1980: MARVEL UK's FRANTIC SPOOFS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

From October 1980: MARVEL UK's FRANTIC (think: Marvel UK knocking-off CRAZY which was knocking-off MAD) spoofs THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

This is issue 8, on-sale in September 1980 with an October cover date.

I would guess this is one of the lesser-known Marvel UK STAR WARS tie-ins, even if it it is of a more unofficial nature than the regular weekly/ monthly and assorted spin-offs.  Marvel NY were unaware of its existance until I alerted them.  It remains to be seen whether this cover will appear in their upcoming omnibus (which will now - it seems - contain less than originally billed) of British STAR WARS material.

1981: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY ISSUE 147

From July 1981: Luke Skywalker takes on an AT-ST 'Scout Walker' in a memorable issue of MARVEL UK's STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY.

The Scout Walker had been a blink-and-you-miss-it ILM bonus (no doubt one that Kenner and Lucasfilm appreciated as it allowed them to shift more toys) in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK so this reprint (although publication dates were so close this may have actually hit just ahead of the States) of US issue 51 is the first time we really see one in combat.

This issue also kicks off, under the new creative team of Walter Simonson (previously of Marvel's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) and David Michelinie, one of the most memorable story acs of the era.  Pre-empting ROTJ, the comic book Empire decide that the Death Star, despite a little design flaw, was actually a jolly good idea and construct a stripped-down replacement.  A mobile super weapon called the 'Tarkin'.  I still think the producers of THE FORCE AWAKENS missed a trick by not borrowing that name for their own Death-Star-in-all-but-name super weapon.  Which would have also looped nicely back into ROGUE ONE a year later.

It seems like Marvel originally pitched the construction of a second Death Star, a storyline they assumed the film series would not revisit.  When they got notes asking for changes, they began to piece together the still-top-secret plot for the 1983 sequel.

This issue also featured Gundarks, another nice nod to the movie series itself.

1981: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK ISSUE 146

From June 1981: STAR WARS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY issue 146 wraps up 'The last Jedi' (from US 49) with what i assume is a brand new, exclusive to the UK cover.  It's almost neon...

The story may have been split over two issues as a buffer because the the British Bullpen were diverting the extended length 'The Crimson Forever' into the second ESB annual, leaving them short of material for the monthly.  They didn't get around to running that strip, from US issue 50, in a regular comic until the ROTJ era.  

1981: MARVEL UK PUBLISHES 'STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI'

From 1981:  STAR WARS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY, from MARVEL UK, issue 145.

I'm sure I wasn't the only old-skool STARLOGGER to experience a tinge of recognition as soon as the title of the next instalment of the STAR WARS screen saga was announced.  We've been there before.  Around this time back in 1981 to be more accurate.  If you lived on both sides of the Atlantic.

Marvel's seat-of-the-pants transatlantic publishing schedule meant US issue 49 (cover-dated July 1981 but on-sale in late April) and UK issue 145 (cover-dated May but on sale sometime in the previous month) both hit at about the same time.  Long gone was the luxury of having months as a buffer between the two editions.

The UK edition wisely dispenses with the pink colour scheme of the original cover for a can't-go-wrong green design.  The interiors were - of course - all in black & white.

I think we can be pretty confident that the new movie will be similar in-name-alone to this issue.  But it is still a good bit of fun to know that Marvel got there first.

1981: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY ISSUE 144

From 1981: STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY issue 144, reprinting Starfire Rising from issue 54 of the US run.

This issue boasts another unique-to-the-UK cover.  Curiously it also omits the issue number and hedges its bets over the month of publication, suggesting that the British Bullpen were having some production and scheduling issues around this time.

The main story is, as with the last issue, an old John Carter inventory story left on the shelf when Marvel lost the license and closed the title.  Marvel tried to stockpile stand-by strips that could be slotted in at any time if a title looked like it would drop behind schedule... but these were often left unpublished when a title closed.  This wasn't a problem when Marvel owned the character as the one-shot story would eventually see print in one of the 'spotlight' anthologies or - in the 1980s - in the pages of MARVEL FANFARE.  But licensed books were more of a challenge.  And Marvel's accountants demanded that everything paid for had to appear somewhere.

