The Retro Star Wars Thread — Page 2

ZkinandBonez said:

ATMachine said:

I suspect the shot of the one drunk alien being dragged away by his friend might be an outtake from the SW 1977 cantina footage. It strikes me as just the sort of amusing slice-of-life/documentary moment that GL would like.

(Plus the crew also improvised other sight gags during filming, like a gunfight between two guys of extremely different height in a Mos Eisley back alley.)

Are you referring to this shot?

Like Tyrphanax said, there’s no fighting, the little guy just runs through his legs. But, I don’t doubt that they shot other “sigh gags” like this. I’m guessing this one survived because it was used in the Holiday Special.

(It’s a weird shot, because the small guy seems to have an empty holster, and he’s clearly running away from something, and the tall alien follows him off screen. Just another day in Mos Eisley I guess?)

Yup, that was what I was referring to.

From your description, the Holiday Special version sounds incomplete – as if there were more to the scene, like a third person arriving in the alley to interrupt a two-way gunfight (causing both people in the image above run away).

SilverWook said:

Fox or Lucasfilm sued over all the lightsaber knockoffs in the 70’s. I had one of these for Halloween around 1978 or '79.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1970s-Space-Sword-toy-molded-plastic-glow-in-the-dark-by-Toy-Box-USA-23-/262597449701
Mine had a futuristic decal on the hilt though. The molds were probably for some more earthly toy sword before 1977. Ironically, I thought it was cooler than Kenner’s official version, which as an adult looks like a giant rubber on a flashlight. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XESLIiwsWp8

Kenner did make a cooler saber by ESB though. Wish I still had my red bladed beauty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0AxNeb_vM
And again, someone at Kenner had a yellow saber fetish or something.

That ESB one actually looks kind of cool. The whistle sound effect was pretty clever.
That floppy yellow balloon on the other hand just looks really awkward.
“Inflation required” isn’t something I ever thought I’d hear from a lightsaber commercial btw. Also, I can imagine that balloon popped quite often?

I still can’t wrap my mind around why they kept making them yellow though? I mean the lightsaber toys that were available in the late 90’s when I was a kid didn’t always have the right colour that corresponded to the hilt design. But I get that. That’s a pretty nitpicky detail. But making toys with a colour never apeared in the films, that’s really weird to me.
Then again it makes a great discussion topic, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

ATMachine said:

ZkinandBonez said:

ATMachine said:

I suspect the shot of the one drunk alien being dragged away by his friend might be an outtake from the SW 1977 cantina footage. It strikes me as just the sort of amusing slice-of-life/documentary moment that GL would like.

(Plus the crew also improvised other sight gags during filming, like a gunfight between two guys of extremely different height in a Mos Eisley back alley.)

Are you referring to this shot?

Like Tyrphanax said, there’s no fighting, the little guy just runs through his legs. But, I don’t doubt that they shot other “sigh gags” like this. I’m guessing this one survived because it was used in the Holiday Special.

(It’s a weird shot, because the small guy seems to have an empty holster, and he’s clearly running away from something, and the tall alien follows him off screen. Just another day in Mos Eisley I guess?)

Yup, that was what I was referring to.

From your description, the Holiday Special version sounds incomplete – as if there were more to the scene, like a third person arriving in the alley to interrupt a two-way gunfight (causing both people in the image above run away).

No, the little guy just runs away, and then it cuts to the Cantina band.
Here’s the actual HS scene

In the original deleted scene however some Stormtroopers arrive just after the little guy runs away and the tall alien follows after him.
Maybe they were running away from the Stormtroopers? It’s hard to tell, but the troopers doesn’t seem to take any notice of them.

Maybe you’ve seen a deleted scene that wasn’t included in the recent Blu-ray release.

^ That was exactly the sort of thing I meant – only the Stormtroopers come in from the opposite direction for the scenario I proposed to make sense.

It does look like the little guy was running from something which we never quite find out what it is, and then the big guy takes off after him. Pleasantly ambiguous!

