The Star Wars Poster Book

by Stephen J. Sansweet, Peter Vilmur

One of the very first Star Wars posters had no images at alljust enormous block letters that announced, "Coming to Your Galaxy This Summer: Star Wars." The rest is history. Now, 28 years later, the 350 most amazing Star Wars movie posters are collected for the first time. This compilation spans the surreal to ultra realistic, the campy to darkly serious: Darth Vader's head exploding in a shower of camera parts; Anakin Skywalker casting an ominous Sith shadow; C-3PO and R2-D2 selling Star Wars shoes; Luke and Vader in mortal battle aboard the Death Star. Classic posters are joined with text by the world's foremost Star Wars collector, Stephen Sansweet, and poster collector Peter Vilmur, behind-the-scenes stories from artists and designers, a scarcity guide to over 2,000 posters, and a bootleg identification guide. Exploding with color, The Star Wars Poster Book illuminates an unexplored corner of Star Wars history. 2005 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Genres: Star Wars, Art, Reference, Science Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2005

About the author

Sansweet was born and educated in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. He studied at Temple University from 1962 to 1966, majoring in journalism. Three years after graduating, in 1969, he began work as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal in both Philadelphia and Montreal. He was promoted to deputy bureau chief in 1984, and later the chief of Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau in 1987. In February 1996, he joined Lucasfilm as director of specialty marketing. He is currently director of content management and in charge of fan relations.

Sansweet's collection has also been featured on the History Channel's Boy's Toys special "Private Collections".

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't have a lot of posters when I was growing up, but for what I did have, the majority of them were Star Wars posters. This book, by two staff at Lucasfilm, covers hundreds of Star Wars posters from all over the world. Some of them I recognize, and some of them I had earlier in my life (or still have, in the case of the Episode I Theatrical Advance One-Sheet), but for me the real treat is seeing all of the posters from international markets. Standard sizes differ from country to country, and some countries even had custom art created just for them. Some of these are awesome (the Japanese originals are usually amazing) and some are totally crazy, like the posters from Russia and former Soviet bloc countries where it seems the poster designers had no idea what the movies were even about. There is this one Russian poster that features a black robot head that looks like a puma. A puma. For Star Wars. I have no idea, and I'm pretty sure the Russian artist didn't, either. Anyway, if you like Star Wars or movie posters this book is amazing.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book featuring many promotional Star Wars posters from around the world, interesting, loved it!