Marvel’s Second Star Wars Era Began Ten Years Ago

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In every Look Back, we examine a comic book issue from 10/25/50/75 years ago (plus a wild card every month with a fifth week in it). This time around, we head to January for the launch of Marvel’s second era of Star Wars comic books.

A long time ago, in a galaxy…well, extremely close by (since it was this one), Marvel debuted its comic book adaptation of the then-upcoming science fiction fantasy film, Star Wars. George Lucas was a big comic book fan (the late Edward Summer told me years ago that Lucas had told him that the iconic boulder sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark was a specific homage to Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge comics. And yes, it IS kind of freaky how many old articles of mine include interactions with cool people who have sadly passed away over the years), and it was very important to him that Star Wars be adapted into a comic book, and the resulting series was a GIGANCTIC smash success, going through multiple printings and, if not OUTRIGHT saving Marvel Comics from going out of business, it certainly made sure that that was not even a possibility, as the sales were really THAT good.

At first.

By 1986, with the Star Wars film franchise finished for a few years, and no sign of future sequels (or prequels), and Marvel looking to clear its production calendar to make room for its brand-new line of comics, the New Universe (it is one thing to launch a new line of books, it is a whole other to just add a bunch of comics to your publishing schedule all at once without either increasing your manpower or decreasing your output of OTHER books, and Marvel went with the latter), Marvel canceled the series (and it was too bad, as it was in the middle of some REALLY interesting post-Return of the Jedi stories). Marvel had a chance to get the license back a few years later, but, after initially agreeing to do it, Marvel changed course (as the late Tom Veitch told me in another Comic Book Legends Revealed. And, yes, again, it sucks talking about all of these cool people we’ve lost), and Star Wars instead ended up at Dark Horse, where it remained for many years. However, once Disney bought both Marvel AND Lucasfilm, it was clearly only a matter of time before Star Wars returned to Marvel, and that time was January 2015, with the debut of Star Wars #1 by Jason Aaron, John Cassaday, Laura Martin, and Chris Eliopoulos).

How did Jason Aaron’s story differ from past Marvel Star Wars stories?

First off, before I say anything else, note that Marvel took the launch of this new line of Star Wars comics SUPER seriously, as they went with pretty much their MOST popular artist at the time, John Cassaday, paired with one of their most popular writer, Jason Aaron. They also used one of the all-time great colorists, Laura Martin, and one of the all-time great letterers, Chris Eliopoulos, so Marvel was not messing around. Just that Cassaday cover ALONE (which I featured for the header of this piece) could sell thousands of comics by itself. I’m sure there were plenty of comic book stores that ordered way more than they would normally sell of Star Wars comics just because of that cover, figuring that cover and a Star Wars #1? You should be able to sell that for YEARS.

Okay, so the book has a cool opening evoking the films…

Okay, so the big problem that Marvel faced in the early days of its Star Wars comic book was that there was obviously going to be a sequel to the first film, and so it was stuck in terms of what kind of stories it could tell, as you couldn’t do anything TOO dramatic with the characters.

Once the films were finished, however, that opened things up a bit, and now GOING BACK, it was slightly easier to revisit those early days, and in fact, Dark Horse had just done so with its last series before losing the license. So Aaron was able to tell an interesting story about the Rebels intercepting an envoy from Jabba the Hutt to an Imperial weapons manufacturing base, and taking its place so that they could blow it up.

And, well, come on, John Cassaday and famous likenesses? It was a match made in heaven!

But of course, their destruction mission is waylaid when they suddenly have to turn their mission into a RESCUE one, as well…

Aaron even gets to get in some strong character work, as Leia notes that Han agreeing to this plan, and using his name as the face of the mission, means that he is ALL IN on the Rebels…

How did Aaron cleverly bring Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker together?

Of course, while they are waiting to blow up the place, and escape with the prisoners, Darth freakin’ Vader arrives!

There’s a great moment here that was addressed in a recent Star Wars comic, as well, which is, “If you could kill Vader, SHOULD you?” Leia says YES, but Vader, obviously, defends himself from an assassination attempt by Chewbacca.

And then that leads to the great hook of the issue. Jason Aaron can’t have Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader clash in a story before Empire Strikes Back, but he CAN have Vader fight a rebel that he doesn’t recognize yet, and so that’s the hook, Vader and Luke face off, with the Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke to run…

It’s a clever way to work between the established canon, and it gives the book an outstanding cliffhanger ending. This was such a great start to Marvel’s second Star Wars era!

If you folks have any suggestions for February (or any other later months) 2015, 2000, 1975 and 1950 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we’re discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.

“}]] A look back to January 2015, when Marvel’s second era of Star Wars comics had a triumphant debut  Read More