So the unpublished strip was rather crudely reworked into a STAR WARS two-parter.  And it stood out a mile.  I suspect sales, on both sides of the Atlantic, took a hit when casual browsers spotted that the main strip barely looked like a dispatch from the galaxy far, far away.

Marvel, of course, had previous form in this area: famously, an issue of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA run reworked an unpublished TARZAN story... recasting Apollo in the role of the Lord of the Apes.  And then there was Apeslayer....

1981: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY ISSUE 143

From February 1981: another excellent cover from the British STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY, published by Marvel UK.

This issue reprints Number 53 in the US run, with a new cover which isn't a million miles from the US design but manages to be more dramatic and makes Leia less of the passive victim.

The appearance of the double-bodied T.I.E Bomber created something of a playground thrill back in the day.

1980: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY ISSUE 142

From 1980: long before the TV show, the STAR WARS DROIDS go solo in MARVEL UK's STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY issue 142, published in November/ December 1980... despite the muddled cover date.

It 'reprinted' US issue 47, on sale Stateside in February 1981.  Another British premiere.

The same strip, published here in b&w, also (by virtue of its done-in-one nature) appeared in the fifth British annual (published in 1982).  It was also - weirdly - adapted as a 'Read Along Adventure' audio.

1984: MARVEL UK'S RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY CELEBRATES 50 ISSUES

From May 1984: MARVEL UK's RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly celebrates fifty issues (and almost a year in print) with a blue elephant and a free glossy booklet, C.Y.R.I.L's DATA FILE, full of photos and saga-related facts.

And - oh look - they've reused the ROTJ US Superspecial cover art yet again.

Despite being the magazine's 'Editor Droid', C.Y.R.I.L had yet to make his visual debut in the comic... that was still a few more months away.  The 'character' himself first appeared, as a letters page gimmick, back in the days of STAR WARS WEEKLY in the late Seventies.

ROTJ weekly itself was still in its first phase of mixing new (chopped into very short chapters) and vintage (sometimes with some weird paginantion) Marvel Star Wars strips (sadly nothing new was ever commissioned for this run) along with vaguely related movie adaptations as the third feature (at this point: JAMES BOND: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Next up: KRULL).

The British Bullpen had only just got around to clearing the backlog of pre-JEDI US material (a reversal of the one-time situation where the US colour monthly was reprinting strips already published in the British edition) and was now - finally - relating events after the fall of the Empire.  The cherry-picked SWW era reprints were about to give way to another outing of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK adaptation the following week, the first time the strip had seen print in the UK since 1980.

ROTJ eventually ran for 155 issues (plus specials) before succumbing to falling sales and the decline in the saga's popularity.  The strip ended its days as a back-up feature in SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS before fading away (although the spin-off DROIDS and EWOKS strips, based on the animated shows, continued to appear across the British range).

1980: MARVEL UK'S STAR WARS THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY ISSUE 141... WITH ORIGINAL 'BANNED' ENDING

From 1980: A special (more special than we realised at the time) issue of MARVEL UK's just relaunched EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY. The 'Banned' issue.

At first glance it looks like a straight black & white reprint of US issue 46.  However, this went on sale sometime in November 1980 (UK comics were almost always dated for the week or month ahead of actual publication) but didn't hit Stateside stands until the following January (with an April 1981 coverdate).  That means that - technically - the US edition is the reprint... albeit in colour and from a US creative team.

But it doesn't end there.  The story, by J.M. DeMatteis, has a pacifist bent which apparently offended the folks at Lucasfilm licensing.  They ordered a last-minute reworking of the final page to change Lando's outlook so that he rejects the pacifist views presented.  That sufficiently irked the author that he had his name removed from the issue.  But - due to muddle or early deadlines - the 'uncorrected' version of the story had already been shipped across the Atlantic and appeared in the UK as originally intended.  Albeit in black & white.

No effort was made to withdraw the issue from sale and it is possible no-one in the UK (or the States) even realised they had gone 'off message'.

This remains the only time the original conclusion of the story has appeared in print.  A subsequent outing in one of the British annuals (now in colour) switched to the reworked US version... as have subsequent American reprints.

