1995: CLASSIC STAR WARS VOLUME 2: REBEL STORM UK TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION

From 1995: The second trade paperback collection of STAR WARS NEWSPAPER STRIPS, reworked to work as comicbooks by Dark Horse.

This is a UK volume put together by the masters of the quickie media tie-in BOXTREE BOOKS.

A hefty (including the price) hardback of the original strips has just been issued by IDW.  As far as I know, it represents the first time the strips have been widely distributed in their original format since they were first published.

The reworked Dark Horse versions were recently reissued (along with some previously unpublished strips in a weird hybrid combo) by Marvel.  I'm not sure how much overlap there is between the two in terms of the strips reprinted.

1999: CLASSIC STAR WARS: A LONG TIME AGO.... DIGEST ISSUE 1 (DARK HORSE)

From March 1999: the first issue of the Dark Horse black & white digest CLASSIC STAR WARS: A LONG TIME AGO....

It sounds strange now but - at the time - this was a really big deal. It was the first time that pretty much any of the 1977-85 Marvel Star Wars run had been reprinted. Despite the boom in Star Wars publishing pretty much throughout the 1990s, no one had tackled the inventory of Marvel material (107 regular issues, one mini-series, three annuals and two Star Comics series). And the price of back issues (never exactly in plentiful supply in he UK thanks to a long-standing embargo on copies shipped to UK newsagents) had shot up as collectors returned to the saga.

However, Dark Horse didn't exactly jump at the opportunity. These digests shrunk the artwork (making text tough to read) and reproduced it in b&w. And they cherry-picked the reprints so collectors weren't getting a complete chronological run. Even the selection of cover art hardly sold the product inside.

Nevertheless, this run of six 96-page editions (sometimes described as trade paperbacks online although they are actually digests) were essential purchases at the time. Only to be superseded by a run of (really expensive) Dark Horse trade paperbacks. Which were then replaced by Omnibus editions. More recently, with the license back at Marvel, the original run has been collected into several whopping volumes... with prices to match.

1994: STAR WARS DROIDS ISSUE 1 (DARK HORSE COMICS)

From April 1994: the first issue of the first DROIDS series from Dark Horse Comics. With the obligatory for the time cover enhancement.

Yesterday was, of course, STAR WARS DAY (4th May blah blah) and Marvel made the most of it coinciding with New Comics Day by shipping ten different SW reprints under their "True Believers" banner of $1/ 75p sampler series.

Seven of the ten were reprints of recent first issues from the second Marvel era and basically designed to make you go out and buy the trade paperback collections.

One was (yet another) reprint of 1977's STAR WARS issue one, albeit now boasting the new colouring created for the recent hardback from Marvel.

Another was a collection of recent Marvel Star Wars cover art. I didn't cross reference with the recent hardback collection of similar art but I have a hunch this may be a different selection.

And the last was the most fun... and the reason (however tenuous) for this post. They reissued the first issue of the old Star Comics DROIDS series, based on the single-season animated show from the mid-eighties. Its essentially a Dollar plug for the upcoming (June) compilation of the full DROIDS and EWOKS (which didn't generate a sampler) runs. Smart Star Warriors will recall that Dark Horse published their own omnibus compilation of the same material a few years ago.

This 1994 series, one of the first wave of Dark Horse titles before it all became too much, followed the same premise as the animated show (the twosome in "solo" adventures) but took things (a little) more seriously. One story, The Kalarba Adventure, spanned the six issue run. 

1995: THE G.I JOE REVIVAL IN DARK HORSE INSIDER

From December 1995: The final issue (in this format) of DARK HORSE INSIDER (48) trumpets the impending (and ill-fated) return of G.I JOE to Comicdom. 

This week saw the return of the MICRONAUTS to print (although it doesn't seem that long ago since the last revival... although time flies) so I thought it would be fun to revisit another, earlier, revival of a classic toy brand. 

The Joes had run out of steam in the early 1990s with sales of the toy line (forced to create ever more preposterous sub-sets to hold the attention of fickle young consumers) and the Marvel comic book way off their highs of the previous decade. 

This was a total reboot that was intended to reboot the franchise for a new audience. But it got lost in the mid-Nineties clutter and never secured the traction it needed. The 1980s "Real American Heroes" characters and continuity returned in late 2001 (days after the 9-11 attacks... giving the whole premise new resonance) and captured the Geek Culture zeitgeist in a way this never did. 

I skipped the four-issue run at the time (I probably would have dabbled if it had been a reboot of the Eighties version rather than a total restart) but I'm pretty sure I've acquired it more recently. I've never read it. Maybe it would have faired a bit better of the pre-launch publicity had used more than one partially obscured image.

Interestingly, ACTION MAN (the British version of the original Joe toy) is poised to make his US comics debut. We really do live in a smaller world now. 

Dark Horse Insider was a holdover from the boom years of 1992-93 when publishers had massive marketing budgets and needed to work hard to get their products to stand out in an oversatuated market. Most of the majors churned out their own (often black & white) plugathons. DHI continued as a cheaper one-sheet poster style fold-out before being abandoned altogether. 

1993: STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI ISSUE 1 (Dark Horse Comics)

From October 1993: another launch in the burgeoning line of STAR WARS comic books from Dark Horse: TALES OF THE JEDI.

This was another landmark series because, for the first time, it demonstrated that Star Wars adventures didn't have to be contemporaneous to the film series but could plunder the whole rich history of the expanded universe and feature none of the screen-familiar characters. That, of course, gave the creative teams free reign to really have some fun with concepts and scenarios only hinted at to date... without falling foul of the continuity police. The stories appearing here took place 4,000 years before the first Death Star went bang.

There was also a sourcebook from West End Games that filled in more of the backstory.

