I got lost exploring this site for a few hours today…lots of international covers for the classic Marvel series here…the ones from Indonesia and Spain are both cool and batshit crazy ! http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/search/label/Retro Foreign?updated-max=2017-03-26T00:18:00-07:00&max-results=20&start=47&by-date=false
Ditto on that first statement.
Indonesian Star Wars Komik Spesial Cypress #1
http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/2015/12/retro-foreign-indonesian-star-wars.html
Man, and I though some of the Norwegian comics were heavily edited. At least the Norwegian editing made some sense, but the Indonesian comic literally just pasted panels from different issues, and with a completely different artist, into SW Annual #1. They even removed the background art in several panels and the cover is a complete mess that looks like scrapbook collage. You can almost make out some Infantino art at the top of the cover. Seems like they took one of the Marvel covers and literally just glued a weird picture of Mark Hamill on top of it.
Brazilian O Incrivel Hulk #25 - 27
http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/2016/02/retro-foreign-brazilian-o-incrivel-hulk.html
I find the Brazilian ones quite interesting though. It reminds me a little bit of what they did in Norway, where they often bundled stories that didn’t quite belong together, but at least they never did anything as weird as Star Wars and the Hulk. Having said that, though, had this been in Norwegian I’d totally read it as a kid.
The most interesting one that I’ve found so far, however, has to be the one from Lebanon.
Lebanese Beyond the Universe Album #2
http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/2016/06/retro-foreign-lebanese-beyond-universe.html
At first it didn’t really stand out among all the other strange stuff posted on the site, but this comment made me see it in a very different light;
“Remarkably, these comics were published in Lebanon in the middle of a 15 year civil war that began in 1975. For Lebanese children who grew up during this era, the Grendizer cartoon and comics were a distraction from the atrocities that were taking place in their country.”
These are actually quite cool TBH (and I kinda want one for my collection). Even the random sci-fi posters and the weird Star Trek photonovel-thing looks quite interesting. This one was just the right amount of weird and esoteric, while still showing that it was made by people who clearly cared for the source material, to make it special as opposed to just strange or novel like many of the other foreign editions.
PS. The Yugoslavian version of ANH has by far the most hideous colouring of any comic book I’ve ever seen and I don’t think I’ll ever complain about the sometimes odd colour choices in old Scandinavian comics ever again after seeing this.
https://i.imgur.com/ufnGwA8.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tXf8Hft.jpg