Presented here is the original final page, before it got 'fixed' by the heavy hand of the studio.

THE FIRST ISSUE OF MARVEL UK'S THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY

From November 1980: The first issue of Marvel UK's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK MONTHLY.  And what a story to start with!

Yup, mere months after the bold relaunch which saw STAR WARS WEEKLY rebadged to coincide with the release of the most hotly anticipated film ever (at least in my playground) the British Bullpen suddenly cut the frequency of their main attraction to monthly.

The sudden frequency change normally meant that a weekly wasn't doing very well (or paying its way) and a reduction in frequency and bump in cover price (accompanied by a few extra pages) was usually seen as a good way of extending its viability.  It worked a treat for DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY.  Bot so much for FUTURE TENSE.  But that's in the future.

It could be that the weekly's sales dropped off a cliff once the movie left the cinemas... but I find that unlikely.  Marvel didn't help the situation by running a dull post-adaptation story of diplomatic shenanigins which failed to live up to the epic scale of the sequel.  Maybe if they had run this man-against-machine showdown instead the story of SW in British comics would have been different.

A sales dip was probably inevitable but i think the British Bullpen were forced to cut the frequency to ensure that they kept pace with the slower US publication of one story a month.  The old weekly would devour two US editions per month and the US Bullpen had to create extra strips (which barely saw print in the States) just to fill the gap in the British schedules.  That was probably acceptable, before 1979, when the UK editorial strings were still being pulled by the New York office.  But, after the Marvel Revolution of early 1979, the UK office was operating at arms length and I doubt extra US content was still on the cards.

Jadwin House did go on to commission some UK created strips, including (famously) some early Alan Moore penned tales, which were dropped in alongside the US stories over the next couple of years.

Marvel weren't quite ready to surrender weekly SF to Tharg (DOCTOR WHO had already seen a similar scheduling cut) and cobbled together FUTURE TENSE to plug the gap.  The end result read like a compilation of SWW back-up strips without a strong lead strip (sorry STAR TREK) and suffered an eventful 1981 before quietly expiring at the end of the year.  Meanwhile, in the Pocket Books department STAR HEROES was already being prepared for a radical makeover as X-MEN POCKET BOOK.  

STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK WEEKLY ISSUE 118 (MARVEL UK)

From May 1980: STAR WARS WEEKLY is no more... long live (ahem) THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK WEEKLY.

Yup: New title, same weekly.  The US edition also incorporated Marvel's sequel adaptation within the usual run of the monthly but didn't feel the need to change the overall title to accomodate it.  The American edition of ROTJ sidestepped it by floating off into a standalone four-part series in 1983.  But here in the UK, the British Bullpen did everything they could to cash-in on the hefty anticipation around the return of the Star Warriors and rebooted the weekly to coincide with the beginning of the adaptation.  In contrast with today's every-six-month relaunches, they didn't go as far as restarting with a new Issue one (although they did in 1983).

The fantastic cover art is probably one of the most seen pieces of EMPIRE art.  Originally created for the US one-shot magazine, it also poped up here on the weekly, on the UK annual (which was shipped back to the States in limited numbers) and on the paperback-sized edition.

1979: WHAT IF SGT. FURY HAD FOUGHT WORLD WAR TWO IN OUTER SPACE (MARVEL COMICS)

From April 1979: One of the strangest Star Age entries from Marvel Comics: WHAT IF SGT. FURY HAD FOUGHT WORLD WAR TWO IN OUTER SPACE? Really.

WHAT IF issue 14 is, as the cover so tellingly teases, silly stuff (a cigar... in a spacesuit) but delivered with a whopping dose of action and is well worth digging out of the back issues boxes if found at a reasonable price.

I was convinced that this had an outing in STAR WARS WEEKLY here in the UK because I'm sure I read it in one of the weeklies when I was little. But I'm struggling to track down the correct issues... Which makes me wonder whether I imagined it. And yet... I must have seen it somewhere in the British line. A mystery! 

Despite boasting a classic Nick Fury in Space cover on its first issue (reviving the old British Marvel tradition of covers that only roughly related to the actual contents), the strip wasn't recycled in the pages of FUTURE TENSE... but probably would have been had the fortuitous failure of VALOUR not alleviated the need to find enough reprints to feed the SF anthology.

