LOL...I think the "theme" there is the lack of imagination amongst Marvel's late '70s cover blurb writers and atrists, as well as the short attention spans of the kids buying the comics!


Really cool, Dizzy D...can't wait to get your comments and thoughts on issue #13 and onwards. It'll be interesting to see if there are any big differences in the scripts in the Dutch translation. What is the Dutch for "Star Wars" anyway?

This another issue where I find myself disliking the monsters, which is weird as I love monsters. They just seemed totally generic and seemed slightly cartoony which made them seem rather nonthreatening.

Can't wait for the first appearance of Valance... He was, I think, one of the greatest concepts of the Star Wars expanded universe. Too bad Marvel didn't do more with him.

It's also the first Star Wars comic I bought at the newsstand (barring the two treasury editions), so I have a special fondness for it. I must admit that the name "Don Wan Kihotay" flew right over my head, though.

I still like the concept of Valance today. He had more depth in his few appearances than Boba Fett had in thirty years of bounty hunting! 

Star Wars #11


Comments: So, this is the first issue of Marvel's Star Wars comic by the new creative team of Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino. For those who might be unaware, by this point in his career Infantino was already regarded as a comics industry legend for his highly influential work on The Flash, Batman and, appropriately enough, the sci-fi superhero series Adam Strange. However, Infantino's art style really isn't all that good a fit for the Star Wars Universe, in my view. Even as a kid, I really didn't much like his artwork on the series – mostly because of its hard angular tenancies, but also because his renditions of Star Wars tech never quite looked right. Take his depiction of the Millennium Falcon in this issue, for instance...



On the one hand, it's easily recognisable as being the same spaceship from the movie. But the more you look at it, the more you spot problems with the detail (and perspective, in that first example) and you start to realise that, actually, it's a pretty inaccurate rendering of the craft. The same goes for Infantino's Star Destroyers as well. Oh, and while we're on the subject, the starships that Luke and Leia each left Yavin 4 in look entirely different under Infantino's pencil to how they did when Howard Chaykin and Tom Palmer drew them. Another problem I have with Infantino's art is that sometimes he puts his characters in slightly ungainly poses, which tend to take you out of the story when you encounter them.

However, let me just say that although Infantino's artwork looks very un-Star Wars-y and is also kinda ugly looking, I've learned to really love it in spite of its faults or idiosyncrasies. I'm sure that there's a whole lot of nostalgia involved in my adult appreciation of artwork that I so disliked as a child, but for me (and many others of my generation, I'm sure), Infantino's artwork was Star Wars between the years 1978 and 1980. What's more, I've also come to realise that his instincts for storytelling with sequential art were absolutely flawless. Throughout his run on the comic, it's always crystal clear exactly what is going on from one panel to the next. Also, let me just add that I appreciate Infantino showing us Hedji the spiner dying during a flashback in this issue (not seeing this scene in Star Wars #10, was one of my big criticisms of that issue).

Terry Austin's contributions to the finished art and inking here are pretty good for the most part, although some of the cast's faces look a little weird or overly harsh at times. Austin also does a good job of toning down some of Infantino's more sharp-cornered tendencies, whereas Bob Wiacek (who would ink a number of future issues) seemed to emphasise it.

As for Archie Goodwin's plot and scripting, the characterisations of the core cast seem reasonably good and, as we will see as the series progresses, his stories are usually very good. His prose style is decidedly less romantic or poetic than Roy Thomas' too, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your own personal tastes. Speaking in Back Issue magazine #9, Thomas would comment on Goodwin's writing for Star Wars by saying, "I think Archie Goodwin had a much better feel for it than I did. He was more enthusiastic about it." In addition to writing the Marvel Star Wars comic and the strip appearing in Pizzazz magazine, Goodwin would also go on to pen some excellent adventures for the Star Wars newspaper strip between 1980 and 1984.

However, Goodwin's writing in issue #11 doesn't really showcase him at his best. For one thing, with the exception of a brief few pages showing Luke battling a sea-dragon, there's a paucity of action in this issue, with the majority of the story being taken up by Han and Leia conniving to get Crimson Jack to take them to the Drexel system. Also, Crimson Jack seems like a pretty two dimensional character and so does his first mate Jolli, despite a nice little bit of character development in which we learn that she's a committed man hater. Still, Goodwin certainly writes Jack as a genuinely nasty threat (not easy given that he's wearing what look like a pair of Speedos!). For example, the scene where Jack instructs his men to set their blasters for "slow burn" in order to slowly incinerate Han and Chewbacca where they stand, reveals him to be an utterly cruel individual.



Overall, this isn't an overwhelmingly auspicious start for the Goodwin/Infantino team. As previously noted, Infantino's artwork isn't really a very good fit for Star Wars and the change from Chaykin and Palmer's art is really quite jarring. Also, this issue is a bit dull compared to the Aduba-3 storyline, and certainly compared to the movie adaptation that preceded that. To be fair though, this comic does spend most of its time setting up stuff that will come to fruition in later issues. Nonetheless, this is definitely the dullest issue of Star Wars so far.