Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years, Vol. 1

Star Wars Legends Epic Collection #29

by Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin, Archie Goodwin

May the Force be with you, in the mighty Marvel manner! The classic original Star Wars comic-book series begins with an action-packed adaptation of Episode IV A New Hope, then continues the story of Luke Skywalker and his rebel friends as they fight on against the Empire in the dark shadow of Darth Vader! New planets and new perils await - like the Cloud Riders, the Behemoth and the space pirate Crimson Jack. Han and Chewie need six allies to make eight against a world - and one of them will be cult hero Jaxxon! Luke and the droids end up trapped on a Doomworld! And the Big Game will pit rebel against rebel!

COLLECTING: STAR WARS (1977) 1-23; MATERIAL FROM PIZZAZZ 1-16, STAR WARS WEEKLY (UK) 60

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Fiction, Fantasy

475 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 2016

About the author

Roy Thomas was the FIRST Editor-in-Chief at Marvel--After Stan Lee stepped down from the position. Roy is a longtime comic book writer and editor. Thomas has written comics for Archie, Charlton, DC, Heroic Publishing, Marvel, and Topps over the years. Thomas currently edits the fanzine Alter Ego for Twomorrow's Publishing. He was Editor for Marvel comics from 1972-1974. He wrote for several titles at Marvel, such as Avengers, Thor, Invaders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and notably Conan the Barbarian. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes — particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America — and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles.

Also a legendary creator. Creations include Wolverine, Carol Danvers, Ghost Rider, Vision, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Valkyrie, Morbius, Doc Samson, and Ultron. Roy has also worked for Archie, Charlton, and DC among others over the years.

Reviews

[DiscoSpacePanther · Rating 3 out of 5]

From back when the Star Wars franchise canon hadn't been codified into stifling conformity, we have these early Marvel comic adaptations, beginning with the adaptation of the move Star Wars itself.

We have off-model starship designs, including a Millennium Falcon that looks so weird and misshapen that it is almost unrecognisable, and star destroyers (or "Imperial Cruisers") that change hull shape and engine configuration from panel to panel, and which travel through space via warp drives.

We have re-tellings of the Seven Samurai that involve a carnivorous seven-foot tall green rabbit gunfighter called Jaxxon and an elderly delusional fake Jedi Knight called Don-Wan Kihotay.

We have a man-hating female space pirate assassin who's never been kissed until Han Solo pulls her from some space wreckage and snogs her as she's dying, after she's spent at least three issues trying to kill him all because her father said she wasn't good enough when she was a kid.

Despite all this, I enjoyed the kind of freewheeling journeys into the unknown portrayed in this series. Everything seemed unexplored, unexpected and new, rather than just chugging around the same old same old cut & paste star systems we've seen over and over again. It's not enough to turn this into a must read, or even something I'd recommend to anyone unless they were a hardcore Star Wars fan, but it has a kind of weird, fresh vibrancy that the franchise has lost in recent, um, decades.

Aside from the adaption of the movie, the best story was the one from Pizzazz that centred on Luke and Leia exploring an ice world in the hopes of founding a rebel base there, and then being accosted by huge white furred snow demons.

None of the stories is particularly original, and there is an exhausting amount of repetition and dialogue clunkier than an unedited Lucas first draft, but it has a kind of indefinable charm about it that I found quite endearing.

Or perhaps it's the fact that the artwork depicts Leia as a busty '70s pornstress and Han Solo as if he was played by Willem Dafoe:

[A.A. Rubin · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven collection. I vastly prefer the early Thomas/Chaykin stuff to the later Goodwin/Infentino stories. The art is better than than the stories throughout, though (with the notable exception of a Chris Claremont gem), except for the initial stories which adapt the original movie. A lot of outdated tropes as well. Plus half a star for nostalgia, but minus that same half star for the price. The repackaged comics are expensive. It would have been nice to be able to get just original adaptation for less money. 40 dollars for a trade paperback is too much in my opinion.

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Star Wars Expanded Universe changed my life, and made me the reader I am today. If it hadn't been for the purchase of I, Jedi at a local garage sale in 2005, I'd still be much more of a couch potato than a bookworm.

Still, I've always been curious about the Expanded Universe's origins; though it got jumpstarted by the Thrawn trilogy, non-celluloid stories set in "a galaxy far, far away" have been around since not long after the first film's debut.

While Splinter of the Mind's Eye may have been the first EU novel, the comics contained here appear to be the first stories to expand on the movies (or, at least, the one movie that was around on that time.) So, when I saw that my local library had this, I jumped at the chance to read it.

Was it as good as I had hoped? Yes...and no.

The makers do a great job of bringing Lucas' space opera into a comic book format. I loved the artwork; it's some of the best I've seen in any comics, and I've read lots of them. It's also fun to see further adventures of Leia, Han, Luke, and Chewbacca, and I much prefer their version of Jabba the Hutt than what we got in the movies; onscreen, he is disgusting.

