A while back I found these six pages from an old article about the “Goodwin-years” of Marvel Star Wars. I don’t know what magazine this is from, but I made them into a PDF and figured I’d share it here.
Cool article , thank you for sharing . I saw Archie Goodwin signing and talking to fans about this series at the Chicago Comic Con back in early 1995 and he was one hell of a nice guy. I think he had a great handle on the characters , I have to disagree with part of this article though as I thought his first story arc on the water world felt like it could have been an awesome Star Wars movie and it had the sense of grand scale and pacing that are a Star Wars hallmark . And while I like that Infantino had a quirky style that got the essence of the characters in interpretation , I am partial to Walter Simonson or Ron Frenz with Tom Palmer . Goodwin did write some of the best stories though and David Michellinie wrote the penultimate arc between issues 55 and 63 with the Shira Brie /Pariah story arc.One of the things I like most about Goodwin though , and he mentioned this himself in the letters column of one of the issues he wrote, was that he realized Darth Vader was too good a villian to be over used and was more effective when used sparingly so he had more of an impact .This is one thing Current Marvel does not get . While some of it has been ok in my opinion , having a Darth Vader series misses the point.And back to the article , yeah , Michellinie’s Tarkin/Death Star story was a bit of a rehash , but it did anticipate the events of ROTJ and the same could be said of TFA. I also enjoyed a lot of the stories written by Jo Duffy with both Ron Frenz and Cynthia Martin prior to them getting their hands tied and the series getting a little wonky the last few issues .
I think Michelinie did ROTJ better than Lucas did! The Tarkin made sense because it used Death Star tech in an innovative way (as opposed to “hey, here’s a bigger one!” a la ROTJ and TFA). Plus its destruction was from within rather than just another ‘exhaust port/main reactor’ scenario. The Hoojibs on Arbra (complete with hover-bikes) did ‘cuteness’ and Endor much better than ROTJ. And finally Shira Brie would’ve made an infinitely better ‘other hope’ than the clumsily shoehorned Leia.