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The Retro Star Wars Thread

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There’s been a lot of retro Star Wars posters, ads, etc. posted on the Random Thoughts Thread so I figured I’d make a thread specifically for sharing any kind of retro SW content, be it funny, weird, or just plain awesome.

(It doesn’t need to be just old artwork, posters, ads, comic/book covers, etc. It can be photos, videos, etc. However I would prefer the content to be for the most part limited to the 70’s and 80’s. )


I’ll start off with something simple;
like these weird Japanese Panasonic ads from the 80’s starring George Lucas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwxeE3jIt5A

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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Anchorhead said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTC3SqPyEDU&sns=em

This public service announcement from 1979 is still being used. They showed it in my defensive driving course just last year.

Wow, really?
Then again, why not. SW is as relevant now as it has ever been.

(I wonder if they shot that for the PSA, or if they used outtakes? Or maybe a bit of both?)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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Star Wars Weekly, The UK’s version of the Marvel Star Wars comics.

Just figured I’d share random covers that I managed to find in high res and that I feel accurately illustrates the over-dramatic quality of late 70’s Marvel SW comics (the last one in particular).

(All of these have original artwork made for the UK by Carmine Infantino. Since the Marvel UK split each American issue into several smaller parts, more cover art was needed. They even wrote some original stories just for the UK.)


(It doesn’t get more 70’s Marvel than a buff Luke Skywalker dual-wielding blasters against some Imperial Troop Transports; which BTW were actually based off a Kenner toy that were released the same year as this comic was released.)


(That guy with the knife is actually supposed to be a TIE-Pilot. It’s hard to tell why Infantino drew him like that, considering how the TIE-Pilots were featured so prominently the movie. Then again Marvel did seem to often use the Kenner toys as reference, and the TIE-pilot figure didn’t exist at this point.)


(This one I find especially amusing. “Chewbacca betrayed by Han Solo!” This ‘betrayal’ ends up actually being a relatively small moment that plays out with far less drama and confusion than the cover would imply. The composition in the cover is, when compared to the events in the cover, actually straight up misleading.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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ZkinandBonez said:

Anchorhead said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTC3SqPyEDU&sns=em

This public service announcement from 1979 is still being used. They showed it in my defensive driving course just last year.

Wow, really?
Then again, why not. SW is as relevant now as it has ever been.

(I wonder if they shot that for the PSA, or if they used outtakes? Or maybe a bit of both?)

Puggo and I would love to find a 16mm of that. He scored one of the PSA’s with the droids and included it on Puggo Grande. Someone uploaded a better version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxpz3Lp-PCk
The droids PSA’s were shot in the UK, with a set using leftover bits of the Death Star control room. You might shed a tear seeing Kenny Baker and Artoo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_69vakbrc
It would be interesting to know where the cantina one was shot. My guess would be in California just like the cantina inserts shot for the movie. The Holiday Special set might have been used.

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SilverWook said:

Puggo and I would love to find a 16mm of that. He scored one of the PSA’s with the droids and included it on Puggo Grande. Someone uploaded a better version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxpz3Lp-PCk

Puggo scored it?
Was it missing music to begin with?

SilverWook said:

It would be interesting to know where the cantina one was shot. My guess would be in California just like the cantina inserts shot for the movie. The Holiday Special set might have been used.

You can very briefly see most of the room here and it looks different from what appeared in the Holiday Special. I’m not patient enough to look through the entire HS scene, but I think they’re different sets. In the HS, there’s a wall on the left of the bar, in the PSA it looks more like a smaller version of the cantina from the movie.

I’m assuming that they re-used the “California/insert-aliens” in the HS, so I don’t see why they would have done something different for this PSA.
(I was surprised by the giant mouse in the HS though. I don’t remember that one from the movie. I remember a giant mantis, but not seeing a giant mouse.)

SilverWook said:

The droids PSA’s were shot in the UK, with a set using leftover bits of the Death Star control room. You might shed a tear seeing Kenny Baker and Artoo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_69vakbrc

Wow, that’s really cool.
Btw, which PSA is this from? I remember having seen quite a few Artoo and Threepio PSAs on YouTube, but I can’t remember having seen this set before.

(Also, this guy on the far right looks like a Vulcan dressed as Han Solo.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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I never noticed Spock guy in there before! Does Frink have a time machine? 😉

I mean he won a copy that came up for auction.
These are the two PSA’s shot on that set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ_R_33iMrE
No idea where they shot this one. Maybe it’s a utility room at Elstree?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li7Sofem5WA

I think the mouse and a couple other creatures were more “off the shelf” things Rick Baker or someone else had lying around to fill out the scene. (Others, like the bouncer, were created just for the HS.) The HS cantina set could have been chopped up and rearranged, or else Lucasfilm still had the partial sets handy from the U.S. shoot. They also could have simply built a new set.

It would seem all the U.K. masks got shipped back to Lucasfilm, as many of them appear in this Richard Pryor show skit from late 1977.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJkhEcQ44k

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SilverWook said:

I mean he won a copy that came up for auction.

