Thursday 10 December 2015

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.

1 comment:

  1. cover number 3 really evokes fond memories of STAR WARS WEEKLY.

    ReplyDelete

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