1986: SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS ISSUES 14 - 17 (MARVEL UK)

From June 1986: the next four issues of SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS weekly from MARVEL UK.

The big news this month was obviously the arrival of STAR WARS as the third feature, ending the long run of the UK title which launched back in February 1978. Wisely, and in a sign of the times, the masthead didn't become SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS FEATURING STAR WARS (or worse: RETURN OF THE JEDI) and even through the strip continued for a while, it didn't rate another cover. 

The SW strip didn't pick up the US continuity from the ROTJ run (placed on indefinite hold for the final months of the run to clear the decks for another outing of the ROTJ movie adaptation from three years earlier) presumably because the continuity was now so far distant (partly because of strict Lucasfilm approvals which prevented Marvel doing anything much with the principle characters) that the menagerie of new supporting cast members and new races would have left casual readers bewildered. 

Instead the British Bullpen opted to reprint the third and final US annual (just a double length comic book published outside the regular run rather than a fancy hardback in the British tradition) which presented a relatively self-contained story... with plenty of Darth. British readers of the 1985 annual, where it shared billing with the Ewoks, had already seen it... but it was unknown to the readers of the weeklies. 

1982: STAR WARS: WORLD OF FIRE (Marvel Illustrated Books)

From October 1982: A Marvel STAR WARS adventure which will seem a lot more familiar to British Starloggers than our American cousins: WORLD OF FIRE.

This Chris Claremont penned adventure (art by Carmine Infantino and Gene Day) was first published in March 1980 in the pages of STAR WARS WEEKLY (issues 107-115), one of several "buffer" strips inserted into the UK run whenever it looked close to running out of material (Marvel were smart enough to realize a repeat of an Apeslayer style deadline crunch should be avoided at all costs).  By this point, SWW was already the first-run outlet for the strips, appearing in the UK before they were 'reprinted' (albeit in colour) in the US monthly.  

It's unclear whether this, and the other UK exclusive strips emanating out of the US Bullpen, were ever penciled into the American book's schedules or whether they were always created on the understanding that they would only be seen oversees.  If the latter was the case, it's interesting that by 1980 the NY office didn't just tell the post-Revolution British Bullpen (by now adept, albeit sometimes reluctant, at producing strips in-house) to "sort it out yourselves".  

It's also odd, but presumably down to licensing and cash, that the US didn't see the launch of a second, companion, title to the core monthly ala the multiple Spider books of the era (partly created to ensure that the British weekly was never short of reprints).  A second book would almost certainly have increased overall sales (even if the core book took a slight hit) and would have helped ensure the Weekly was kept well-stocked.

Regardless of plans, this adventure was left on the shelf once THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK hit and Marvel switched to a succession of self-contained post-movie stories.  Once again, they could have presented it as a post-movie adventure (with, perhaps, new wraparound bookends to position it as a flashback tale) but it turned up here, as a hard-to-find, black & white paperback instead.  

I've never seen a copy in stores (at a guess I would say UK distribution was virtually non-existent) so I eventually took the plunge and ordered this copy on-line.

It's officially STAR WARS 2 because Marvel had already published the 1977 paperback version of the movie adaptation.  They presumably chose to ignore that they had already published a second SW paperback: the 1980 outing of The Empire Strikes Back.  

Ironically, the strip is actually pretty symbolic for me as issue 110 was the first issue of SWW I ever owned.  Although, thanks to School Fairs and a market stall, I soon amassed a substantial selection of earlier issues.   

For the record, the other UK-only strips that appeared in SWW were Way of the Wookiee (SWW 94-96), The Day After The Death Star (97-99) and The Weapons Master (104-106).  SWW also reprinted the strips from PIZZAZZ magazine which also didn't form part of the regular US run.

These extra strips (and their excellent original covers) are usually omitted from compilations of the US runs but they can be found in the WILD SPACE collection (along with the latter post-ESB British created strips and other oddities).  Snap up a copy of this Dark Horse published book whilst you can as it will, presumably, drift out of print now that the license has shifted to Marvel again.  Those hefty hardback Marvel omnibuses are, once again, skipping these adventures.  They've never been published in colour (SWW and this paperback are both black & white) and, presumably, the colour work was never completed. 

