Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

c.1982? | age 13 or 14? Some of the drawings on this page are horrible, especially panel 1. When the oldest ones are poorly drawn that’s charming, but when the teenage ones are poorly drawn it sometimes makes me cringe a bit.

Art Notes

‘Join the Empire, and See the Next World!’

Agh! I hate this page, but there are some good bits. Like that poor stormtrooper being blown to smithereens, which is quite exciting. He reminds me of a cast iron boiler or pot-belly stove exploding, the flames blasting its door off. It was inspired no doubt by Howard Chaykin’s drawing of a Stormtrooper being blasted inside out, in the prison block shoot-out scene. This page is not a good recruiting poster for potential Drones of the Empire.

SPECIAL FEATURE! « SFTP-FX technique See Luke’s blaster fire and the Falcon’s engines? I « previously wrote about the ‘Smudged Felt-Tip Pen Effects’ technique, check it out if you want to be amazed.

Script notes

“- C’mon kid! So his life won’t have been in vain!”
—Star Wars age 9

So his life won’t have been in vain? Once again we see an attempt at using a well known expression and making complete load of arse of it.

So Ben’s life will have been in vain, if full advantage isn’t taken of his death? In other words: Solo thinks that the old geezer just spent his life sitting in a mud house on a dustball, like a mad old hermit—waiting to redeem himself by getting killed for their benefit? That’s pretty funny.

Film Notes: You Dirty Womprat…

Thanks to reader, our Neil Baker, someone on reddit was asking the other day how Luke was able to so easily make the adjustment to killing people. One reader responded that he’d been shooting womprats since he was a kid. I responded: “Maybe Luke’s a classic psycho. You know… killing animals for fun?”

It’s great being a kid. All these complex questions and plot holes just don’t figure when you’re enjoying a piece of entertainment.

Comic Notes: Wormfood

The last load of upcoming pages are only half-sheets. I’ll explain the sad reason why.

There are pages from the first or second versions of the comic, that later on had their other halves—which showed the opening scenes of the film—cut off. And they were thrown away! NOOoo.. I must have just thought the drawing was terrible in hindsight, because I was older and better at drawing. So all that is left of them is the sides of the pages that show the closing scenes of the film. I almost get weepy thinking about what’s lost—forever. Decomposed 4 decades ago in a landfill site. That’s the sad bit. Wormfood.

Remaining half sheets, after the opening scenes of the film were cut off and thrown away!

The not sad bit, is that there are newer half pages and folded over whole pages inserted among this wad of old ones. I had to fold the new ones, and keep them only at the back half of the book so that no blanks would appear at the front half of the book. Basically, 3rd or 4th time around, I ran out of blank pages by the time I got near the end of the book and had to add more.

I know this is hard to follow (maybe I should shoot a video!). Basically there are more pages in the back half of the book now, than there are in the front half. Because I cut-off and threw away lots of the front half of the book, and added lots of new stuff to the back half of the book.

The older half sheets and newer added half sheets, were then rearranged and stapled back together before being placed loosely into the back of the book.  My big worry is: pulling the old staples out, to separate the pages so I can scan them. Painful prospect!

(Update) I did remove the staples—but kept them—and I scanned the rest of the comic. I haven’t re-stapled them back together.