Yeah, special editioning the comic was possibly the dumbest thing they could have done.
Why can’t they just use the original coloring? Did they lose the negatives or something?
Well, it makes sense for for Dark Horse and Marvel to want to modernize these comics, especially since they’re based on famous movies. Most people under a certain age won’t understand why the OT adaptations (or any older comics) has such wacky colours. For people who actually grew up with these comics, or younger fans like me who reads/collects them, its obvious that the old newspaper-print needed vibrant, over-the-top colours, in order to pop out. But on modern glossy paper, or digitally, it can be quite weird and even confusing to some. This effects SW twice as much since there are several movies as reference points.
So as long as Marvel provides the original colours in one form or another (which they do), I don’t hold it against them for wanting to modernize it for newer/younger readers. They could of course just draw new adaptations, but I personally appreciate that they instead choose to reintroduce new readers to the work of Chaykin and Williamson.
And while on the subject of the 1997 SE comics; I just flipped through the ESB SE and noticed that on one page Boba Fett has the exact same colour scheme as Jango in AOTC. I wonder if that’s a coincidence or if someone at Lucasfilm saw this page at some point and figured they’d borrow the same look when designing Jango a few years later.