1983: THE X-MEN AND THE MICRONAUTS Limited Series (Marvel Comics)

From 1983/ 1984: One of the more bonkers limited series (at least until the X-MEN/ TREK crossovers of the Nineties) of the Star Age: X-MEN AND THE MICRONAUTS.

Well, maybe not so strange... the mighty miniature Micronauts were, after all, integral to the mainstream Marvel Universe even through the Bullpen had only borrowed them.  Quite why they were deemed to be worthy of a four-part run in the mutants is less clear.  Presumably the strong sales in the direct market made it a no-brainer for the circulation department.  

Back issue prices don't reflect it but this is also one of the rarest X-outings of the decade.  When Marvel lost the rights to the Micronauts a few years later (a plan to revive them a decade later stalled on the launch pad), they also lost the ability to reprint this four-parter.  It's not been seen outside the back issue bins (where, in truth, it seldom surfaces as a complete set) anywhere (except a four-issue rerun in MARVEL UK's THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL... which was cancelled a month after the reprints ended) since.  

The announcement that IDW have picked-up the rights to both the 'Nauts and ROM THE SPACE KNIGHT (who, unlike the former, didn't see a return to comics during the early Noughties fad for toy-based print revivals) opens up the slim possibility that both the original series will return to print... although IDW will still have to overcome the problem of multiple appearances by Marvel's copyrighted characters throughout both runs.  

The UK reprint in MWOM marked the last appearance of the Micronauts (following stints in STAR WARS WEEKLY, STAR HEROES and FUTURE TENSE) in the British line.  Their finale should have been in the pages of SECRET WARS II (yup, they were blessed by an encounter with the big-haired Beyonder) but the Annex of Ideas (possibly because the rights had already lapsed) skipped both the Micronauts and Rom crossovers.

1986: ON-SALE THIS WEEK: THE FINAL ISSUE OF RETURN OF THE JEDI WEEKLY (Marvel UK)

From June 1986: MARVEL UK's long-running (all the way back to the beginning of February 1978) STAR WARS franchise finally runs out of steam with the finale of RETURN OF THE JEDI weekly.  

Like pretty much everyone else, I'd drifted away from the 'Wars by this point (although it turned out to be only a short-lived departure... the 10th anniversary issue of STARLOG and the SW RPG SOURCE BOOK... although not the game itself... lured me back into the fold a year later) but, when I heard of the impending merger with SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS, I felt a pang of teen nostalgia and made sure I grabbed a copy of this final edition.  

The British Bullpen must have known that the writing was on the wall for a while.  The franchise was all-but-dead at this point with no new films to fuel interest.  Even the once ubiquitous toys were gathering dust on the racks.  Oh to have snapped them up at clearance prices.  

Marvel had obviously been chasing a younger readership for several years with ROTJ.  Perhaps the assumption was that as older fans drifted away, a new generation of younger readers would discover the saga through TV and VHS (and the Ewok teleflicks) and keep things solvent as long as possible.

Unfortunately for them, the US Bullpen hadn't read the memo and, trapped in approvals hell with Lucasfilm, shifted the emphasis away from the core Star Warriors and onto sundry supporting characters and new alien races to try and keep things interesting and simultaneously honoring Lucas' wish to "do nothing" whilst he pondered the future of his cash machine.  

The UK edition was finally, after years of running behind, finally all but neck-and-neck with the American edition.  So the decision to cut the frequency of the monthly to bi-monthly created new headaches for Cyril and team.  For a while they alternated one serialized contemporary new adventure with one archive tale.  But that stop-start approach was hardly satisfying.  So they ditched the US continuity entirely after issue 147 (wrapping up, appropriately enough, The Party's Over from US 105) in favor of rerunning the RETURN OF THE JEDI adaptation (148-155) last seen in 1983.

That left the final two US issues unpublished in the UK.  Post-merger, SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS ran the (fairly) self-contained third US annual rather than pick-up the dangling continuity threads.  