Ah, of course. I should’ve gotten that.
(As a non-native speaker these idioms slip your mind every now and then. I though you were implying that Puggo was restoring one of the PSAs or something like that.)

SilverWook said:

I think the mouse and a couple other creatures were more “off the shelf” things Rick Baker or someone else had lying around to fill out the scene. (Others, like the bouncer, were created just for the HS.) The HS cantina set could have been chopped up and rearranged, or else Lucasfilm still had the partial sets handy from the U.S. shoot. They also could have simply built a new set.

It would seem all the U.K. masks got shipped back to Lucasfilm, as many of them appear in this Richard Pryor show skit from late 1977.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJkhEcQ44k

Those masks really got around didn’t they.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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They sure did! And there was some other one off tv special circa late 1979 or early 1980 I barely remember now, that had all the Cantina aliens plus a Xenomorph seated in a bar set! It was mostly a backdrop to something, maybe an awards show of some kind? I’ve no idea if the Xenomorph was a replica, or an actual suit from Alien.

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ZkinandBonez said:


(That guy with the knife is actually supposed to be a TIE-Pilot. It’s hard to tell why Infantino drew him like that, considering how the TIE-Pilots were featured so prominently the movie. Then again Marvel did seem to often use the Kenner toys as reference, and the TIE-pilot figure didn’t exist at this point.)

I think Infantino just took a lot of creative liberty with his renderings. Everything from ships to stormtroopers looks off compared to their counterparts in the original film.

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ZkinandBonez said:

Anchorhead said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTC3SqPyEDU&sns=em

This public service announcement from 1979 is still being used. They showed it in my defensive driving course just last year.

Wow, really?
Then again, why not. SW is as relevant now as it has ever been.

(I wonder if they shot that for the PSA, or if they used outtakes? Or maybe a bit of both?)

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.)

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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I don’t think it was a gunfight, just an encounter. The little guy scurries through the larger’s legs.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

END OF LINE

(It hasn’t happened yet)

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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?)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

ZkinandBonez said:


(That guy with the knife is actually supposed to be a TIE-Pilot. It’s hard to tell why Infantino drew him like that, considering how the TIE-Pilots were featured so prominently the movie. Then again Marvel did seem to often use the Kenner toys as reference, and the TIE-pilot figure didn’t exist at this point.)

I think Infantino just took a lot of creative liberty with his renderings. Everything from ships to stormtroopers looks off compared to their counterparts in the original film.

True.
This one just seems unusually off to me.

I mean he added his own touch to the the weapons, ships, etc. but a Stormtrooper was recognizable as a Stormtrooper. This guy, looks like a scuba-diver to me.

(Not that I’m complaining, I love Infantino’s SW work, I just find this green and purple scuba-pilot kinda funny.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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What issue is that in the American Marvel run? I’d bet the interior art is more accurate.
The extra covers needed for the weekly may also have been rush jobs.

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SilverWook said:

What issue is that in the American Marvel run? I’d bet the interior art is more accurate.
The extra covers needed for the weekly may also have been rush jobs.

It’s from a story called The Day After the Death Star and it was made specifically for Star Wars Weekly in the UK. It was released in the US a year later with colour as a Marvel Illustrated Books. Both the cover and the interior art was done by Carmine Infantino.

And no, he does look exactly like that in the interior art.

It’s hard to say what colours he was supposed to be though. The Star Wars Weekly comics didn’t have colours, and the coloured American release one year later gave him a different, but still pretty weird, colour scheme;

(Honestly the largest picture I could find online.)

EDIT:
Infantino drew a TIE-pilot that looked very similar in a previous issue (made for a US release);

The design is similar, but he’s wearing a black outfit which at least makes him look more like a proper TIE-pilot. However, we never see him from the front, so it’s hard to say what Infantino imagined.

However, he did also draw the cover art, in which the TIE-pilot look pretty much the same as he did in the Star Wars Weekly story. (The colourist, however made him look even crazier on the cover. Here he’s red and blue.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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Since we’re on the subject of the Goodwin/Infantino comics of the late 70’s, I figured I’d share this recent comic purchase of mine.
This might be a bit too niche, but hopefully some of you will find this somewhat fascinating.
I’ll post some more “normal” retro stuff later.


First off, to put things in context, I live in Norway, and I recently decided to find a copy of every pre-PT SW comic that’s ever been published here. Now that may sound crazy, but being a small country with only a few million people there was never a large enough demand to publish as many comics as in the US. As a matter of fact I already own half-or-so of every SW comic published between 1978 and 1999. So it’s not as daunting a task as it sounds like.
My priority search however revolves around these six annuals released between 1978 and 1983.

What’s so fascinating about these annuals is that what the Scandinavian publishers did was to take story lines from the US comics that were split into five or six issues, and simply released all of them in one album each year. That way they managed to cover roughly half a year of US comics in one single comic released annually.

The comic above, which I recently purchased online, is one of the rarest and hardest to find, and it’s the only non-movie-adaptation one with original cover art. The other two are Infantino covers recreated by some Scandinavian painter.
(The Norwegian title translates to “Last Warning” btw.)

However, what fascinates me the most is what’s inside this comic.

