Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Black and White Wednesday: May the Groovy Age Force Be With You!
Happy May Fourth, Groove-ophiles! We all know that the (arguably) greatest science-fantasy film of all time, Star Wars, is a product of the Groovy Age. We also know that Marvel Comics (thanks in a huge part to Roy Thomas) brought George Lucas' masterpiece to comicbook life way back then. Thomas, along with Archie Goodwin, Howard Chaykin, Carmine Infantino, Steve Leialoha, Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, Gene Day , and others made monthly masterpieces of the continuing saga of Luke Skywalker and company for the rest of the Groovy Age, and Marvel kept using the force until well into the 80s. Today The Fourth is with DotGK as we dig on some far out original art pieces mined from the four-gazillion corners of the wwweb! Enjoy, baby!
Wonderful stuff Groove, the Star Wars comic reprints by Marvel UK, that I grabbed as a tiny boy, were all in black and white and came out weekly, which meant we only got five pages of story a week and a lot of back up strips. However, issue one did come with a free gift of a cardboard X-wing fighter, which was much cherished at the time.
ReplyDeleteOh, I remember these comics: they created a sort of "alternate" SW universe before the release of "The Empire strikes back".
ReplyDeleteJabba was not a slug, but an apelike character, Luke still had a crush for Leia (before that "Oh God she's my sister" thing), and nice characters were created, like the lunatic old "Jedi" impostor Don-Wan Kihotay (Don Quijote), or Jaxxon the Green Rabbit (Lepus Carnivorus), both in the story inspired by "The magnificent Seven", set on planet Aduba-3.
And Valance, the vengeful Cyborg mercenary who hated all Droids.
I had only a few of those, but it was fun while it lasted.