However, the profanity count was higher than I would have liked, and some of the female characters could have been dressed more modestly. It's not quite as egregious as I've seen in newer comics, but, I expected more decorum from old-school issues, especially ones based on such a clean-cut film series.

So, this was quite the mixed bag.

[Gary Fortuin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1978 if you wanted more Star Wars you didn't have a lot of options. You could go see the movie again in a theater, you could make up your own stories with your action figures, or you had the Marvel Star Wars comics. This collection features the first 23 issues of the Star Wars comic, and additional content from Pizzazz and Star Wars Weekly from the United Kingdom. The stories are hit and miss. It begins with the comic adaption of the movie itself. From there, it was clear the writers were at a bit of a loss of what to do.
The worst of the bunch features Han and Chewie in what should be a slam dunk seven samurai story. This suffers from a pretty bad group of supporting characters. Don-Wan Kihotay (a jedi knight), Amaiza (super scantily clad mercenary), Hedji ( a weird humanoid cad/porcupine man), the Starkiller Kid and his robot friend FE-9Q, and last but not least- Jax- a green humanoid rabbit. It just doesn't work. The good stuff includes a story about Luke and Biggs that takes place before episode IV and shows us why Beggars Canyon was such a big deal.
Overall the art is pretty fun. The covers of the individual issues are great as are some of the splash pages. It's fun to look back on that time and you realize how spoiled we've become with so much great Star Wars media over the past 20 years.

[Alex Sarll]

The original Marvel Star Wars comics, and of course back then there was no Kathleen Kennedy to administer interlocking multimedia continuity, no opportunity to check likenesses against a DVD, possibly not even that many stills or the chance of a rewatch. Meaning that the first six issues, adapting the original film, become a fascinating alternate vision of something now long since burned on to the retina of anyone who cares enough to read this. The art on those early issues comes from Howard Chaykin; he's not yet fully formed, though you can definitely recognise what would become his trademarks at times, as when Leia first sees Vader, or with Luke at the Sandcrawler after the 'only Imperial Stormtroopers are this precise" line (which is somehow even funnier on the page). Still, even his rougher work has some of the right lunatic vigour, like a more competent Kirby. Some of the discrepancies could easily have appeared on screen, like the deleted Biggs scene we eventually got in the Special Edition, or Jabba's original form; other differences are odder, like the conical helmets of the pilots, or the spelling "light-sabre" (seldom seen now even in British English, but right there on the cover of issue 2). Vader says "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the cosmic force"; the next issue it's "the force", complete with quote marks every time for ages. As for his oath "By the immortal gods of the Sith!" when the Falcon arrives...well, if nothing else it's more intriguing than any of Episode IX's attempts to muck with the Sith.

Still, some likenesses come together between issues, and gradually it becomes increasingly recognisable as the Star Wars we now know...just in time for them to run out of film to adapt, and go haring off into the beyond, expanding the universe before anyone had thought of the term 'Expanded Universe'. Some of the ensuing stories foreshadow, I presume unwittingly, stuff which would appear in the sequels; the saga of gambling station the Wheel, existing in an uneasy arm's length relationship with Imperial authorities, is very much Cloud City prefigured, from the untrustworthy administrator who claims an old title right down to his creepy consiglieri (and if you thought Lobot was unsettling, you've never seen the way this robot grins as he apparently caresses his robo-nipples). Elsewhere, you can tell they really didn't know what was coming, as witness all the times they go hard on the Luke/Leia romance plot; I'm very much looking forward to seeing the screeching change of direction in later volumes when they find out. And the description of the casually violent Wookiee homeworld made me realise this must predate even the Holiday Special, whose wanking to Jefferson Starship is as far as I'm concerned wholly canonical.

