Art by Gene Day, color by Marie Severin (1983)
101 notes
·
View notes
"Look out, world... Marvel goes Mad!"
Crazy #1, February 1973, original cover art by Marie Severin
31 notes
·
View notes
April to October 1977. Although the first issue of the Marvel STAR WARS comic has a cover date of July 1977, it appeared on newsstands in early April, about a month before the film debuted, and Lucasfilm first approached Marvel about a comics adaptation before the movie had even started shooting. Lucas was plainly a comics reader — as writer/editor Roy Thomas explains in a text page in the first issue, Lucas had even read Marvel's short-lived UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION magazine — and for all Lucas's talk of Joseph Campbell mythological archetypes, the movies contain some probably non-coincidental similarities to the work of Jack Kirby, both from Marvel and DC. Lucas requested Thomas, whom he'd previously met, to write the comic, and also apparently asked for artist Carmine Infantino, who would later pencil the ongoing series, albeit not until after the adaptation of the movie was complete. The first 10 issues of the series were drawn by Howard Chaykin, who'd previously done some similar space-opera adventures, including his original "Ironwolf" strip in DC's WEIRD WORLDS in 1974–1975.
Thomas says in the text page that spreading the adaptation over six issues was his idea. That was generous for a movie adaptation (a few years later, Marvel adapted a variety of feature films, including BLADE RUNNER, in just two issues apiece), and was a fairly risky commercial move, but it paid off handsomely — I'm reasonably sure that this adaptation was by a healthy margin the most successful book Marvel published in the 1970s, going through multiple printings and being repackaged in an assortment of different ways. Unfortunately, this was before Marvel implemented its "incentive" (royalty) program for writers and artists, so it wasn't the windfall for Thomas and Chaykin that it would've been a few years later.
The adaptation isn't Chaykin's best work, although the addition of Steve Leialoha as inker on issues #2 through #6 tightens up the likenesses and gives the line art a greater feeling of solidity. Since the comic was done before the movie was completed, there are some discrepancies, and the adaptation includes several scenes that were dropped from the film, including Luke running to tell his friends about witnessing the battle between Leia and Vader's ships (which Luke has seen through his macrobinoculars) and encountering Biggs. The second issue also includes Han's confrontation with Jabba the Hutt (initially spelled "Hut"), later added in the SW Special Edition. Since Thomas and Chaykin had no idea what Jabba was supposed to look like except that he was an alien, this is what they came up with:
This version of Jabba reappeared twice in later issues of the series (#28 and #37, both penciled by Infantino). When Jabba's appearance was finally canonized in RETURN OF THE JEDI, Marvel made no attempt to explain the difference, which was really just as well. (If you dig around the Wookieepedia wiki, you'll find a rationalization for it that is absolutely NOT reflected in the original comics.)
Thomas and Chaykin also did the earliest post-movie stories, both in the STAR WARS title and serialized in Marvel's PIZZAZZ magazine, although these were not particularly distinguished and are really of interest only as curiosities. Thomas departed before either storyline was completed, with the comic book story wrapped up by Chaykin and Donald Glut and the PIZZAZZ serial continued by Tony DeZuñiga and Archie Goodwin. Goodwin would subsequently become the principal writer of the SW comic book until after THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and of the newspaper strip until 1984.
35 notes
·
View notes
Gene Colan - Daredevil #67 Unpublished Cover Original Art (Marvel, 1970)
Source
Similar layout but the published art is by Marie Severin and Bill Everett and holds an E7V brand.
98 notes
·
View notes