the real people. Also, you know what? Princess Leia doesn't have to wear her hair in those buns all the time.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of short stories featuring Leia, Luke and Han. Some of them are quite clever, including a disease being used to transmit data. The artwork and wording is very much of its time. It is an uncluttered way of telling a story and works quite well. A good read.