And then, of course, there's the stuff which neither supports nor opposes the world as seen in later films, but simply goes off on one. Most famously, Jaxxon the giant green carnivorous rabbit, first encountered in a Magnificent Seven riff alongside Don-Wan Kihotay, self-proclaimed last of the Jedi knights, and the Starkiller Kid, who may dress like an escapee from Boogie Nights but still makes better use of that abandoned name than JJ Abrams ever did. The Magnificent Seven riff then turns into a Godzilla riff instead, which makes very little sense in plot terms but certainly stops things getting predictable, and is further enlivened with a weirdly pin-up pose for one of the leads – but before you start making assumptions about sexism in comics, that's Chewie rather than Leia. Which said, she does go weirdly angular once Carmine Infantino and Terry Austin take over the art, while Chewie gets horrible bald bits on his face. An issue with Walt Simonson guest art introduces the cyborg bounty hunter Valance, offering some explanation of why they expected anyone to give a toss about him in the recent comics; alas, not having read this stuff in decades, he had at some point in the interim slipped my mind. Very remiss of me, I know. And besides, this is much better. Granted, there are times when the gender politics have aged worse than the films, and I don't just mean Han now coming across a bit old-fashioned when, during a cantina brawl, he exclaims "It's getting so you can't tell one sex from the other in these spaceport towns." I'm more thinking of the stories with Han's old rival Crimson Jack, and in particular his sidekick Jolli, a hard case determined to prove herself at least as tough as any of the men she hates – but who nonetheless finds herself strangely fascinated by Han. I would say this is not the franchise's best attempt at engaging with feminism, but fuck it, compared to sexy Force messaging with Kylo fucking Ren, I'd probably still take it over the sequel trilogy's flailing efforts.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a fan of Star Wars since I was a kid, during that interminable period between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace when it seemed I'd missed out on the opportunity to see a new one in a movie theater for myself (which has for a lot of fans turned into a kind of curse since then), I'll never really know what it was like to experience the phenomenon as it was happening. This collection is one of those small windows that allows a glimpse, featuring material that began life before anyone knew what was going to happen, and so its existence, and the ability to read it much later, is a kind of miracle of the modern age.

At its heart, Star Wars exists to celebrate throwaway material, the kind of stuff that always exists at the basest level of popular entertainment, the easy-to-digest stuff that has always either served as the basis for better material or mooched off of it. I'm talking about social currency, the stuff easiest to talk about, the Greek myths establishing heroic deeds or the dime novels featuring forgotten outlaws, or the pulp fiction that was cancelled out by things like radio and superhero comics, the latter of which continues to exist in large part because it keeps adapting into new media and finding new life, today as the dominant source of movie blockbusters. What made Star Wars so exciting was that it clearly evoked that kind of material, but it also had elements that touched on deeper cultural yearning, the mystical allure of the Force chief among them. It created its own language, in other words, even though the words were already known, so that the language positively exploded at the box office and in the imaginations of everyone who learned it.

George Lucas is the opposite of Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson. Watterson famously refused to exploit his creation, passing on the kind of lucrative licensing that had become synonymous with comic strips thanks to Peanuts and Garfield. Lucas, from the very start, wanted Star Wars known as widely as possible. He had a novelization available before the movie was even in theaters, toys ready for kids to play with, and even a comic book. Roy Thomas, the original writer tapped to work on those comics, explains in this collection how he had to convince Stan Lee it was a good idea, and how the results actually helped save Marvel in the '70s (as it has done so again in recent years, thanks to the company reacquiring the rights after a near-twenty year lull in which Dark Horse published legions of stories that helped spur interest in the big screen revival by keeping the brand active and vital in the minds of fans). Clearly it was; the comic lasted more than a hundred issues.

The first six issues are a direct adaptation of the original movie, back when it was still known, simply, as Star Wars. It includes material that would become familiar to fans but had in fact been deleted from the 1977 release; apparently this was enough to anger fans at the time, who wanted in the comics version nothing they hadn't seen in the film (fans remain fans). There's a version of Jabba that doesn't exist anywhere else! And then, the rest of the collection is all-new material.

Before we get into that, some notes on the art. Original artist Howard Chaykin would evolve his style over the years on his way to becoming a champion of independent comics; his work here isn't very recognizable to modern eyes. Even Walt Simonson is difficult to identify (although I confess to having read few of his comics, much less a familiarity with his Thor). Carmine Infantino is more identifiable. Dave Cockrum also contributes work. These are all big names; the aforementioned Marvel return that began a few years ago similarly features the company's biggest names on art. Some things never change.

The storytelling, the original material, that requires its own analysis. To be honest, it returns Star Wars to its inspiration. Thomas and Archie Goodwin, as much Marvel stalwarts as the above-noted artists, craft Marvel stories with Star Wars characters. While they may carry the spirit of the breathless storytelling found in the movie, they don't really capture the scope of it. Few enough references to the Force, for instance, whether by mandate or inclination doesn't really make a difference. Apparently Thomas eventually bowed out of the comic after being told once too often what he couldn't do. Not that it really mattered. They were never going to be confused with the movie, or the ones that would follow, at least by the discerning eye. Although the more I think of it, maybe most of these fans can't tell the difference, maybe they do get swept up in the romance of it more than the narrative, the adventure, the mythos, and don't really care about the craft put into it. They do seem to miss the point more often than not.

The stories may have, however, influenced the future of the saga more than it might seem. The collection ends, on a superficial note, with our heroes on an ice planet home to a hidden Rebel base, much as Empire Strikes Back would later begin on Hoth. There're bounty hunters, Vader acting increasingly imperial around Imperial troops, and even a lack of progress in an otherwise seemingly foregone romance between Luke and Leia (Thomas expresses that this was a mandate) and much more momentum toward one between Leia and Han.