ATMachine said:

^ That was exactly the sort of thing I meant – only the Stormtroopers come in from the opposite direction for the scenario I proposed to make sense.

It does look like the little guy was running from something which we never quite find out what it is, and then the big guy takes off after him. Pleasantly ambiguous!

Right.
It’d be interesting to see any other bits of “life in Mos Eisley” that they shot.

I’m actually quite surprised that there’s never been an overly-elaborate EU story about these two guys.
(Of course this shot was originally only in HS, so I guess there wasn’t as much of a demand for it. Then again the guy with the ice-cream maker on Cloud City got his own tale, so it could still happen.)

ZkinandBonez said:

SilverWook said:

Fox or Lucasfilm sued over all the lightsaber knockoffs in the 70’s. I had one of these for Halloween around 1978 or '79.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1970s-Space-Sword-toy-molded-plastic-glow-in-the-dark-by-Toy-Box-USA-23-/262597449701
Mine had a futuristic decal on the hilt though. The molds were probably for some more earthly toy sword before 1977. Ironically, I thought it was cooler than Kenner’s official version, which as an adult looks like a giant rubber on a flashlight. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XESLIiwsWp8

Kenner did make a cooler saber by ESB though. Wish I still had my red bladed beauty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0AxNeb_vM
And again, someone at Kenner had a yellow saber fetish or something.

That ESB one actually looks kind of cool. The whistle sound effect was pretty clever.
That floppy yellow balloon on the other hand just looks really awkward.
“Inflation required” isn’t something I’d ever thought I’d hear from a lightsaber commercial btw. Also, I can imagine that balloon popped quite often?

I still can’t wrap my mind around why the kept making them yellow though? I mean the lightsaber toys that were available in the late 90’s when I was a kid didn’t always have the right colour that corresponded to the hilt design. But I get that. That’s a pretty nitpicky detail. But making toys with a colour never apeared in the films, that’s really weird to me.
Then again it makes a great discussion topic, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Yeah. Mine made a low buzzing sound if you swung it slowly. (I think the part inside the hilt kind of worked like a giant kazoo.) It was pretty neat, but I kind of wish the prototypes seen in Kenner catalogs had made it to market. They had some sort of gyroscopic gizmo in the hilt to make you “feel” the Force guiding you. It must have been a very late change, as the final toy still looks like batteries would fit in the hilt. You could also unscrew the blade and remove it if you wanted to pretend it was switched “off”.

Someone could probably easily customize an old Kenner saber with electronic lights and sounds today.

The inflatable sabers came with a patch kit, and I imagine they didn’t last too long before springing a leak. Funny they came up with such an ridiculously “safe” toy before the rocket firing Boba Fett debacle. 😉

DuracellEnergizer said:

ZkinandBonez said:

flametitan said:

Out of curiosity: Were there ever any country specific comics anywhere for Star Wars? For example, I know Marvel in the UK had a couple stories in some of their other licenses that didn’t appear in the US comics. Did this happen for star Wars too?

I the UK’s Star Wars Weekly magazine, there was exclusive stories; such as The Day After the Death Star that I mentioned in an earlier post, as well as Way of the Wookiee, The Weapons Master and a rather odd and out-of-place story called World of Fire .

There were also the Alan Moore stories and “Death Masque”

Ah, yes, I forgot about those.

I actually really liked some of these. Death Masque was a pretty clever story, and Dark Lord’s Conscience is a really good example of how cool Darth Vader was before the PT (and even ROTJ to some degree).
Alan Moore’s Tilotny however is one of the weirdest and most non-SW things I’ve ever seen published by either Marvel or Dark Horse.

Anchorhead said:

ZkinandBonez said:
I ever actually read the newspaper strips so don’t really know what they would have looked like originally…

They’re all here in their original format. A must-read archive, perfectly preserved.
http://dailysw.blogspot.com/2009/03/welcome-to-daily-star-wars.html

Still one of my favorite ways to step into the Star Wars universe. This is well before it became a contaminated mess. Just a comic strip based on a popular film.

