Book: Star Wars
Issue No.: 15
Published: June 27, 1978
Title: “Star Duel!”
Cover Price: 35¢
Format: Original paper copy
These old issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic books are hard to find in the wild. Which makes sense, I guess, because they appeal to both comic book fans and Star Wars fans. So any copies that hit the back-issue bins get bought up quickly. After working on Marvel Time Warp for almost a year, I finally picked up a few late-1970s issues of Star Wars — they were more expensive than my usual five-dollar back-issue buys, but they weren’t crazy expensive.
One thing missing from the digital reprints of these books is the original indicia, the “fine print” text at the bottom of page one that includes various copyright and publishing info about the book. Checking out the indicia for this issue of Star Wars, I noticed that Marvel claims copyright for the “advertising and editorial” content pages (specifically pages 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, and 32), while attributing 20th Century Fox copyright of the Star Wars story pages.
I never thought much about who owns the copyright for ad pages in a comic book. I probably assumed it was the advertisers? And it’s interesting that 20th Century Fox gets the copyright credit for the story pages. I always forget that, even though Star Wars creator George Lucas’ company Lucasfilm retained copyright to the Star Wars sequels and merchandising (did the merchandising include this comic book?), Fox owned the original movie. (And now Disney owns Star Wars after buying Lucasfilm a few years back and then buying 20th Century Fox a bit later. And they own Marvel, too, so after many years at other publishers, Star Wars comics are back at Marvel. Corporate synergy!) (Disney probably owns too dang much stuff these days, but that’s a modern problem, undreamed of — by me, at least — in 1978.)
This issue of Star Wars wraps up the space pirates storyline that’s been ongoing since I started reading the book for Marvel Time Warp. That wrap-up happens in outer space, but before our protagonists (Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO) leave the ocean-covered planet they’re on to go to space, we find out Luke can’t swim. Which is a nice little character moment — why would a guy who grew up on a desert planet ever learn to swim?
The showdown between the good guy pirate (Han Solo, of course) and the bad guy pirate (Crimson Jack) is actually decided by a double-cross. Early in this issue, Jack leaves one of his crew, Jolli, for dead. Well, not literally, but she’s stranded in her space ship, and Jack tells her if she’s good enough she can rescue herself. Eventually she does manage to rescue herself, and she crashes a one-on-one zero-gravity space duel between Han and Jack, effectively finishing off Jack for Han.
This classic Star Wars book continues to be one of my favorite regular reads for Marvel Time Warp. I know we have all kinds of Star Wars movies and shows and books available now, but there is something I find extra fun about these comic book stories from a time when the Star Wars universe was a bit newer and smaller.
Next time — Machine Man continues to fight off an invasion of alien robots!