But there are things peculiarly unique to these stories, too, that aren't found in the movie. There's a considerably negative attitude toward droids, and Imperial duplicity, that are only hinted at in the movie, and augmented so much in the comic as to become something else entirely.

Names aren't really Thomas's, or Goodwin's, forte. They deliver some truly terrible ones throughout the collection. They don't capture personalities well at all, although some are better than others. The worst is certainly Artoo, the beeping droid we only get a window into thanks to his conversations with Threepio. Although the comic understands the importance of their bickering, it wildly misinterprets the source of it, convinced that it's Artoo that's the obnoxious one. Maybe it's because Threepio's antics become exaggerated in Empire Strikes Back, but I can't even begin to imagine how the writers got that so wrong.

Some of the material seems almost to have inspired work in other franchises. The lead bounty hunter (certainly not Boba Fett), the last time we see him, might have influenced the very creation of James Cameron's Terminator (we know Cameron started out in b-movie territory, and that the first Terminator is more of a b-movie than its sequel; it's not really such a stretch). A space station central to one of the extended arcs looks a lot like the eponymous station of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Could be coincidences, both, but who knows?

Speaking of arcs, it's incredible that the collection really amounts to about three arcs (and change, with the three-page serials rounding it out amounting to a couple additional issues worth of material). Long story arcs in comics weren't yet common. I don't know if they were more common outside superhero comics, which is certainly possible, whether for instance Thomas did this sort of thing with Conan all the time. Could be. If you read this review and know, feel free to comment.

If I were grading the collection solely on the basis of the strength of the material, it'd be lower than four stars. Owing to its particular pedigree and thus historical value, I'm comfortable with four. As a Star Wars fan, it seems almost obligatory, a salute to the dawn of the saga and how it took shape. This is exactly what it looked like...!

[Jason Tanner · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a particularly geeky person, I was interested in reading the old Marvel Star Wars comic when it became available with the Epic reprints. (This was also how I discovered a fair amount of the old Dark Horse material, which I never looked into in its heyday.) I was a bit concerned, though, because I find old comics—that is, before approximately 1980—to be somewhat grating. Doubly so when it comes to Roy Thomas in particular. It’s both a pacing issue and a writing style thing. (Stan Lee is an exception, but his favored protégé for some reason is like nails on a chalkboard for me.)
The story can be broken down into a few parts
1)The Original Movie Adaptation: Actually, kudos to Thomas on this. He insisted on a full six issues to tell the story, which he needed every panel of to give it justice. And he did it well. It’s easy to say he and artist Howard Chaykin just borrowed the Lucas script and put it on paper, but that is underselling it. I have seen plenty of bad comic adaptations of movies. The script was tight and the art dynamic.
2)Roy Thomas’s post-movie story: He had four more issues before quitting the book, and it was clear that he had no idea what to do with anyone. This is not entirely his fault, because Star Wars is a licensed property, and Lucas had some serious restrictions with what he was willing to allow the main cast to do. Thomas’s solution was to rewrite The Magnificent Seven in space with Han Solo as Yul Brenner. It was clear at this point that Thomas reeeealy didn’t have Solo’s voice down. He was also throwing some subtle (for Roy Thomas) hints at a burgeoning Luke and Leia romance, which fortunately didn’t go anywhere. On the (dubious) plus side, this tale gave us Jaxxon the Space Rabbit.
At this point, I want to talk about set design a little bit. The world of Star Wars had a distinct, lived-in look, and the costuming was fairly practical and even modest (gold bikini in ROTJ notwithstanding). Somehow, this was lost on the artist. Han, Luke, and Leia all wore their same clothes they wore in the movie, but any new character introduced in the series looked like a character from a 1960s DC Space comic. All the women wore bikinis and most of the men wore some variation of a jumpsuit, often with some kind of symbol on the chest. It was completely dissonant. Clearly, in 1977 and 1978, people still hadn’t put their finger on what exactly Lucas did to revolutionize space opera, and it’s kind of fascinating to see other creators struggle with it in real time.
3)Archie Goodwin takes over: Goodwin’s first arc follows Thomas’s last, with Han, Chewie and Leia coming to rescue Luke Skywalker and the droids, who was left stranded on a water world. He, in my opinion, has the characters’ voices down better than Thomas did once he started his own scripting. A few issues in, we see the return of the Empire a real way as the cast stumbles upon an Imperial plot to frame the Rebellion for piracy and use that piracy as a pretext for the military takeover of The Wheel, a space station that acts as a nonpolitical bastion for high-rolling space gamblers. Godwin’s issues to me have a bit more verve than Thomas’s, and it seems like he has some big ideas for where he wants to go. But that remains to be seen until the next volume.
4) Pizzazz serials: The last segment of the collection has some three-page serialized stories from Pizzazz magazine, written again by Roy Thomas and later Archie Godwin. They were both largely forgettable.
All in all,for me reading this collection was more interesting as a look at an aspect of pop-culture history than it was as a comic book.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be warned...not only is the pew-pew-pew strong with this one, but the Force was strong with the cheese.