Thanks.
I’ll have a look at those.

ZkinandBonez said:

LexX said:

Finland got the same treatment. About 10 years ago I tried to figure out what Marvel numbers were released here and found out how they did the albums. Kind of funny. ROTJ was the last album, then they started to publish the comic itself and the stories were like they were meant to be (althoug in completely random release order).

Interesting, that’s exactly what they did in Norway.

I know that Denmark and Sweden published more-or-less the same comics as we got in Norway, and from what I’ve gathered online they were all edited and distributed by the same company in Denmark.

I wonder if Finland might have done the same.

---

Did you actually get any of these Finish annuals/albums?
I’m curious as to what they look like.

Yeah, it was the same. People were asking for more stories and the answer always was “depends on the distributor in Denmark”. Sweden only got maybe a couple of more stories that weren’t released here that I know of.

I have all comics released here. You got some weird cover art for one of the album, otherwise they were the same. I didn’t find any site to quickly show you all of them but here are four of them: http://www.overlook.fi/lehtihaku?keys=tähtien+sota&tid1=All

LexX said:

ZkinandBonez said:

LexX said:

Finland got the same treatment. About 10 years ago I tried to figure out what Marvel numbers were released here and found out how they did the albums. Kind of funny. ROTJ was the last album, then they started to publish the comic itself and the stories were like they were meant to be (althoug in completely random release order).

Interesting, that’s exactly what they did in Norway.

I know that Denmark and Sweden published more-or-less the same comics as we got in Norway, and from what I’ve gathered online they were all edited and distributed by the same company in Denmark.

I wonder if Finland might have done the same.

---

Did you actually get any of these Finish annuals/albums?
I’m curious as to what they look like.

Yeah, it was the same. People were asking for more stories and the answer always was “depends on the distributor in Denmark”. Sweden only got maybe a couple of more stories that weren’t released here that I know of.

I have all comics released here. You got some weird cover art for one of the album, otherwise they were the same. I didn’t find any site to quickly show you all of them but here are four of them: http://www.overlook.fi/lehtihaku?keys=tähtien+sota&tid1=All

I found this Danish website recently that covers all the SW comics released in Scandinavia; http://superhelteserier.dk/star_wars_comics.htm

It’s interesting to see how Sweden got a fair amount more than Norway, Denmark, and apparently Finland as well.

I also see that you got the same cover art for the fifth album that Denmark and Sweden got. I wonder why only Norway got the unique cover. (It also got released one year later for some reason.)

(At least this one makes more sense to the plot. Although it really weird-looking, it has both Baron Tagge and one of the Omega Frost towers. And the title (Danish here, don’t know the Swedish or Finish one) translates to “Frozen Stars”, which makes a lot more sense than the ambiguous “Last Warning” that Norway got. Also google translates the Finish title as “Glacial Ambush”. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it still makes more sense than the Norwegian one.)

This might be a somewhat odd thing to ask about, but to you know/remember how the Finish comics, that is the monthly comics, notified the readers as to the continuity of the stories, if at all? I went and checked the comics that I have in my collection, and pretty much all of them have a small sentence at the top of the splash-page that will say something to the effect of “this story takes place between [ESB] and [ROTJ]” or at least say something like “shortly after evacuating the Hoth base…” I’m curious as to what the Finish comics did once you mentioned that you got them all in a random order as well in the early 80’s.

ZkinandBonez said:

(At least this one makes more sense to the plot. Although it really weird-looking, it has both Baron Tagge and one of the Omega Frost towers. And the title (Danish here, don’t know the Swedish or Finish one) translates to “Frozen Stars”, which makes a lot more sense than the ambiguous “Last Warning” that Norway got. Also google translates the Finish title as “Glacial Ambush”. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it still makes more sense than the Norwegian one.)

