001: Tantive IV – Pursued! (In hyperspace?)
c.1977/1978 | age 9 What a weird looking Tantive IV! And I love the “John White Presents” bit! I’ve also done a Special Edition version of this page – for fun. So, two can play at that game George! Watch out for more of these.
SWa9 Special Edition version! Full-size View
Art Notes
Art Blakey
The childishness of the drawings is charming. The early version art was obviously just based on a single viewing of the film and maybe Star Wars Weekly Comic No#3—which would place this one in early 1978.
Lacking any other visual references, I basically had to try to remember what the ships looked like: hence the peculiar appearance of the rebel craft. Microphonic!—like a Shure SM 58 microphone; or a backwards Blake’s 7 ship.
I was amazed to discover that I still have my old Corgi brand Blake’s 7 Liberator ship toy. I remember my excitement around going into Naas town and buying it in one of the little corner shops. Some of the other boys in the class had them, and they were so cool looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if I still hadn’t even seen the TV series at that stage, because since moving to Ireland from Scotland, we only had one TV station! And Blake’s 7 was being shown on the new, second state TV station: RTE 2. If you wanted to receive that you either had to have a 30 foot tall mast in your garden with a whole mess of guy-line/wires radiating from it all over your lawn to hold it up with an aerial on top, or maybe you just needed to live in Dublin, closer to the TV station itself.
(This one’s for you Rod Hannah).
Our dog Polly preferred Star Wars to Blake’s 7 – it seems. Nicely chewed-up back in 1977.
Over the Rainbow
The clue that this was done after I saw the comic, is in the positive/negative banded hyperspace effect which came from Marvel. When Howard Chaykin depicted the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic team still hadn’t tackled how the heck they’d depict it themselves! So Chaykin had to get creative and obviously his early take on it was good enough for me. It’s funny how quickly you get used to leaving the blackness of space as white isn’t it?
Howard Chaykin’s Hyperspace (Marvel Comic)
T.I.E. or Tie or TIE?
Someone on Flickr saw this image and said “The Imperial Empire – I love it!” I stopped and wondered what was so funny about it. When I was in school we called Tie Fighters T.I.E. fighters—pronounced, “Tee-Aye-Ee”. My friend Niall – who you’ll hear more about – suggested that it stood for ‘twin ion engine’.
TIE INITIALS + STAND FOR + THE IMPERIAL EMPIRE + + + + +
Star Wars Weekly Letters Page
Darren Slade of Episode Nothing Blog and I run a Facebook page for Star Wars Weekly Comic – Image by Marvel
But in Issue#21 of the UK Star Wars Weekly Comic, this very question was asked in their ‘Cosmic Correspondence’ letters page. And the Robot Editor’s answer was..?
So, take your pick. Sounded plausible. Because I was only 9 or 10, I didn’t realise that this was a bit like saying “Your High Highness” or “Princely Prince” or “Stinky Stink”. And just as I got used to the whiteness of space – it also never occurred to me how silly “The Imperial Empire” is. When Mike McGinnis made his remark about its silliness 30+ years later he gave me a good laugh at myself!
Alarm Bells at LucasFilm?
But was the Robot Editor always an in-the-know insider? Perhaps not, check out this letter in SWW comic – written by young Iain Gledhill, of Pudsey, West Yorkshire.
Incidentally, in many subsequent issues, the question about Artoo’s missing middle leg would come up time and time again!
Young Iain Gledhill’s letter to Star Wars Weekly Comic
Niall
In class, we were asked to come up with a sentence containing the word ‘retractable’. My mate Niall stood up and said
“Artoo Detoo has a retractable middle leg.”
—Niall F. (aged 10)
There was much giggling from the boys and much cruel mocking in the schoolyard afterwards. Ahh… kids. Horrible sometimes.
Comments below please! I love ’em.
This is a black & white line art comic page, drawn in biro.
Panel 1
John White Presents :- is written in the rough, wobbly hand of a 9 year old child, followed by an equally wobbly rendition of the Star Wars logo.
We see Princess Leia's spaceship shooting through hyper-space. Space is rendered in positive and negative vertical bands.
It reads: 'This is a Rebel ship in Hyper Space.'
Panel 2
'And this - an Imperial Empire Ship.'
The triangular Imperial Destroyer comes down from the top of the frame in emulation of the movie, shooting at the rebel ship, which is twisting and turning to avoid being hit.
Ah it’s brilliant, so full of energy and enthusiasm!
Indeed! The older stuff is my favourite!
The Imperial Empire! I love it! And the logic explaining where that came from is great too. An alternative TIE acronym! I do like your High Highness. I will have Han Solo use that when he mocks Leia at the next opportunity in BMS. See, SWA9 really is inspirational!
Oh, and funny about the Liberator. I used to have that old Corgi die-cast toy thing too. I still do somewhere. The paint started flaking off at some point so I did what any proactive child would do and used White-Out (whatever you call the equivalent in Ireland / UK) and painted over it. The result was a blotchy thick paint job that makes it look like the toy was badly sculpted. Sigh…
Ah, but the memories Rod, the memories! You know, I’m going to post some of my old Star Wars toys and debris soon – just to show what I did to them.
The true ‘collectors’ out there will grieve…
What are those those things on the end of each wing? Additional thrusters? Really big cannons? Just curious.
God only knows. Perhaps inspired by the under-wing canons on my Airfix Hawker Harrier Jump-jet? – which look a bit like bombs but with loads of holes in them.
Whatever they were, it looks as if the ‘design’ changed during execution.
This reminds me of something I thought of while rereading the Marvel SW recently — the ships, guns, robots, etc. all looked a bit off-model, but back in 1977 we didn’t have the Internet with it’s plethora of images. We had the photos in the paperback, the pictures in the album sleeve, the gum cards, etc. but that’s about it. Oh, there was the “Star Wars Blueprints” book if you had money, but it’s not like now, when I can download a set of 3D images of variant Y-Wing configurations.
So anyway, long story short, love the art and the story-telling here. Thanks for sharing them.
Hiya Rob,
Thanks for dropping by – and leaving the message.
Yes, even Howard Chaykin couldn’t get photographic references for a lot of the stuff he was drawing. Apparently there wasn’t even a rough-cut of the film when he started.
Hope you keep enjoying the rest of the book – you’ve a big read ahead of you. It’s nearly ended now but ‘ALIEN age 11’ is coming!
Wow, I love the John White Presents B/W art AND the special edition version (the colors really pop!) Hey, you got the gun turret correct on the Tantive IV! I like your Blakes’s 7 spaceship reference photo too!
Well, if it isn’t the Co-Creator of the movie ‘Star Wars Remake’! Welcome to ‘Star Wars age 9’ Jim—lovely to have you drop by.
I’m pleased that you like the Special Edition version. But… sometimes I wonder if it might be a bit too fancy and ‘gradienty’ myself. I was only just the other day mentally comparing it with the new re-coloured version of Howard Chaykin’s Marvel one—and the new airbrushy colouring doesn’t really suit his loose, rough, brushed-looking inking.
Have you seen it, Jim?