Part of Marvel's Epic Collection trade paperback line, and marking the third reprint in a decade or so of much of the material (and Yog-Sothoth knows how many reprints the first six issues have had.) The content consists of 23 issues of the main title, and two stories that ran serially in the late unlamented PIZAZZ magazine -- the final part of the second story is a black and white reprint from the U.K. Star Wars comic.

The less said about the stories, the better. The art ranges from brilliant to atrocious, and the reproduction is sometimes not so good -- although the worst of the art issues occur due to updated colouring, with the result often being overwhelming. The colours don't so much pop as launch a full assault with AT-ATs.

If you can turn your mind off and somewhat disconnect from Star Wars as it's become entrenched, then this is an amusing collection of thumping space opera.

Always remember: Jaxxon Lives!

[Chip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I loved the original Marvel run of the Star Wars comics. I mean all of it, even Jaxxon.

The real clincher for me with this trade was the collection of stories from the pages of Pizzazz.

[Tony Romine · Rating 3 out of 5]

STAR WARS: THE ORIGINAL MARVEL YEARS VOL. 1 is a collection of the original Star Wars comics published a few months after the release of the first film in the series.  It collects issues 1-23 and some other smaller comics from Marvel's failed pop culture magazine called Pizzazz and a UK publication called STAR WARS WEEKLY.  All of this material was published between July 1977 and May 1978 (with the Pizzazz material dated to the end of 1978).


The interesting thing about these comics is that they were published before Empire Strike back, but after the first film, so you're experiencing an interpretation of what the writers thought would happen after the events of A New Hope.  In fact, only the first 6 issues will be familiar to new readers, as they are a comic adaptation of the first film (even includes deleted scenes from the film in comic form and a rare, entirely different take on Jabba the Hutt).  The next 9 issues are...interesting.


Issues 7-10 have a few appearances by Luke and Leia to set up future storylines, but mostly focus on Han Solo.  Han and Chewie leave Yavin after the medal ceremony and head to a distant planet that is basically Tantooine and is immediately in trouble with the locals.  Soon he is hired by a village to protect them from space bandits and forms a Seven Samurai-esque group to help.  To spare the details, the group consists of a giant green sharpshooter rabbit, a kid who is Luke Skywalker just not the actual one, a buff porcupine with legs, Don-Wan Kihotay an old Jedi, and a scantily clad woman that Han knows.  It's as silly as it sounds.


The next handful of issues (11-15) are a story arc where Han (and eventually the rest of the gang) get involved with pirates on a Waterworld type planet where the city is a giant floating ship.  There's a dumb, generic villain named Crimson Jack who has been with Han.  It's a giant slog to get through and it actually almost made me quit reading this collection entirely because of how bad they are, but luckily it's only 5 issues (that you could easily skip if you wanted and not be lost at all).  You can tell with this arc that Archie Goodwin, the writer of most of the comics in this collection (including this arc) was really trying to find his footing in terms of what a Star Wars comic should be.  Issue 16 introduces a new villain named Valance (who hates Luke because he works with Droids and Valance himself is an android...quality writing there) and is the last appearance of Jaxxon, the giant green rabbit.  17 is a backstory issue for Luke and you get to see him racing on Tatooine with Biggs and shooting rats. 


The last arc (issues 18-23) starts to really feel like proper Star Wars territory.  Luke falls ill and the gang has to outrun Empire ships to get him to a hospital on a giant spacestation called The Wheel.  They quickly get serpated and captured and have to find a way to get off the ship.  Darth Vader even shows up during all this.  It's a decent enough story and for sure the strongest one of these original Marvel comics (aside from New Hope adaptation).


Also included here are two story arcs originally published in PIZZAZZ (some magazine of the era).   They are actually quite good (way better than almost a third of the issues in this collection)  and focus only on Luke, Leia, and the droids.  Be sure to check out Roy Thomas's forward to the previously released omnibus for a good history of how Marvel started publishing STAR WARS and the direction it took.


It's a decent collection, but honestly I would skip the first two story arcs. Sure the idea of a big green rabbit in STAR WARS seems weird and interesting, but once you realize he's just there for lame jokes and Bugs Bunny references (of course), it wears off very quickly.  Otherwise not a bad read at all. Recommended. 