---

This might be a somewhat odd thing to ask about, but to you know/remember how the Finish comics, that is the monthly comics, notified the readers as to the continuity of the stories, if at all? I went and checked the comics that I have in my collection, and pretty much all of them have a small sentence at the top of the splash-page that will say something to the effect of “this story takes place between [ESB] and [ROTJ]” or at least say something like “shortly after evacuating the Hoth base…” I’m curious as to what the Finish comics did once you mentioned that you got them all in a random order as well in the early 80’s.

That probably is the literal translation but it’s more like “freezing ambush” or “ice-cold ambush”.

We got the exact same covers for the SW comic as in your link except the last one in 1986. I think they were just translated from English, I highly doubt that the translator made his own comments into the comics. As you can see from the covers, the “random” order is the same order Denmark got based on the covers. They started after TESB, then went after ROTJ, then again after TESB and then continuing where they left off after ROTJ.

LexX said:

ZkinandBonez said:

(At least this one makes more sense to the plot. Although it really weird-looking, it has both Baron Tagge and one of the Omega Frost towers. And the title (Danish here, don’t know the Swedish or Finish one) translates to “Frozen Stars”, which makes a lot more sense than the ambiguous “Last Warning” that Norway got. Also google translates the Finish title as “Glacial Ambush”. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it still makes more sense than the Norwegian one.)

---

This might be a somewhat odd thing to ask about, but to you know/remember how the Finish comics, that is the monthly comics, notified the readers as to the continuity of the stories, if at all? I went and checked the comics that I have in my collection, and pretty much all of them have a small sentence at the top of the splash-page that will say something to the effect of “this story takes place between [ESB] and [ROTJ]” or at least say something like “shortly after evacuating the Hoth base…” I’m curious as to what the Finish comics did once you mentioned that you got them all in a random order as well in the early 80’s.

That probably is the literal translation but it’s more like “freezing ambush” or “ice-cold ambush”.

We got the exact same covers for the SW comic as in your link except the last one in 1986. I think they were just translated from English, I highly doubt that the translator made his own comments into the comics. As you can see from the covers, the “random” order is the same order Denmark got based on the covers. They started after TESB, then went after ROTJ, then again after TESB and then continuing where they left off after ROTJ.

Right.
Well then it seems that all four countries got the exact same comics released in the same back-and-forth order during the 70’s and 80’s. The only exceptions being the extra comics in Sweden, the one weird cover variant in Norway, and of course the actual translations.

(Also I wouldn’t doubt that the translators made their own comments some times. After all they did some pretty extensive and elaborate editing on the annual albums, even going so far as to extend the panel art. Also in the Norwegian comics, the text informing the reader about the continuity, is literally just one line typed onto the blank margin atop the splash-page. Example)

EDIT: Double post

ZkinandBonez said:

(Also I wouldn’t doubt that the translators made their own comments some times. After all they did some pretty extensive and elaborate editing on the annual albums, even going so far as to extend the panel art. Also in the Norwegian comics, the text informing the reader about the continuity, is literally just one line typed onto the blank margin atop the splash-page. Example)

You may be right. I don’t have any of my comics at my place so can’t check them out.

Okay, theses are the last Star Wars Weekly (or Marvel comics) related images I’ll post in a while, but I just found some of these old magazine ads, news, etc. and I find them pretty interesting.

These are taken from Star Wars Weekly issue 100 from January 1980.

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(I think it’s funny that it calls them co-stars of the “future.”)

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(Note that they’ve gotten John Williams name wrong, and called him “Richard Williams” instead.)

Wow, these are really awesome.

(That Marvel adaptation must have been a pretty big deal back in the day. It’s interesting that they reprinted the American comics. I was under the impression that the Japanese preferred to make their own versions of American IP’s when it came to comics/manga?)

Also I wasn’t aware that Ohrai had done more than just the ESB poster.

Well, now I have something to look for the next time I visit Japan.

(PS; no ROTJ translation?)

^and that his helmet is painted in a way that makes it look like he’s smiling.

He looks like he’s had a bit too much to drink.