In a post from 30th March 2014 The Comic Shops. A Trip Down Memory Lane. I was talking about being a child and
going to comic shops in the 90's. Now you're wondering why i would bring this
up in relation to the Marvel Star Wars #1 issue that came out last week or the
week before...
I had it on mail order so it took a little
longer to get to me... I would of taken a trip to Ace Comics in Richmond or the
Forbidden Planet in London but i have been super busy at work and just didn't
get the time to get the issue on the day of release. So this little look back
and thoughts on the comic is written a little later than i had hoped.
But back to the point.
Marvel have the new licence to do the Star
Wars comic after 23 years (...December 1991- August 2014...) of Dark
Horse Comics doing them. So i pulled out The old #1 issues of the comics from
my collection and looked through them again. I will say this. I stopped
collecting the comics at around the time of Episode One The Phantom Menace so
that would be 1999. This was mainly due to the comic shop in Hayes closing and
i couldn't go to a comic shop regularly enough to carry on collecting. So i
started getting the graphic novels instead. Not the same but close enough. Also
at around 1994 I started to get heavily in to Anime and Manga.
Now you must remember i live in the UK so
the size of the comics here are different to the size in the US. And yes i have
over the last 24 years gone back to get the normal size US comics of Dark
Empire. but i wanted to look back at My issue Ones that i had or was able to
buy at the time.
So let's begin at the beginning...
The 1980's
Star Wars #1 the Over sized comic was
given to me as a child by my dad who told me to look after it as it was old
well this would of been in the mid 1980's and the comic is dated 1977 so less
than 10 years but i kept it safe to this day. It is a special collection of the
first three issues that made up the film adaption but Marvel comics.
These issues have been reprinted so many times over the years in annuals,
graphic novels and so on but they are drawn so well i love the art it's so 70's
and i prefer the art in comics from the 70's and 80's. The Movie adaption
covers about half the movie up to the rescue of Princess Leia and i loved that
book. for a long time it was star wars for me. After all the VHS was expensive
and it was only on TV at around Christmas so i only had the comic read all year
round. until we got a VCR player and i could record Star Wars one Christmas.
The 1990's
Star Wars featuring Indiana Jones #1 this
was a comic that came out in the UK and was sold at newsagents it was magazine
sized and was longer than the normal 22 page comics at 48 pages. This issue had
the UK printing of Dark Empire #1 and a back up comic from the Indiana Jones
comic also done by Dark Horse. Dark Empire was the start of the Dark Horse Star
Wars comic line and came out in December 1991 but here in the UK it was printed
in October 1992. It came out monthly and on the back of each issue it had the
release date of the next issue. I can remember running after school to the
newsagents that was just down the road from my school to get the new issue. As
far as i can tell this comic only lasted 10 issues and ended in July 1993 in
the back of the comic issue 11 is listed but i was never able to find it. But
luckily it was around that time that i started go to the comic shop in Hayes
and Northfields... Which i finally remembered the name of the shop just outside
Northfields Station. It was called Outlander... and it was at Outlanders where
i was able to get the US comics. and the back issues from the year before.
Now Dark Empire#1 is a great read i read
that thing so many times in that first month i had to buy a second copy because
mine had fallen apart. After all this was at a time when there was nothing Star
Wars out. From about 1985-1992 there was really no Star Wars products being
made unlike today... No comics, no Cartoon's, no toys, no books and NO
MOVIES!!! so it was a dark time really and then Hair to the Empire came out in
book shops and that was followed but the Dark Empire comic and everything
changed. Just sitting on my bed reading that issue you could feel a change was
coming and my fandom was renewed. The art as well was like nothing i had ever seen before. The
art was done by Cam Kennedy. It was set about five years after Return of the Jedi and followed Luke as he battled the Dark Side of the Force from within.
Just like the above this has been reprinted
countless times and can be found very easily. And if you have never read Dark
Empire and it's sequels Dark Empire II and Empire's End i highly recommend
them.
The 2000's
This takes us to today January 2014.
Marvels new Star Wars #1. Now i must say that i think the whole Variant cover
thing has and is out of hand with around 68 different covers...Why are there so
many??? Any way i decided to get the cover with Jaxxon on it. Only because
Jaxxon was a Green Rabbit from the old Marvel comics from the 70's and 80's.and he reminds me of Bucky O'Hare.
Now this is a good comic and i enjoyed it. It is completely different to Dark Empire and i can not wait to get issue 2 and find out what happens next. I am also debating weather or not to get the single issues or the graphic novels... It was upbeat and feels like a continuation of the events that followed Episode IV A New Hope. The art is good and everyone looks like Han, Luke and Leia. I have high hopes that is will last just as long if not longer than the Dark Horse run and with new Films and TV shows coming out The future of Star Wars comics is looking bright.
And that is a breath history of me and Star Wars issue #1's i could go in to getting the US comics and that but they don't have the same kind of attachment to me as the ones above. And with that out of the way my next post will hopefully be an update on my Darth Vader Helmet.
No comments:
Post a Comment