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Star Wars is perfect for comic books. Even moreso than for movies. I've tried to read these through in the past and fell off the ride because of some flaws here and there but this readthrough I confess that I barely noticed them. Howard Chaykin's art is really really rough in the movie adaptation issues which overall I felt could and should have been a lot stronger, but it's clear that they didn't really know what Star Wars was and were only pushing forward with it because Roy Thomas had an inkling that Space Opera would sell well. Once Chaykin is onboard his art miraculously improves , although all things considered I still prefer Infantino's style in the later issues in this omnibus.

The post movie-adaptation content starts out rough too with the notorious Seven Samurai reskin which features a giant green rabbit. Nobody liked that rabbit and Thomas was switched out (his own choice. Hurt feelings) for Archie Goodwin who was clearly so, so, passionate about Star Wars it hurts. Still, it's tough not knowing what to do with these characters and, as other reviewers have pointed out, the characterisation is overall a little choppy ... nobody knows where folks are coming and going so the best they can do is throw them in one situation after another and hope that something sticks. Well, it feels like that's how this comic was written and thanks to that it fortuitously picks up that old school old time radio vibe that Lucas had always been going for. It's a brash, silly comic overall, as pulp as it gets and perfect for that ten year old with a bit of change from their sweet money. When you think about the target demographic it's mad how beautiful the art looks though and there's nothing I enjoy more than gazing at the pencillings of huge sea monsters or starships that have been so lovingly crafted here. The storylines have a tendency to run a bit long though, unfortunately, for the amount of development characters get. There's a cool Wheel in Space, a den of smugglers that the Empire are looking to take over, that's reminiscent of Cloud City and there's an attempt to make the head of operations have an arc which is ultimately given up on in though. The Sea Monster narrative never quite makes sense and you can see that Goodwin adapted this and more successfully for one of the newspaper strips later on.

Surprisingly it's the shorts at the back of the book that supply the most bang for the buck though, little stories that ran in other magazines just three pages long but in classic Goodwin style he seems to get better and better the more restricted he is. Dave Cockrum pulls illustration duties for these too and the results are pretty sublime. It gets even sillier, Luke and Leia are transported away to the home of a giant supercomputer left alone to tend to a dying planet, whilst on an ice planet they meet giant monsters who help them fight some imperials chasing them. It's just joyful, really.

This is definitely a 5* book in terms of fun, joy, Star-Wars-ness, especially if you're nostalgically inclined, and for acting like a child. It's not the most consistent run of issues but there are 23 issues here, many of great quality. Definitely addictive and I may just pick up the next 20.

[Adam Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book collects the original Marvel Star Wars comics from the 1970s with Issues 1-23 of the US Marvel comics and serialized stories originally printed in the UK Comic.

The book can be divided into several sections:

Issues 1-6: The original film adaptation. Early issues came out before the film was released and is different in several places from the theatrical version. The story shows that Hans shot the bounty hunter remorselessly and we get to see how Jaba the Hutt was originally imagined. On the negative side, there are several lines of dialogue that lack the oomph of the film version. I lean towards blaming the fact that the final script wasn't used than writer Roy Thomas.

The art by Howard Chaykin is not all that great, and in some cases, he ruins scenes with weird expression and poor artistic choices. This doesn't capture the grandeur of A New Hope. The issues aren't bad but they are far more middling than they should be.

Issues 7-10: Hans and Chewie leave the rebellion to settle up their debts, only to be robbed by a space pirate. They then lay low, but find work gathering a team of mercaneries to protect a bunch of peasants being harassed by bandits. Essentially, this is the Magnificent Seven meets Star Wars. The plot is a decent idea and several of the character are interesting, although the Don Quixote homage is silly.

The writing has some rough moments as Hans references not having been to Sunday School, which is an odd thing to say in another galaxy. The art is a bit uneven, but not as disappointing as in the opener.

Issues 11-15: Hans captured by the same space pirate. Hans want to take the pirate's ship (which is a captured Emperial cruiser) and turn it over to the rebellion but his plans go awry when he discovers Leia is a prisoner on the ship. Leia left the rebellion to find Luke, who had gone on a recon mission and finds himself fighting in a war against the Dragon Riders. The story is written by Archie Goodwin with the art by Carmine Infantino (with Walt Simonsen spotting Infantino every now and again.) This story and the next big one were very well-written and exactly the sort of thing I expect the Star Wars heroes between movies.

Issue 16: A one-shot that features none of the movie characters. Valance, a bounty hunter, goes after members of Hans and Chewie's team from Issues 7-10, hoping to learn about Luke. The story has a clever twist at the end that leaves me hoping Valance re-appears.

Issue 17: A tale of Luke before A New Hope. Far better than I thought it would be as it holds your interest without too much fan service.

Issues 18-23: Luke goes into a coma and Hans and Leia take him to the Wheel, a gambling space station that's not under the Empire's jurisdiction, but the Empire's trying to change that by staging robberies and framing the Rebellion. At the same time, Darth Vader re-emerges hunting for Luke. There are a number of parallels to Empire Strikes Back as they're on a station run by an unscrupulous gambler who's willing to sell them out for his own benefit while the Empire closes in.

