Star Wars age 9 Comic Book

(Post Oct 1978—age 10?) Welcome to the young me’s sequel to 1977’s ‘Star Wars!’ Having learned of the new film’s title, I imagined and visualised—on paper—what I hoped it would be like. The title of the new film was officially released on August 4th 1978. Marvel seem to have used a variation on that title in Oct ’78.

I made the cover by tracing from Carmine Infantino’s splash page, in the UK Star Wars Weekly comic No. 35! In fact, I laid this sheet of paper under Carmine’s art, with a sheet of Carbon paper inbetween. I must have really been impressed with his splash page! It’s nice that I was impressed, because I was never dead keen on his Star Wars comics artwork to be honest. Sorry, but I just wasn’t. Now, I admire the fact that his style was totally unique. He seemed to copy no one. And in my opinion, that’s just something you can’t often say about mainstream comics artists these days. Most of them seem to slavishly copy their heroes, or each other. (But dammit, I still admire their skillful craft)

Above: Literally copied. Carbon-paper-traced from Carmine Infantino!

Disassembling and scanning the comic

Before I could properly scan the pages of this old comic, I had to take it apart. This involved removing all of the TINY staples that held it scruffily together. I attached numbered labels to all pages. Then I chipped my fingernails and drew blood prising the staples out. 30-40 mins later, they were all out! So hard to do without damaging the circa 40-year-old-pages. There were 43 staples. Yep, forty-three.

Back then, I clearly couldn’t drive a staple through all 25 or so pages at once, so I stapled groups of 3 or 4 at time, and then stapled each of those groups to each other! I still recall doing that. The staples that I’d used on this are very very small, and the stapler itself must have come from a Christmas cracker or something. It was so small and weak.

Take a look, below:

Above: Sticky labels to number the pages, before I separate them

Above: Dog-eared as hell. Should I iron them?

Above: Weirdly attached together

Above: Prising the staples out

Above: Prising the staples out

Above: Prising the staples out

Bonus Picture

Above: Pin-up! (click to enlarge)

Drawn on the back of this page, is the Millennium Falcon fleeing Tatooine for Alderann. I suppose it’s as if this is a real commercially published comic, and you’re getting a Pin-up of ‘Star Wars Scene 45’. Complete with a film sprocket holes effect around the title.

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