If the spelling of the word "light sabre" in the title looks a little off to you, then you might not be a big Star Wars fan. A big Star Wars fan would tell you that's it's not 'a little off', it's completely and definitely wrong. And they'd be... almost right. You see, the term 'lightsaber' (one word and westernized) has appeared in print and online hundreds of thousands if not millions of times. This post (and the previous one) are about that hectic first year and a half from the release of the Ballantine edition of the Star Wars novel, through the movie's release and the comic book adaptation to it's reprints in different formats.
This is the back cover of the Del Rey/Ballantine mass market paperback reprinting all six issues of the comic book adaptation. The series was released monthly, starting before the release of the movie, and continued beyond the sixth issue with new stories. Marvel coordinated with Lucasfilm to keep things consistent as much as possible in a franchise that's become a yardstick for synergistic marketing: comics, novels, toys, clothing and even a Christmas album all came during the next year. It worked out eventually, but the first movie was adapted to comics before there was a final edit. There was a lot of guess work involved and one of the wonkier bits of trivia that arose from that situation is that the word 'lightsaber' was occasionally spelled 'light sabre' in the comics.
Compared to making Jabba humanoid, the spelling was a minor glitch.
When I left off in the previous post it was with a scan of Stan Lee's Introduction, something that had become obligatory in Marvel trades back then. Usually that made perfect sense since, more often than not Stan had written the stories being reprinted in the few trades that were published during the 70's. At the very least, he would have been the original editor. For "Star Wars", though, Roy Thomas was editing his own script. His take on the events are in the Preface seen here on the right and continued below.
The contents of the book begin with four unnumbered pages, all but the first of which appear in scans in the previous post. The numbered pages follow with Stan Lee's Introduction (1-2), this Preface (3-4) and each of the six issues introduced by a different full page of art announcing the chapter number, a second page with the original cover and then the full story content for that issue. Since issues #2 and #3 had 18 pages of story and the other four issues had 17 pages, the story accounts for 104 pages. Add the six chapter pages and six covers and you get 116 (numbered 5-120). The four unnumbered pages and the four text pages make 124. The final four pages are pin-ups, the first of which is in the previous post.
The real detective work involves identifying the artwork used in the chapter pages. Some of them are easy. The art for the Chapter Two page is just taken from the cover to issue #7. The art for the Chapter Three page is a detail from issue #1, page 9, panel 3 that depicts Grand Moff Tarkin walking with Darth Vader. (I sometimes suspect that scene from the movie was the inspiration for the perpetual "walk-and-talk" sequences on "The West Wing".) The Chapter Five page is the most obvious; it's just the image of Luke excerpted from the cover of issue #1.
That leaves One, Four and Six.
The Chapter One page looks like a million other knock-offs of the movie poster. Actually, the original Tom Jung poster feels like a knock-off of a million Frank Frazetta barbarian paperback covers. Luke is holding his light...um, thingy straight up over his head, Leia is kneeling in front of him looking slinky and holding an enormous pistol. An over-sized spectral image of Darth Vader's head looms in the background against a night sky. (Because eight-year-olds and studio executives think that night time is "when outer space comes out".)
Of course, in the Jung poster, Luke, Leia and Darth are all facing to the left. In this illustration, using art from an in-house advertisement appearing in Marvel's comics and drawn by Tony DeZuniga, Darth has turned to the right. I suppose that makes a nice complement to the Rick Hoberg cover used for the first tabloid collection and again for this paperback.
Here, Darth is still looking to the left but Luke and Leia are turned around.
The art for the Chapter Four page looks as though it comes from the cover of the second tabloid collection. The truth is that it comes from the advertising for that tabloid. Check out this excerpt from the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page for comics cover dated January 1978 (which would have shipped in October, the month before this paperback came out).
Note the hand in the lower left corner of the cover and the fact that there's a ceiling and a back-ground. Now compare both of these to the cover the way it actually shipped.
In the published version, the background is gone and they're in outer space. Or it's just night time again. The hand is missing from the corner in order to free up space to make R2-D2 more visible. C3PO is also more exposed and in a different position. The art here could be by Howard Chaykin (who did the art for the adaptation). Chewbacca has the sort of more-gorilla-than-dog appearance that readers complained about in the early issues. That was one of the problems attributed to working on the art before the movie was finished. The tabloid's credit is for "Covers by Howard Chaykin and Tony deZuniga". That doesn't specify if the front and back covers were each done by both artists or if the front was done by one and the back by the other.
The art from the back cover of the second tabloid was used to create the Chapter Six page. Aside from dropping the text of a "May The Force Be With You" blurb and some minor cropping it looks pretty much the same. The first page of the second tabloid became page 123 of this paperback (see right). The second page became page 122 (below page 123) and the third page became page 124. All three originally appeared with text boxes providing viewers with a recap of the story up to that point. For the first page (123), the boxes were in the upper right and lower left corners. On the second page (122) the text appeared at medium height and on the right edge. On the third page (124) the text was also at medium height but on the left edge.