At first it seems quite simple;
Take Marvel Star Wars #25-26 & #31-34, ignore all the sub-plots explored in between, and release all six issues in one annual.
However, in order to get these six stories to fit into one 80 page comic, as well as to remove any signs that these used to be several comics, they’ve done some editing of the actual artwork by Infantino.

As you can see in the image below, they’ve take the original splash-page, cropped it and combined it with several panels from the next page. The reason for this is simply that the splash-pages become redundant when you’re doing six issues as one continuous story, but there’s none-the-less information here that they can’t cut out.
The result is this chopped up composition where two pages become one.

US comic on the left, Norwegian comic on the right.

Here they’ve taken a splash-page and incorporated it into a large two-page image. They’ve even thrown in the first panel from the next page (in US version) to save some space.

US comic top row, Norwegian comic bottom row.

And the more I looked into it, the crazier it gets. Some times there are several pages that are completely re-arranged from their original compositions. If you look closely you can even see that they’ve altered the artwork itself some times. A lot of the text is really condensed down to their bare-essentials as well, not to mention that the colours are often quite different.

An example of just how crazy this editing can get.


(As a side-note for those of you who have actually read these comics. It’s kind of funny how for Norwegian readers back in the 80’s, the entire pre-ESB EU ends with this annual, e.g. Marvel SW # 31. The whole “Red Queen Rising” story-line with Domina Tagge was never published, presumably because it was only three issues and therefore didn’t fit into the annual format. So as far as Norwegian kids was aware of back in the 80’s Baron Tagge dies here when his ship explodes, and not as he actually did two issues later in the US (and UK). What’s even weirder is that when Norway started publishing monthly SW comics like in the US, but only after 1983, where they initially focused on post-ESB stories, Domina does make an appearance. She actually references events that were never published in Norway. There’s even a little text box that refers to “a previous issue”.)

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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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).

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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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.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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IIRC, when Dark Horse reprinted the newspaper strips in comic book form, there was similar reformatting going on.

And wow, the lightsaber placement in front of Threepio’s crotch is too awkward to be random. 😉

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I won’t link to it as it’s probably skirting the rules, but someone has been making Youtube videos out of the old SW Marvel comics recently. (And some not so old material.) First time I’ve seen anyone do this online. All the original ads and letter pages included, which the reprints and omnibus editions don’t have. Worth it just to see those if you don’t have the original issues, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be up long if the Mouse police get wind of it.

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On that second comparison pic, the one with Han escorting the other ships, isn’t that the prototype design for the Pirate ship? judging by what materials the comic team had access to, I’m not surprised they got that design.

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?

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SilverWook said:

IIRC, when Dark Horse reprinted the newspaper strips in comic book form, there was similar reformatting going on.

I ever actually read the newspaper strips so don’t really know what they would have looked like originally, but I did recently find a comic from the early 90’s that contained one of the newspaper storylines by Archie Goodwin. I’m assuming that all they’ve done is put them all on the same page.
Maybe you, or someone else, could help give me some clues as to how they edited them from the originals;
I took this photo of some pages from the comic. It’s not a very good picture, but it shows how they’ve set it all up.

Oh, and compared to the images I shared above where they integrated the splash-pages into the other panels, it’s funny how in this Norwegian comic they’ve done the exact opposite and made a splash-page out of the newspaper strips/panels;

SilverWook said:

And wow, the lightsaber placement in front of Threepio’s crotch is too awkward to be random. 😉

Wow, I didn’t even notice.

At least it’s not as blatant as the old “Force Beam” ads from the 70’s.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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flametitan said:

On that second comparison pic, the one with Han escorting the other ships, isn’t that the prototype design for the Pirate ship? judging by what materials the comic team had access to, I’m not surprised they got that design.

Yes, it does kind of look like it. But then again, that design was re-used for the Blockade Runner in the opening of ANH, so it’s probably just supposed to be one of those. There’s another ship visible underneath it which look very similar as well.

(I’m more curious about what that red antenna thing is supposed to be.)

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 .

As for Scandinavia though, no. They were not important enough to get any exclusive stories. They were in fact quite lucky if they got any at all. Star Wars in Scandinavia was quite a mess. Many stores got left out, and many plot-lines wasn’t even finished. Norway did f.ex. get Dark Empire and Dark Empire 2, but no Empire’s End. Similarly the Swedes only got two thirds of the Thrawn trilogy comic adaptation.
(In the fan letter sections of these comics, there would sometimes even be advice on how to contact UK comic distributors so that the fans could order the missing parts from abroad.)


SilverWook said:

I won’t link to it as it’s probably skirting the rules, but someone has been making Youtube videos out of the old SW Marvel comics recently. (And some not so old material.) First time I’ve seen anyone do this online. All the original ads and letter pages included, which the reprints and omnibus editions don’t have. Worth it just to see those if you don’t have the original issues, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be up long if the Mouse police get wind of it.

Interesting, I’ll have a look at it while it’s still available.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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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 now 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.

I was bemused to see obvious knockoff electronic “space swords” in Walmart recently. You’d think Disney would have a fit over that.

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