My Last Star War, 1984-85

To all phases of a life and a career, there are beginnings and endings. Some are swift and abrupt while others fade softly in and out. I can truthfully say my "kid comics" phase ended softly with the projects shown here. Fittingly, they were all Star Wars fanzine comics.

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Lightspeed No. 1, 1985

This project marks the culmination of my "kid comics" years, when I took them as far as they could go: the publishing of my own homemade Star Wars fanzine. It was to be the beginning of a new mega-story that would take years to tell. What happened to that story? Read this article to find out!

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Star Wars: Knight to the King, 1984

In the days after the fall of the emperor, the rebel alliance presses their advantage by inviting as many planets as possible into the New Republic. Ambassador Luke Skywalker learns that the royal family of one such planet cannot make a move as long as their king is held in an imperial prison. For which the obvious solution is a good old fashioned Jedi jailbreak.

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Star Wars: Lightspeed comics, 1984

Two more tales from a galaxy far, far away by a couple youngsters I used to hang with back in the day, fellow nonconformists who stayed one step ahead of dullsville and defied all the squares who wanted us to be just as square as they were. Our weapon against mediocrity was making comics. And oh, did we enjoy wielding it.

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Star Wars: To Hunt a Jedi, 1984

Luke Skywalker is sent on an undercover mission to wipe out an Imperial port, and all his Jedi skills are put to the test by a new enemy he never expected to face! With this story, my "kid comic" years culminated with me publishing my very own Star Wars fanzine! See it here!

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Star Wars ‘zineworks, 1983-84

Most of what I've presented in this section of ArtValt has been one-off comic stories of one kind or another. This page rounds up a mishmash of Star Wars projects drawn during my fanzine years, including my second parody comic of the first movie, drawn when I was 18.

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Star Wars: Death Mission, 1983-84

Return of the Jedi gave me a lot of new elements to factor in, and I had the pleasure of drawing some characters and mecha for the first time. Now that Luke/Vader confrontations had an endpoint, the continuity for pre-Jedi stories was completely clear, and this would end up being my last one set in that time frame.

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Blade Runner: Will a Soul Survive, 1983

1982 was the year that truly paid off the gambles taken by Lucas and Spielberg in the 70s. In just a short, 4-month period, we got more A-level fantasy and SF movies than we'd ever seen before. For me, the one that rose above all the others was Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It got so deep into my bloodstream that it had to come out as a fanzine comic.

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Star Wars: Infiltrator, 1983

Imperial TIE fighters strike the rebel fleet out of nowhere in a surprise attack? How did they get through, and who let it happen? This was the tenth Star Wars fanzine comic I drew since jumping into the pool in late 1981, and the first to sort of get me into trouble. Find out how here...

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Voyage to the Unbranded Planet, 1982

Ready for some hard-hitting social satire? From the mind of a 17-year old? Well, look elsewhere. Because this story isn't that. I thought it was at the time, though. And nobody ever told me it wasn't. So maybe you decide.

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Star Wars: The Littlest Bounty Hunter, 1982

Of all the Star Wars comics I created back in the fanzine days, this one is my absolute favorite. It was effortless to write, as if it came together all by itself, and had just the right balance of light and heavy moments. Rough edges notwithstanding, it seemed as solid to me as anything Marvel was doing. Plus, it featured a bounty hunter. I loved those guys.

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Star Wars: Deathrun, 1982

Rebel pilots must escort critical supplies from a planet's rings down to their embattled base on the surface, forcing them to thread a deadly needle to avoid Imperial attacks. How will they do it? And what valuable lessons did this story teach me about the craft of storytelling? Find the answers to those and other questions in this article.

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Star Wars: Mammoth Alpha, 1982

If I had one super power as a teenager (outside of writing and drawing), it was the ability to conjure up a Star Wars story from just about anything. Here's what happens when you pull a story out of a magic combination of Star Wars toys.

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Star Wars: The Hunter and the Holocaust, 1982

This one is LOADED with memories for me. First and foremost, it's another bounty hunter story. As my record will attest, I was fascinated by the bounty hunters since the first sighting of Boba Fett in 1978. When that rogue's gallery appeared for the first time in Empire, it was like Uncle George was handing me story ideas. There was a tale to be told about each of them, and this comic was one of those tales. ALSO: lucky special bonus comic inside!

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Star Wars: Parasite, 1982

This was my fourth Star Wars comic written and drawn for a fanzine in April 1982, when I was 16. It was published in Crossed Sabers (Vol. 2, issue 3) in 1983. At the time I drew it, Return of the Jedi was a little over away, so in my head the rebel alliance was still in a Battlestar Galactica scenario, creeping through space toward whatever was to come. And space is always full of weird hazards.

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Star Wars: Day of the Droids, 1982

Luke Skywalker and an Imperial pilot crash-land on an uncharted planet, where mutual survival forces them into a temporary truce. They are forced into much more when they find a city of persecuted droids massing to retaliate against the entire galaxy! This was my third Star Wars story created for fanzine publication, written and drawn from January to March, 1982 (at age 16).

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Star Wars: In Battle With Bossk, 1981

From the exploits of Han Solo: Han and Chewie are stalked through a big city by the toughest, meanest bounty hunter this side of Boba Fett! This was one of the earliest Star Wars comics I drew for a fanzine, and it predated a lot of later Bossk appearances that seemed to be cut from the same cloth.

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Space Corps Scandals, 1981

This was one of my first comics to be published in a fanzine, a comedic story set in an open-source world created by my first friend in SF fandom, Cathy Ford. The stakes were low and no heavy lifting was required. All it had to be was entertaining.

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Posted in: Kids Comics