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STAR WARS - the comic that saved MARVEL. Not the British edition you see above, but the American one. Apparently, Marvel's fortunes were on the wane and if it hadn't been for them acquiring the rights to GEORGE LUCAS's space fantasy epic, they may not have been around for DISNEY to acquire a few years back.
Funny how these things work out, eh? The Marvel U.K. weekly didn't have quite the impact as the U.S. monthly, but I think we can safely assume that it did okay for itself. The Force was with it!
10 comments:
My first issue of SW Weekly was No.2 and the first thing I noticed was that the comic had only 28 pages unlike the other Marvel UK weeklies which had 36 pages - but it was the same price with nearly 25% less pages. The second thing that struck me was that the artwork on the Star Wars strip was utter shite - and that's not just my poor memory, a couple of years ago I saw that SW strip again and I still think the art is shite. I got SW Weekly till #6 then bailed out because I thought it was a horrible comic overall - I started reading it again with #15 only because The Complete FF and Rampage were cancelled and by then there were only 3 Marvel UK weeklies left - MWOM, Super Spider-Man and SW Weekly and since the earliest days of reading Marvel UK I'd always got 3 comics a week and anyway, the art had improved (I quite liked Carmine Infantino's art on the SW strip). But SW Weekly always remained a comic I got only because there was nothing better around - I finally abandoned it in 1980 when it changed its' name to the ridiculously clunky 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Weekly'.
So The Force was with it, but CJ wasn't! I've got the American edition and the art looks slightly better in colour - but only slightly.
Kid, I'm being a bit hypocritical because I did buy the two Star Wars Treasury Editions even though I didn't like the art - hey, it was still Star Wars and in 1978 I was a huge fan of the film which I saw as soon as it came to the local cinema. I'd agree that in the TE's the art looks better where it was in colour and on much bigger pages. But really I just wanted the TE's because they were Star Wars and in '78 I'd buy anything if it was Star Wars-related. By 1980 when 'The Empire Strikes Back' came out I'd largely lost interest - I still think the first film (which I refuse to call 'A New Hope') was by far the best, in my opinion they ruined Star Wars by making Darth Vader Luke's father and Princess Leia his sister - whatever next, R2D2 as his long lost cousin-twice-removed ?? And don't mention those prequels...bah !!
I saw the movie a couple of years or so after it came out, as part of a double bill withe the second one. Thought they were okay, nothing brilliant - wondered what all the fuss was about to be honest. Whatever next? R2-D2 and C-3PO will turn out to be gay lovers.
Ah yes Chaykin art. It got better when Al Williamson took over. Honestly I never cared for Star Wars. I found it simplistic.
My problem was that I couldn't see Luke Skywalker as a hero I could relate to. Han Solo maybe, but he didn't strike me as the main star.
Much as I like Carmine Infantino's art (some of his later stuff in the 80s was really good, IMO), I find his Star Wars art really disappointing. Al Williamson was fantastic in just about everything he done, Dark Horse reprinted his SW newspaper strips a few years back and they are stunning. He also drew a two-issue Flash Gordon series for Marvel in the 90s which is well worth tracking down (probably not that expensive either).
I've a few other back issues to track down first, DD, but I'll put that two-ish FG series on the list. As for Carmine's art, it declined in his later years, sad to say.
Al Williamson also did three issues of a Flash Gordon comic book (including both the lead feature and the Secret Agent X-9 back-up strip) in 1966-67. IIRC, it was #1, #4, and #5. He also did the cover for #3, and for a 1966 Flash Gordon record album. And a 1980 adaptation of the movie. I read that Flesk Publications did a book that reprinted most of Williamson's FG work.
Obviously, Williamson was a perfect choice for a Star Wars strip. George Lucas admitted that SW was strongly influenced by Flash Gordon.
Infantino's art at DC in the early 1980's looked to me like unfinished rough sketches. I prefer to forget it, and remember his iconic Silver Age images of Batman and the Flash.
Yeah, TC, Infantino was another one of the greats whose work declined in later years - Kirby and Ditko suffered from the same thing, alas.
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