By the time this paperback came out in November 1977, Marvel began to run three pages of a Star Wars serial in every issue of PIZZAZZ, an ostensibly 'teen' magazine that definitely spoke to a younger demographic. In February 1978, the Marvel UK branch began publishing STAR WARS WEEKLY, an anthology which started by reprinting half of each issue of the American Star Wars comic plus other Marvel science fiction stories similarly cut into smaller portions and serialized.
By April of 1978 the movie was still playing in theaters but had dwindled from a peak of just over 1000 screens to just over 100. In July it would be officially re-released (to over 1700 screens, according to IMDB) and in anticipation of that, Marvel published a third tabloid which collected all six issues in color in one volume for the first time. The third tabloid had new front and back covers by Ernie Chan. The inside covers used the same B&W photos taken on the set of the movie that were used in the second tabloid with the indicia and other text changed. It had 112 interior pages (the length of the previous two tabloids combined) for $2.50. Besides the 104 pages of story, the remaining eight pages were:
This is the back cover of the Del Rey/Ballantine mass market paperback reprinting all six issues of the comic book adaptation. The series was released monthly, starting before the release of the movie, and continued beyond the sixth issue with new stories. Marvel coordinated with Lucasfilm to keep things consistent as much as possible in a franchise that's become a yardstick for synergistic marketing: comics, novels, toys, clothing and even a Christmas album all came during the next year. It worked out eventually, but the first movie was adapted to comics before there was a final edit. There was a lot of guess work involved and one of the wonkier bits of trivia that arose from that situation is that the word 'lightsaber' was occasionally spelled 'light sabre' in the comics.Compared to making Jabba humanoid, the spelling was a minor glitch.
The contents of the book begin with four unnumbered pages, all but the first of which appear in scans in the previous post. The numbered pages follow with Stan Lee's Introduction (1-2), this Preface (3-4) and each of the six issues introduced by a different full page of art announcing the chapter number, a second page with the original cover and then the full story content for that issue. Since issues #2 and #3 had 18 pages of story and the other four issues had 17 pages, the story accounts for 104 pages. Add the six chapter pages and six covers and you get 116 (numbered 5-120). The four unnumbered pages and the four text pages make 124. The final four pages are pin-ups, the first of which is in the previous post.
That leaves One, Four and Six.
The Chapter One page looks like a million other knock-offs of the movie poster. Actually, the original Tom Jung poster feels like a knock-off of a million Frank Frazetta barbarian paperback covers. Luke is holding his light...um, thingy straight up over his head, Leia is kneeling in front of him looking slinky and holding an enormous pistol. An over-sized spectral image of Darth Vader's head looms in the background against a night sky. (Because eight-year-olds and studio executives think that night time is "when outer space comes out".)
Here, Darth is still looking to the left but Luke and Leia are turned around.
Note the hand in the lower left corner of the cover and the fact that there's a ceiling and a back-ground. Now compare both of these to the cover the way it actually shipped.
 |
| This scan taken from Grand Comics Database at comics.org |
By the time this paperback came out in November 1977, Marvel began to run three pages of a Star Wars serial in every issue of PIZZAZZ, an ostensibly 'teen' magazine that definitely spoke to a younger demographic. In February 1978, the Marvel UK branch began publishing STAR WARS WEEKLY, an anthology which started by reprinting half of each issue of the American Star Wars comic plus other Marvel science fiction stories similarly cut into smaller portions and serialized.
By April of 1978 the movie was still playing in theaters but had dwindled from a peak of just over 1000 screens to just over 100. In July it would be officially re-released (to over 1700 screens, according to IMDB) and in anticipation of that, Marvel published a third tabloid which collected all six issues in color in one volume for the first time. The third tabloid had new front and back covers by Ernie Chan. The inside covers used the same B&W photos taken on the set of the movie that were used in the second tabloid with the indicia and other text changed. It had 112 interior pages (the length of the previous two tabloids combined) for $2.50. Besides the 104 pages of story, the remaining eight pages were:
- p.36 the cast and crew page used in the first two tabloids
- p.55 a pin-up of Obi-Wan Kenobi by Tony deZuniga from the British STAR WARS WEEKLY #7.
- pp.56-57 are a cover gallery
- p.58 is a pin-up of Sandtroopers (Stormtroopers on Tatooine)
- p.59 is a Carmine Infantino pin-up of Luke and the Droids
- p.94 is a Carmine Infantino pin-up of Han and Chewie
- p.112 is a full page ad with the cover of issue #14 of the monthly series.
The pin-ups on pages 58, 59 and 94 have all also appeared in STAR WARS WEEKLY, as did the pin-ups from the first two tabloids. However, it is less obvious in the case of the third tabloid whether the pin-ups appeared there or in SWW first.
I suspect that the additional materials included in the tabloids have been incorporated into the bonus materials of the first STAR WARS OMNIBUS: THE ORIGINAL MARVEL YEARS, but I don't know how well it documents (if at all) when that material appeared in the British weeklies.
All I know is that I've got to follow up on a Jack Kirby Sandman post with a 'what ever happened to...'. Plus, I found some more record sleeve art. And an advertising flyer. And some very old movie passes. And an actual old movie reel. And a couple of jigsaw puzzles....
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