The 'second-feature' was a reprint of Fool's Bounty which, coincidentally, also the in-continuity strip from ROTJ issue 1 in 1983.  The weekly had come full circle and bowed out as it arrived. 

Rerunning the adaptation finally gave M-UK the chance to use the cover art from the four-part US ROTJ limited series, originally dropped in favor of photo-covers back in '83.

The real oddity was the long-running Power Pack back-up.  With nowhere to shuffle the strip, ROTJ readers were left on an unfortunate cliffhanger (or chasm plunge) with the vague instruction that Jedi's young readership should track down the US edition to find out what happened next.  Conveniently overlooking that imported copies of the US edition had come and gone from newsagents several months earlier and - reflecting the fact that the US book had just switched to Direct Sales Only, had been dropped from British bundles.  Even that information was printed so poorly that it was virtually impossible to read.  

1974: MARVEL UK GOES GLOSSY House Ad

From January 1974: Another Mighty Marvel UK landmark moment: glossy covers!

I always think of glossy covers and the defining feature of British Marvel.  They always helped the line standout when racked alongside the IPC and DCT weeklies and their (usually) bargain-basement production standards (of course, they were investing a lot more in originating new material rather than just recycling from the States).

So, it's easy to forget that in the early (and late) Seventies, Marvel's British weeklies had newsprint covers.  THE AVENGERS, their third launch (September 1973), was the first to dabble in the new format... and their two existing titles followed at the turn of the year.  

Glossy covers and 36-page interiors remained the default format (with a few exceptions: CAPTAIN BRITAIN sacrificed the glossy covers in favour of colour interior pages, FURY deliberately aped the low-fi formats of its war rivals and STAR WARS WEEKLY sliced four pages to make life easier for the pushed-for-filler Bullpen and to recoup the costs of the license) until the Marvel Revolution of 1979 tried to make Marvel's comics look the same as all the others.  

STAR WARS WEEKLY and DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY retained their glossy exteriors throughout the Revolution (because it allowed them to showcase stills to catch the attention of casual browsers) and shiny covers returned (coinciding with the start of the SPIDER-MAN live-action TV show in the UK) in late 1981.  

They remained, with the occasional exception (the experimental THE THING IS BIG BEN), throughout the rest of the history of the Annex of Ideas... although some formats were more glossy than others. 

1989: DROIDS SPRING SPECIAL House Ad (Marvel UK)

From 1989: A House Ad for MARVEL UK's DROIDS SPRING SPECIAL.

The one-shot, which reprinted the third issue of the brief (8 issues) US Star Comics series, was pegged to the BBC screenings of the animated series (which mustered a single season from September 1985).  

This marked the last time that the Annex of Ideas would publish a standalone STAR WARS related comic.  The long-running title that began as STAR WARS WEEKLY in 1978 shuttered in June 1986 (with a coda in SPIDER-MAN AND ZOIDS post-merger).  

The very final STAR WARS-related strip to appear in a M-UK comic was also the DROIDS, serialised in the pages of THE MARVEL BUMPER COMIC.  They bowed out in issue 25 (cover-dated 25 June 1989).

The franchise bounced-back with the five issue run of EWOKS starting in November 1987.  It was all over by the following March.  

Marvel UK had already published one DROIDS SPECIAL the previous year. 

1978: STAR WARS WEEKLY PIN-UP (Marvel UK)

From 1978: More scenes from STAR WARS captured in the Mighty Marvel Manner!

Another full-page pin-up from the first year of MARVEL UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY. 

1980: ON SALE THIS MONTH: STAR WARS WEEKLY Issue 100 House Ad (Marvel UK)

On sale this week in 1980: A MARVEL UK House Ad plugging the impending 100th edition of STAR WARS WEEKLY.

What did appear in that landmark issue?

A wraparound ILM photo-cover of an X-Wing taking on Darth Vader's T.I.E Fighter.

A seventeen-page reprint of The Long Hunt (the first US Star Wars Annual).

A two-page text summary of SWW's main strip to-date.

A tease of upcoming back-up strips.  

Coverage of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK... including the date of the world premiere in London (16 May 1980).

1980 was a year of big changes for SWW... a name-change (to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK WEEKLY) followed by a cut from weekly to monthly (to ensure the supply of fresh US strips).