Pizazz #1-#9: From the UK magazine Pizazz, these three-page serialized stories focused on Luke and Leia going out to bring other groups into the Rebel Alliance but they're forced out of space by the Empire and land on a planet with mysterious children on it. Not bad, but felt more "Star Trek" than "Star Wars."

Pizazz #10-16 and Star Wars Weekly #60: Three page continue until Pizazz was cancelled with the rest of the story being published in Star Wars Weekly. Luke and Leia arrive on an ice planet where creatures called Snow Demons steal the Droids. However, it appears Luke and Leia will be fine, but unfortunately for them, everything's not as it seems. A very fun adventure.

Overall, despite a few rough issues, this is a fun collection filled with great swashbuckling stories in between movies and requires next to no extra continuity knowledge. Well worth reading.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever wanted to see Star Wars in comix style? Then this collection of comix is for you, especially if you're a true Star Wars nerd. These are the first issues, published right around the time of the film's official release. Lucas does it WAY better than Spielberg, that I am 100% sure of all the time. But remember, the force is an all-out strong force because this is, without a doubt, the most iconic franchise of all time, as it opens up a world of possibilities of what may be creative worlds outside of ours and its concept is quite impressive. This comix collection is a very awesome follow-up to the entire franchise. The concept of the hero's journey on the intergalactic war is very interesting as usual.

The heroes are always iconic, especially Skywalker (AKA Annikin Starkiller, an adventurous hero), Han Solo (a rebellious criminal with a hidden heart of gold), and Obi-Wan Kenobi (a wise Jedi master and the real father of Skywalker who knows how to use the force and use it very well). As always, Princess Leia is a fearsome warrior and textbook strong female character. And, of course, C-3PO and R2-D2 are always hilarious and often useful comic reliefs.

An important factor in these comix, as the film itself, is symbolism. The Force is meant to be a power that requires faith. The ethos of the Jedi is similar to real-world religions such as Taoism. The Empire, contrasted to the Rebels, puts their faith in the Death Star and depends on Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. The Empire's generals also wears clothing similar to the German Empire from World War I, which represents the Empire as basically Nazis in space; furthering this point, they also use a lot of black and red, and the Stormtroopers are basically bodyguards for the troop leader. Color's also an additionally important factor. Vader and the Empire's highest members wear black, Luke and Leia wear white, and Han wears a combination of black and white since he's a anti-hero with a rebellious side. The Stormtroopers may wear white on the outside, but you can see the black underneath their shell, hinting they may be hiding something underneath their façade.

And that's it, really. That's everything about this collection of comix. See my full review of the original George Lucas bestseller here.

[Jon Shanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an absolute blast! A very interesting "adaptation" of the original movie based on an early script and rough cut of the picture seen by the writer, so the comic could be rushed through to come out as close to the 1977 premiere as possible. The result is quite different from the finished film in a few places, including scenes that were dropped from the final cut (e.g. more of Biggs & Luke, Han's meeting a very different Jabba to what we eventually saw in The Empire Strikes Back!). After this we then saw the Marvel creative team's interpretation of what happened after the credits rolled, including Han & Chewie in a Magnificent Seven Western-style story (including "Don-Wan Kihotay" who is a former Jedi, or crazy old man who thinks he was & Jaxxon the infamous six foot tall green rabbit alien!) and whole the gang at the mercy of an unscrupulous space casino owner, including a few scenes between Luke and Leia, which show the writers had no idea of their future relationship revelation! A fascination relic well worth reading for any Star Wars fan.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 4 out of 5]

When these were originally released, Star Wars was brand new. I was six years old and anything was possible. Rereading more than 2 years worth of comics now (including a look at the weekly series from the UK), the stories are a ripoff of a ripoff (The Magnificent Seven, a ripoff of the Seven Samurai), the names are ridiculous (Don Wan Kihotay), and the characters are worse than Jar Jar (Jaxxon is a 6 foot tall green rabbit). Even though none of this is canon now, in 1977, it was a continuation of the greatest story I had ever seen. Star Wars would never get better, but the Marvel series would eventually find its footing. Before losing it again near the end of the original run in 1985.

[Kevin Milner · Rating 4 out of 5]

475 pages! took me forever to read, but it was totally worth it, from a "stuff from when I was a kid" perspective.
The only complaint I have is that the volume includes up to #23 then switches to reprints from something called pizzazz magazine. The complaint is that at the end of issue 23 it says the next issue will feature Obi-wan during his old republic days. Since this is circa 1979, I very much wanted to see what that looked like. Oh well, I'll have to find the next volume.

