This week I had to see people about things and my dad is turning a room into an office and occasionally needed my help. So in order to have something this week I’m going back into the other site’s archives for a review.
Considering I went a long time without a Scanning My Collection article I don’t mind that there have been three this month. They come out when I have something to review for it, while I’m trying to do the others at least once a month. And since this one is collected and I can only guess where the breaks should go I’m going to review the whole thing.
Said whole thing is the original adaptation of the first Star Wars movie, though at the time we thought it would be the only one. Marvel adapted the movie in the first issues of the Star Wars comic series, and the version I have is a collected trade by Dark Horse featuring the first three, half of the movie. I don’t know if any changes were done by Dark Horse and if they did (outside of brightening the color) that’s a shame. I have noticed that Chewbacca looks more on-model than he did in issue #23, which I reviewed earlier today. Threepio has stronger colors and I’m not sure if R2 looks different or not since I just flipped through it prior to this opening. I am curious about the changes between what we saw on screen and what was in the adaptation. Dark Horse would also do their own version for the Special Edition, although the other two comics were just the Marvel adaptation. I don’t get it, either.
Well, this party got out of control real quick.
Classic Star Wars: A New Hope #1
Dark Horse Comics (June, 1994)
reprinting Star Wars #s 1-3 (Marvel; July-September, 1977)
ADAPTATION: Roy Thomas PENCILER: Howard Chaykin INKER: Steve Leialoha IDW RE-COLORIST: Pamela Rambo IDW COVER ARTIST: Arthur Adams IDW COVER COLORIST: Matthew Hollingsworth LETTERER: Tom Orzechowski ORIGINAL EDITORS: Roy Thomas & Archie Goodwin IDW EDITORS: Bob Cooper & Edward Martin IIIThe fact that they redid Marie Severin, Steve Leialoha, and Carl Gafford’s colors instead of just brightening them up is already a bad sign, but I don’t have the originals to compare it to. Now I wish I did so I would know what other art changes were made.
Comparing this to the character models in #23 you can see some changes, mostly with Chewbacca (whose fur is more matted, in some panels looking like the old Kenner action figure) and R2 (whose head is the comic’s slightly flatter dome in one panel). Much like the Special Editions I would have liked to have seen them keep the older style if indeed they were changed. They do have the deleted scene with Jabba but instead of a rotund male in a furry coat they have something more alien that looks like it could have been pulled off, but as we know Lucas had a bigger idea for Jabba’s design, which is why we had to wait for the third movie to meet him. R2-D2 and C-3PO are referred to as droids for the first comic and a half, where Ben refers to them as droids for the first time in the comic.
The dialog changes–expected with an early script to work from, the needs in adapting to another format that splits the story up into six issues, and to cover details that would take too much room to draw–are understandable but rather limited. Some of the dialog is close and some is even spot on. There couldn’t have been that many changes between the script Thomas was working with and the final screenplay. In addition to the Jabba scene, we not only get the Biggs scene (which I only saw pictures of in a storybook so I know they shot it) but they also included some of Luke and Biggs’ friends, which frankly I like. It puts more life into Luke’s life, that he knew someone other than Biggs and his aunt and uncle.
I’d still like to see the classic, untouched-up, original color artwork for a proper comparison as well as the other three issues that complete the adaptation (and kudos to Marvel for making it six issues long rather than trying to cram the adaptation into two or three issues) but based on Dark Horse’s reprint this appears to be a rather good adaptation. It’s worth checking out if you remember there were changes. It’s also not the only adaptation I have for the original film. I mentioned the Dark Horse “Special Edition” adaptation and have used the “manga” version for a Friday Night Fight, and we’ll get a proper review of those in future installments.
The Clutter Reports 
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