This also demonstrated Dark Horse's willingness to push the envelope in terms of expanding the scope of the saga. A policy that would go on to help them build a bewildering diverse range of SW titles and pave the way for other parts of the Lucasfilm merchandising juggernaut to similarly leave the confines of the films behind. It may have even have helped convince Lucas that audiences didn't need all the familiar faces in order to turn out in droves to see a new Star Wars flick.

Although I bought this first issue at the time, I wasn't terribly interested in mining the ancient history of a fictional realm and I didn't bother to pick up another issue.

1997: CLASSIC STAR WARS: HAN SOLO AT STARS' END (Dark Horse)

From 1997: With STAR WARS mania threatening to overwhelm the planet at any moment... Here's some more: the three-part comic book version of HAN SOLO AT STARS' END, a reworked version of the newspaper strip... Which reworked the novel.

The Brian Daley novel came first, one of a trilogy of Han Solo adventures published in 1979. The threesome, along with SPLINTER IN THE MIND'S EYE and the Marvel series (and sundry spin-offs), were the only places to find new SW adventures during that long gap between the first two movies. Either Lucasfilm wasn't as clued up about merchandising as we've come to believe or they thought that a lack of anything new would just bolster repeat business at the movie houses.

The paperback trilogy (also HAN SOLO'S REVENGE and HAN SOLO AND THE LOST LEGACY) became a mainstay of the science fiction section of WH Smith throughout the early 1980s and have been reprinted several times since.

Apparently the character Bollux was changed to Zollux in the British editions because - you know - it sounds a bit rude.

Archie Goodwin and Alfredo Alcala adapted the novel (they didn't do the other two) for the LA Times Syndicate newspaper strip in October 1980. It ran through to the following February.

Dark Horse, having already reworked much of the newspaper strip's run for the CLASSIC STAR WARS title, reprinted the strips as a three-issue addendum to the main run.

The trilogy were incorporated into the large (and unwieldy) Expanded Universe... And then sidelined by Disney as part of their pre-movies house cleaning operation.

The newspaper strips haven't been reprinted since the Dark Horse run. Several, although not this series, were collected into trade paperbacks by Boxtree in the UK.

1992: ALIENS Volume 2, Issue 1 (Dark Horse International)

From July 1992: the first issue of the second volume of the British ALIENS comic.

The Dark Horse strips (ultimately the strips that elevated the indie from being just another publisher to being a major player with those all important Hollywood connections) had previously been published under license (or possibly not: a DH published guide to their own output claimed the British editions were unlicensed although, as I've noted before, this seems improbable to me) by Trident.

But, when DH decided to follow the Marvel model and open up a London office, the publishing rights to Aliens, Predator and The Terminator (appearing in "his" own monthly) were brought in-house and relaunched.
The DHI editions looked more classy than their predecessors and benefitted from better feature pages and design work. I seem to recall DHI also claiming that the British edition would feature exclusive strips but, in reality, I expect they just appeared in the UK ahead of a US outing.

DHI pretty much followed the template laid down by their predecessors and also ported across the Predator supporting feature. They'd already crossed over in the comics but were still more than a decade ahead of a cinematic slamdown.

DHI also published (unusually) a three-issue mini-series adapting ALIEN 3.

Other titles in the ultimately short lived DHI stable included STAR WARS, TOTAL CARNAGE and MANGA MANIA. All of which I've posted about in the past.

1993: THE MAKING OF DARK HORSE'S CLASSIC STAR WARS in THE LUCASFILM FAN CLUB MAGAZINE

From 1993: The twentieth issue of THE LUCASFILM FAN CLUB MAGAZINE publishes a "Making Off" article devoted to Dark Horse's CLASSIC STAR WARS title (see previous post). 

1992: CLASSIC STAR WARS Issue 1 (Dark Horse Comics)

From August 1992: CLASSIC STAR WARS Issue 1 from Dark Horse Comics.

The saga was resurgent (at least in print) in the early Nineties and Dark Horse, already the publisher of ALIENS, PREDATOR and TERMINATOR comics had lucked-out big time by taking a punt on publishing the plush DARK EMPIRE limited series after Marvel's Epic line had passed (despite going as far as announcing it in a MARVEL AGE preview).  

DH were obviously looking for new WARS product to get into stores... so they turned to the old newspaper strips as a resource well worth mining.  

The strips (which, I believe, never crossed the Atlantic... despite what would seem to be obvious appeal to any British paper looking to win a new audience) had been syndicated to local papers across the States (with the exception of USA TODAY and the biggest of the "local" papers, like the NEW YORK TIMES, that could boast a national circulation, papers were distinctly regional) a decade earlier.  

The strips had recently been collected into several fancy hardback volumes but CLASSIC STAR WARS was the first time they'd been published in a mass market format.  Rather than simply reprint the strips as originally published (tricky as the landscape formats of daily strips are ill suited for the portrait dimensions of comic books), DH took it upon themselves to rework the panels and pages to make them read as a normal comic book.  Value-added or sacrilege?  You decide.  

Above is the first issue of the monthly run.  The series eventually ran for twenty issues over a two year period.  The early strips also appeared in the British SW monthly published by Dark Horse International.  

The CLASSIC brand was extended to several other series and one-shots including:

• Reprints of Marvel's adaptations of the movie trilogy.
• DEVIL WORLDS, a two-issue compilation of the rare British strips created for the UK monthly.
• THE VANDELHELM MISSION,  done-in-one reprint of the 98th issue of Marvel's ongoing run.  
• HAN SOLO AT STAR'S END, a reworked three-issue reprint of the newspaper strip based on the original novel.  
• A LONG TIME AGO, a six-issue run of black & white digests that reprinted a selection of the Marvel run.  These were quickly superseded (thankfully) by comprehensive full-colour compilations.