1 out of 5

So file in the ‘nostalgia’ pile of things that don’t work too well if you’re not a super Star Wars fan or weren’t thirsting for these reprints.  Apparently the ‘classic’ Star Wars books DH put out were reprints of newspaper strips, re-edited and ‘re-mastered’ for a comic book format.  And I only bought this issue because Gerber remembered working on the script, though to what capacity I have no clue – like, he wrote the original dialogue, he helped re-work it for the book…?  Dunno.

To the book’s / editors credit, without reading the letter cols to find out that these were originally in the paper, the comic reads pretty well as a straight forward piece of a story, the only tip that this might not be the original format coming in occasional recaps at the start of a page.  The art and colors have also been given a pretty great scrubbing.  From the look of it, Russ Manning’s pencils were already pretty clean, but even though this comic was published in ’94, even by today’s standards the colors pop really well, and there’s a surprising amount of space and detail depicted for what might’ve been a weekly series.  Though there is a slightly quirky, slightly silly look to Russ’ characters on occasion – the odd pose, the cross-eyed look – but they represent their film counterparts rather naturally, without looking too much like a forced mock up of a celebrity but recognizable all the same.

But… I dunno.  We can consider the three original films classic, and this issue – the strip’s purpose was, I assume, to fill in the gaps around the movies – this issue references the movie a couple times in a requisite wink-wink way to readers, but it’s like… we’ve all seen it.  But the world was a different place when the strip was published, perhaps.  Whatevs.  It’s just an annoying I GET IT STAR WARS IS COOL YAY kinda thang.  Beyond that, the writing is fairly bleh.  Mad apostrophes at the end of every sentence, and a plot about a spreading plague sort of bumpily developed.  Admittedly I’ve never really followed a newspaper storyline, so I’m sure pacing is tough dot dot dot I just mean to say, as I did to begin with, that the comic holds nothing for a new reader.  You either remembered the strip or are a Star Wars fan.  Manning seems like a competent artist for the task but not someone to breed a legion of followers to track down random thing he’s worked on, SO nostalgia pile all the way.

But if they ever collect the Turtles or Howard the Duck newspaper strips, like, ten stars each.