036: “I find your lack of waiters disturbing…”
Weird fingers!
Art Notes: Tiniest of Details
Have a little look in the bottom left panel. Notice anything – odd?
I posted a comment to Blue Milk Special‘s webcomic some time ago because I’d discovered a peculiar and amusing panel in Howard Chaykin‘s Marvel adaptation of Star Wars. Have a look at it on the left. Over on Blue Milk Special Vader drinks coffee: for comic effect. It’s a parody of the film. I mean, honestly: how on earth could he possibly drink coffee? Well look what I found the other night in a box of old comics in the attic (left).
Vader’s Coffee: A Mystery…
Yep, in the Howard Chaykin Marvel comic adaptation of 1977– Vader is actually depicted holding what looks like a paper cup of latte – or milk! Perhaps he liked it before bedtime, with a biscuit. Even weirder: in the top left panel, the cup seems to float in mid-air, steam rising from it, then in another panel it’s in his hand! All those mighty powers – and look what he uses them for: parlour tricks. Rod Hannah of Blue Milk Special was as surprised as I was! And their Vader always holds a coffee mug.
Where did Howard Chaykin get that coffee cup? (view larger)
Of course, Howard Chaykin/Marvel‘s adaptation did look odd sometimes, but that was because they didn’t have much reference material to work from. The film wasn’t even finished! The studio didn’t have enough production stills to give them for reference. There was an excellent article on Star Wars.com – now gone – by the comic’s editor Roy Thomas in which he confirmed this.
Roy Thomas (left) and Howard Chaykin (right) discuss the Marvel adaptation at the 1976 San Diego Comic Con.
…Solved!
But… do you know what? The origin of ‘Vader Levitating and Drinking Coffee’ has been found. There it is – in the 1977 novelisation! Lucas must have omitted it from the film because of budgetary constraints.
(Not because it was silly or anything – obviously)
“A huge metal-clad hand gestured slightly, and one of the filled cups on the table drifted responsively into it.”
1977 Novelisation
Gary Kurtz: “Jesus George, Fox are going to pull the plug if we don’t get the film finished – on budget. So which one will we do? The floating coffee cup with all that expensive black thread – or – the Death Star exploding?
Coffee cup – Death Star – Coffee cup – Death Star. Agh… I can’t decide!”
Finally, the Bean Counters at 20th Century Fox prevailed. The coffee cup was axed. And poor John Dykstra wept because he’d never wow audiences with cinema’s first levitating coffee cup.
The Coming Threat
Lucas the genius beats everyone to it – again
Now I’m worried: If I read the rest of the novel, will I find that some of my other comically-genius additions actually came from the Novel too? Do I really want Lucas to take all the credit for those masterstrokes? Like the bit about ‘ducks’ for example. Confused? You will be.
Next: She’s beautiful!
It’s amazing I never saw this, lol!
I think he was just keeping it warm for Tarkin. 😉
Aw, WTH, we know he was trying to stay awake in those meetings.
Imagine him sat warming it between his thighs – “here you go darling”.
Do you think when he got bored he’d do sneaky force chokes at people, with his hand under the table?
John did you have the Marvel Star Wars comic in colour in Ireland? We in the UK had to make do with the black-and-white reprints in Star Wars Weekly.
Hi Darren,
We had Star Wars Weekly too. No colour – but oh my, it was still the most exciting thing in the universe after the film itself. To get that thing into your hands at the newsagent was better than gold!
Some of the printing was pretty poor – as especially evident in the supporting strips like ‘Man Gods from Beyond the Stars’.
I didn’t actually get the comic until issue 3 I think. A friend gave it to me.
Thanks. I thought because you reproduced a colour frame that might mean the US comic reached you in Ireland.
We did have the Star Wars Annual No. 1, which came out (I think), unusually for an annual, in time for the summer of 1978. That had a truncated version of the Marvel comic adaptation which was mostly in colour, but the beginning and end of the story were still in black and white.
I’m guessing the publishers only budgeted for a certain number of colour pages, and they had to be in the middle of the book!
Funnily enough, I remember the black and white version of that frame with the coffee; or at least I remember wondering what the object was! It was one of several drawings in the Chaykin adaptation that made me think “Erm, what’s happening there, exactly?”
Yes, I got my annual at Christmas. I read the HELL out of it. My friend Niall actually coloured several pages at the end which I loved.
I don’t think MARVEL really understood how much joy this stuff brought to children. Just magical.
That frame is scanned from my Giant Size versions of the comic that my mum bought at an auction or something. First time I ever saw the whole adaptation in colour!
Do you remember how short-changed we were with annual 2? We waited a whole year and got a reprint of the sodding ‘Dragon Lords’ series [Carmine Infantino] printed in just one extra colour – magenta and very poorly at that. Stuff we’d already read! No additional material as I recall.