[Edward Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but this was a fun read (plus I purchased it for $12). The story mainly focuses on Han following the adaptation of the first movie, but after that it goes back and forth between the characters reasonably equally. It was interesting to see how Jabba The Hutt was envisioned based off the original script, plus you get some insight into all those deleted scenes and characters that haven't thus far made it back into the film.

[Jacob Mahaffey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of really fun stories in here—a fun imagining of what Star Wars could be beyond the original movie, well before Empire came out. I particularly enjoyed the first post-film storyline of the ragtag group of fighters that Han and Chewie put together. The collection itself is great, pulling from both the original comic series and the serialized storylines from the short-lived Marvel magazine Pizazz to ensure a more complete collection of all the Star Wars comics of the time.

[John Geddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had picked this up on nostalgia, it collects the original movie comic adaption and then the next 17 issues of the old series. It’s really neat to see the property through the eyes of people who only saw the movie once and see where they imagined the story going next. The romantic triangle continues. Chewbacca looks a lot like Bigfoot. It takes them a year to bring back Darth Vader because…he died?

Just old fashioned space opera stuff with more than a little Flash Gordon in there.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are around my age (6 years old when the first Star Wars movie came out) and if you respect what that original trilogy did to movies and to the genre (none of the prequels or sequels to the original trilogy of films counts as canon - they are all crap) then you know that the original comic series from Marvel from the 70's was amazing. This was a compilation of the first couple of years of that series and it's great, great characters, great writing, great world building - just amazing.

[S.J. Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the most fun I've had reading comics, recently, if only for the history lesson in such things as, "I guess Jabba the Hutt once looked like a gangly otter with a moustache." Seeing the early days of the Star Wars Expanded Universe finding its feet is simply...joyous, green rabbit man and all.

Valance is actually awesome, you guys!

[John Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not worth reading unless you really like Star Wars. There is though something fascinating in here for Star Wars fans. See the stories that Marvel came up with before the framework of the star was universe was established. By the end it seems to get closer what feels like a classic Star Wars story.

[Patrick Raftery · Rating 5 out of 5]

My childhood

This took me back to a kid, l couldn't get to see Star wars film till empire came so all knew was from these comics.l fell in love with them them and now there very happy memories,the water planet or the ice one or even the wheel in space, great stories

[Jeroen Huylebroeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's old, and you can feel it in the aesthetics, but also in some misconceptions, errors, tropes,...

That is both something that takes away from the experience, but catapults you back to those as well, so I can't blame it entirely. Would make for a 3.5 out of 5, if you can stomach the "oldness".

[Michael McGrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

down memory lane…

A guilty romp through my childhood, before dvds, streaming, hen the only way to relive a favorite film was through its comics and novelizations….and yet this volume has so much more!

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a whole lot of fun. Definitely 70s camp and dated, but still fun. Many aliens left to the writers/artists imagination. Good episodic Star Wars action.

[Brannigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reminds me of a knock off comic someone created after hearing about a movie without actually seeing the movie.

[Noah Vance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peak fun.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure escapist fun.

[Don Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marvel Comics has dug even deeper into their vaults and collected their earliest adaptation of the original Star Wars saga, the first entries into what would eventually become part of the “Expanded Universe”. To coincide with the release of the movie in 1977, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and the rest found themselves in the capable hands of such comic book pros as Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, and Chris Claremont.

The first six issues tell the familiar story of Episode IV: A New Hope, working from George Lucas’s most current version of the screenplay at that time. What’s interesting reading this in retrospect is seeing interpretations of scenes in the comic book adaptation that were later dropped from the theatrical release, but ultimately restored in the 1997 Special Editions. Particularly, Luke’s scenes with his friend Biggs Darklighter (which added more pathos to the Death Star battle sequence), and the confrontation between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt in the Mos Eisley spaceport. The latter sequence, of course, features a Jabba the Hutt which unsurprisingly looks nothing like his cinematic counterpart (this is long before Jabba’s reveal in 1983’s Return of the Jedi). One wonders how much guidance was provided in the script, or by Lucas himself, for how Howard Chaykin should depict the Jabba character.

The issues here that follow the movie adaptation range from poor to superb, and inevitably suffer from the effects of creative differences. As Roy Thomas elaborates, by that time Star Wars had become a major hit, and George Lucas naturally had his own plans for his franchise. There couldn’t be any conflict between how characters were portrayed in the comic book and how they appeared in later films (which would eventually be on the horizon). It was really rather brave of Archie Goodwin to take on the series after Thomas left. Essentially having the characters locked in place and writing the stories around them must have been very restrictive to the creative teams, and that feeling of being trapped carried over into the issues to a certain extent.

Despite the limitations, and having only a single movie to draw upon for inspiration, Marvel’s original Star Wars stories still manage to retain some of their entertainment value thanks to their association with the genre and remain a major contribution to the mythos, for many fans acting as an introduction to Star Wars while the saga was still in its infancy.