Friday, 11 November 2016

1997: STAR WARS UKINVERSE: MAGAZINE OF THE OFFICIAL UK STAR WARS FAN CLUB ISSUE 2

From 1997: the second issue of STAR WARS UKNIVERSE, the shortlived newsletter of the briefly revived OFFICIAL UK STAR WARS FAN CLUB.

Not to be confused with the original fan club of the seventies and eighties... nor the unoficial early nineties incarnation I've been posting recently... this was another officially sanctioned enterprise timed to coincide with the re-release of the original trilogy and the early buzz around the prequels.

This passed me by entirely at the time but i recently found issues 2-4 in a London comic store so picked them up cheap. I don't remember seeing the magazine in any stores at the time so I assume it was only sent out to paid up members.

Tbe fourth issue also happens to be the last... the closure of the club and the end of the newsletter apparently down to a Lucasfilm decision to streamline such licenses.

Although, in the age of the web and an abundance of genre magazines, its hard to see that there was a particularly large niche for an official club when Lucasfilm were already licensing several official magazines with overlapping content.


3 comments:

  1. this would be harder to come by since as you point out, it wouldn't have been generally available in shops.

    the cover logo is most unusual as are the drawings in place of actual photos.

    There was also a later incarnation of the uk fan club mag which I briefly subscribed to in the early 2000's. It offered various goodies to members including a nice video which compiled bits and bobs on the phantom menace.

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  2. that later mag was called JEDI JOURNAL.

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  3. I have just come across the full set (all 4) of these in my possession - mint condition - some say I'm sitting on a small fortune !? - what say you ?

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