14. Marvel Star Wars Comics 1977-1986

 Marvel Star Wars Comics 1977-1986

It takes a lot longer to listen to audio than to read, so I'm doing the comics as a quick buffer. I have a lot of driving to do this weekend, so I should be good to finish up the radio dramas next week.

Technically the Marvel comics were the first post ANH Star Wars material, with issue #3 coming out about two weeks after the film. 

Much like the video games, I wasn't interested in reading over a hundred issues, so I looked at about a half dozen random of them throughout the run. All panels in this entry are from issue 56 (the introduction of Shira Brie/Lumiya AKA proto-Mara Jade). Long story short, they're bad.  When I was reviewing the early books I often said something like, "They're generic 70s/80s sci-fi, which is fine if that's what you're looking for." The comics are goofy 70s/80s sci-fi, but poorly written (and the art isn't winning any awards either.) 

The biggest issue is that they're wordy. Yes, older comics were wordier than (most) modern ones. Yes, sometimes that's part of the fun. Yes, I miss reading narration boxes in Stan Lee's voice. But there's a limit to how much wordiness I'm into, and a minimum writing quality required to support them. When there's an entire paragraphs of text on a page with nothing happening, I draw a line. Beyond that, there's also the standard early EU/OT era problem where nothing can actually happen. Lando can go to Bespin, but he can't liberate Cloud City. The Rebels can find out about Imperial Super Weapon 501, but it can't actually threaten them (nor can they actually kill Darth Vader or anything.) Are there some good issues in there? Sure. Is it worth slogging through over a hundred of them for the few good ones? Probably not.

Let's look at some panels!


Todd Macfarlane said Lando Calrissian is his main inspiration for Spawn.

Hat-troopers (they get tricked by a talking bomb)

Every panel is ridiculous

Alright, I'll give them the parallelism here. Well executed.

A rare visual representation of the Wilhelm Scream.
















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