1978: STAR WARS OFFICIAL COLLECTORS EDITION MAGAZINE (Marvel Comics)

The STAR WARS OFFICIAL COLLECTORS EDITION is one of the earliest spin-off's from the Saga, published in early 1978 by Marvel Comics (although it contains no comic strip material).

As the double-page spread below suggests, this was a black and white magazine heavy on photos and recapping the film's story which - in the pre-VHS age (and a gap of at least 3-5 years before a TV outing) - is just what the kids wanted.

There was also some behind-the-scenes stuff, memorably comparing Chewbacca to Universal's Wolfman on account of the hair thing.  Sigh.

The Micronauts advert appeared on the back cover and pre-dates Marvel's tie-up with the toys by almost a year.

This one-shot was heavily plugged in the earliest issues of Marvel UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY but is surprisingly hard to find today.  I stumbled across this copy, the only one I've ever seen, in a London comic book store and paid a premium for the privilege of owning it.

I'd always assumed that this was an import of a US edition but the back-page advert suggests that this edition was specifically prepared for the UK (Airfix - the model guys - were the  'nauts UK distributor) although possibly a printers' run-on from the US edition.

That's assuming there was an American edition... can anyone confirm?

The two sequels generated a cornucopia of book and magazine tie-ins and Marvel limited themselves to issuing their adaptation in as many formats as they could imagine.

** UPDATE 4 JUNE 2013: 
I picked-up some (lovely) late-seventies back issues of Jim Steranko's MEDIASCENE at the weekend and several of them included mail-away adverts for this, billed as being imported from the UK.  I guess that confirms that there was no US edition and Marvel only issued it overseas**