Sunday 7 November 2010

Star Wars Weekly






The question is: Does this constitute a British comic? Sure, the main strip is from the US, with backup material also from the States, but it was produced weekly by Marvel UK, had each strip especially cut up into chunks, with new covers and, much later, original UK material.
For those reasons, i'm gonna give it a mention.
LOVED it when it first came out as, back then in '78, the weekly was the only way of getting new Star Wars material.
Odd as it may have been.
Leaving aside the 6 foot green Bugs Bunny and other bizarro notions, the main draw for me, aside what it was based on, was the work of Carmine Infantino.
Its kinda nice that the artist that was giving me my first superhero thrills back in '66 with Batman was now giving the 16 year-old me my SF thrills.
Looking back on it now, there's two things to note:

(1) How brilliant he was with the hardware, despite must not having very few refererence shots - the Y Wing is pretty much spot on, and how he uses them - those speed lines on the Falcon just scream speed don't they?
(2) The up and down of likenesses. While he never quite nailed the Stormtroopers and his Luke is just plain weird, what with the elfen eyes and Farrah Fawcett hair, his Leia is drop dead gorgeous, even with those silly buns.
Carmine, i salute you.
Another things to mention is:
I was going to buy the Dark Horse collection of these early stories, all ready to buy, flick through and... they're in colour.
Having years and years and years of pouring over these strips in black and white, it just doesn't look right AT ALL to have them in colour. That's how they were meant to be but guess, and this applies to all 60's Marvel strips too, i was so used to them being in b/w that anything else isn't right.
And. comparing the two, i'd rather go this way. You can see the penwork much better and guessing too that someone at Marvel UK applied the Letratone shading, which added for a much moodier and effective look.
Incidently, while i much prefer the 60's Marvel strips in b/w as that's how i was introduced to them in Mighty World Of Marvel et all, the same can't be said of DC. I only knew them from the full colour imports, so to flick through one of their Showcase collections with the likes of the Flash and Batman in monochrome just looks wrong.

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