CLASSIC STAR WARS PART ONE - THE EARLY ADVENTURES

Art by Al Williamson

I have this peculiar interest in early fiction based on licensed properties, before all the mythos have been properly defined and sorted out. The original MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE mini-comics, for example, produced by DC Comics for Mattel, were a far cry from what that property would eventually become. And the early years of the STAR WARS newspaper strip definitely fall into that category as well.

Working with little more than the original 1977 film and probably some production notes as his only reference, Russ Manning was tasked with creating some of the very first "Expanded Universe" material for STAR WARS, and he did a mostly admirable job of it. Manning's starships and interiors are derived from those seen in the movie, helping to make his version of the STAR WARS universe resemble its on-screen counterpart. His characters may not be photo-realistic likenesses of the actors they represent, but the wardrobes and certain details like hairstyles work well enough to convey a sense of who is who.

CLASSIC STAR WARS

Several years ago -- I'm guessing ten, but it could have been eight or nine -- on the last day of the San Diego Comic Con, I came across a dealer unloading random Dark Horse STAR WARS trade paperbacks for five dollars a pop. I was (and of course still am) a huge STAR WARS fan and had read several of the novels, but I had never explored the comics. The Marvel series predated my interest in the franchise, and the contemporary Dark Horse stuff was too much to deal with on top of the many Marvels I bought every month.

So, for such a steep discount, I figured -- why not? I grabbed three trades titled CLASSIC STAR WARS, and left the convention with them. I assumed, without taking a close glance at the contents, that they were collections of the Marvel series. However, they turned out to be collections of the STAR WARS newspaper strip, which ran from 1978 to 1984. I wound up with volumes 1 and 3, plus a separate book titled THE EARLY ADVENTURES, which, while published last by Dark Horse, actually collected the first couple years of the strip.