12: Imperials kill the Rebel Prisoners
1978/79? | age 10/11? Ratcheting-up the evil of the Empire still further, the Imperials kill Rebel Prisoners at Yavin IV. I’d read plenty of WWII comics by this time and was familiar with SS tactics against civilians and prisoners.
Yet Another Massacre
Above: Shocking stuff. Poor Spider-head man. And what are those rocks doing there?
Is that poor Spider-head man from the Mos Eisley Cantina? I bet he wishes he hadn’t signed-up with the rebels. Though if he’d stayed in Mos Eisley, he probably would have died too. (I wonder where that costume came from? An old giant spider monster B-movie?)
I’d already had <Stormtroopers murder the ENTIRE POPULATION of Mos Eisley—right from the get-go in this comic—as a reprisal for the Rebels destroying the Death Star. Any innocent and unrelated people would do as a reprisal, it seems. And on the previous page, they massacred all of the Rebels’ abandoned droids. Strangely enough, in this page, there seems to be a ready-made prison camp at Yavin, with a sentry tower and barbed wire. It’s in keeping with Star Wars’ echoes of the WWII imagery and equipment which we’d seen in the first film.
Above: Just like gunners in the World Wars, covering their ears
Above: X-Wings and Y-Wings put out of commission
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Lidice in Space?
Gosh, I had to look that one up, Rob. That’s shocking.
Lidice, Czech village, raised to the ground and all of its inhabitants shot or sent to concentration camps by the SS. As a reprisal for the assasination of Nazi general Reyhard Heydrich.
Warlord comic would depict this kind of thing quite often. “Reveal the whereabouts of the partisans, or escaped enemy soldiers, or we will shoot 1 villagers per day.”
Grim stuff for me to introduce to Star wars. Granted, the Death Star destroyed an entire planet, but it was distant. This, and the Mos Eisley massacre is right up close. Warlord comic tended to show a lot of this kind of thing. It was less than 20 years after WWII and they took a very 1-sided approach. Germans and Japanese frequently shot civilians and prisoners.
The later ‘Battle’ comic fom IPC was more nuanced.
Distance does tend to rub the rough edges off — compare the fight scenes in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with the off-screen violence of “Crystal Skull” for example.
I remember the brutal fight on the airfield in Raiders, but no off-screen violence in Crystal Skull.
Oh, actually I recall Indy fighting the big Russian guy. That was pretty brutal bare-knuckle stuff.
That looks like the Death Squad Commander action figure! He really earns his title here
He’s funny looking though, Phil! No neck.
Short, but deadly.
I loved the teeny picture of him on the back of the action figure card backs. Of course, I eventually got the figure too.