Marvel 1977 Star Wars Comics

[Barrington Boots]

I used to read these as a kid - I think Marvel UK reprinted them after RotJ? I'd all but forgotten about them until I was gifted a bunch of the Dark Horse reprints. I'm guessing a lot of you guys must have read these too, what do you think? What are your highlights?

Some of it is really good, some of it is pretty dark, and some of it is really boring. Jo Duffy's stuff in particular gets really enaging although I felt towards the end it's starting to collapse under the weight of too many Zeltrons and dark elves. I loved the almost all the Tay Vanis stuff, Lando's Drebble character, See You in the Throne Room, the story with the Stormtrooper from Alderaan - and of course the Han Solo magnificent seven pastiche.
The worst story: possibly the one where Luke has to join a jousting tournament on lizardman world although the John Carter reskin was abysmal.

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah I have all the old Dark Horse reprint collections after having read Star Wars Weekly for a good long time as a kid.

Its so hard for me to unpick the older stories from my super fond childhood memories of more Star Wars, MORE STAR WARS and my brain melting with delight. On reread a lot of those early tales are rubbish but god I love them. The Han Solo first original story is terrible BUT I LOVE IT. The Carmine Infantio stories, pretty poor objectively, but I love them.

I do think the Walt Simonson / Tom Palmer issues are good comics and agree the Jo Duffy post Return stuff is really good and it was such a shame it was curtailed by Lucas Film (as I recall).

Another series to look out for is the Dark Horse Classic Star Wars stuff from the newspaper strips. They have some glorious Al Williamson art that means the crap stories matter nowt.

[Jim_Campbell]

I do think the Walt Simonson / Tom Palmer issues are good comics

I have very fond memories of that run from the Marvel UK reprints (which, IIRC, were often graced with some absolutely lovely painted John Higgins covers).

[sheridan]

I loved the almost all the Tay Vanis stuff

Was that the purple woman?

[Barrington Boots]

I loved the almost all the Tay Vanis stuff

Was that the purple woman?

That's Dani but she features heavily in that arc.

I was confident Colin would have read these! I'll look up that Al Williamson stuff whilst I'm on a retro Star Wars trip.

[Tjm86]

Think it is fair to say it's a real mixed bag.  Some utterly naff stuff interspersed with quality one-offs.  The post ROTJ stuff shows how little idea anyone had where it could go although I'd be inclined to say it is better than what they did in the recent Disney film trilogy.

Another vote for the single Leia / Alderaanian Stormtrooper episode.  The other one has to be the Han Solo story with the red crystal.  I've got a copy of Issue 1 (weekly) with the cardboard cut-out X-wing that I picked up at a Birmingham comic mart many, many moons ago (back when they were just about comics ...).  The UK editions could be almost as interesting for what else they ran at times!