Lit Omnibus: Wild Space Volume 1

Well, IMHO DH should prioritize this "Wild Space" Omnibus, as well as the possible 2nd?! Omni in the series, if only because the material being reprinted is so obscure & HTF. While all of DH's own SW series are available as either floppies (individual comics) and/or TPB's, this much older material is extremely rare - I myself have never even seen any of the UK comics & IIRC I briefly flipped through the 3D comics back in the late '80's at a comic store (though I never got them). So, if these stories doesn't get reprinted in these Omnis, many fans like me will never get a chance to own (let alone read) the material.

Obviously, this is my opinion as an older fan whose strong preference is old-skool SW EU (late '70's - '80's). And, I know that younger fans (who may prefer the more recent DH material) may very well disagree with me on this.

 

I've got a couple of the old UK comic magazines that came out for ESB - found them in an old comic/collecting shop now sadly defunct..

 

If you throw in all the Hyperspace Webstrips, that would help fill up a volume.

 

Psyched that i'll finally be able to get my hands on Alan Moore's stories.

 

So, this is less than a week away from coming out, though Amazon apparently isn't shipping for a week after Dark Horse's street date.

Super excited to finally get my hands on this, also by the way Amazon has a Look Inside feature for it now.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Omnibus-Space-Volume/dp/1616551461/


It's interesting that they decided to use the combined colored issues where applicable, but didn't combine the single black and white issues that were part of the same story arc together where there wasn't a combined issue to use.
The exact Table of Contents is:

Star Wars #0: The Keeper's World (Originally Published in Pizzazz #1-9)
Pizzazz #10-16: Star Wars (The Kingdom of Ice)
Star Wars Weekly #60 (Pursuit)
Star Wars Weekly #94 (Way of the Wookiee)
Star Wars Weekly #95 (Chewbacca Fights Alone)
Star Wars Weekly #96 (Switch)
Star Wars Weekly #97 (The Day After the Death Star)
Star Wars Weekly #98 (Space Duel)
Star Wars Weekly #99 (Empire Kills)
Star Wars Weekly #104 (The Weapons Master)
Star Wars Weekly #105 (Day of the Assassins)
Star Wars Weekly #106 (My Enemies Surround Me)
Star Wars Weekly #107 (World of Fire)
Star Wars Weekly #108 (Star Terror)
Star Wars Weekly #109 (Molten Doom)
Star Wars Weekly #110 (The Word for World is Death)
Star Wars Weekly #111 (Unholy Alliance)
Star Wars Weekly #112 (A Creature in the Stars)
Star Wars Weekly #113 (The Guardian of Forever)
Star Wars Weekly #114 (Betrayal)
Star Wars Weekly #115 (The Monster's Secret)
The Empire Strikes Back #149 (Death Masque)
Devilworlds #1 (Originally published in The Empire Strikes Back #153, 155, 157, 159)
Devilworlds #2 (Originally published in The Empire Strikes Back #151, 154, 156)
Star Wars 3-D #1
Star Wars 3-D #2
Star Wars 3-D #3
Star Wars Kids: The Rebel Thief
Star Wars Kids: X-Wing Marks the Spot
Star Wars Kids: Imperial Spy
Shadows of the Empire (Galoob)
Shadows of the Empire (Ertl)
Droids: The Mixed-Up Droid
Star Wars Kids #12: The Gambler's Quest
Star Wars: Droids (Apple Jacks)

 

Yes, it's great that this is so close to being released. I remember when DH first announced this Omni last August?!, so it will be nice to finally own this
I think it's safe to say that many fans/collectors (including myself) haven't read much of this obscure material....

 

Amazon UK date is June 11 so still some time to go for me.

 

Can you clarify what this means a bit more?

 

Yes, I'm a little confused also.

TC

 

Sure.
As far as I know the issues of Star Wars Weekly and Empire Strikes Back Monthly were in Black and White. Some of the issues were republished by Dark Horse, like in the case of Devilworlds, in color. They appear to be using the colored versions for these comics in the omnibus and are leaving the rest of them in black and white. They're also seperated in the table of contents by issue and not story arc, so it appears that we'll get all the covers for all the black and white comics, but not all the covers for anything republished in color later.

 

Ah, I see. It's unfortunate that the issues reprinted by Marvel in color in the US as "Four New Adventures" won't appear in color here. I guess I'll just have to hang on to that one...

TC

 

The Day After the Death Star! That's the comic where Chewie gets his medal.
Can't wait for this omnibus.

 

ARE WE JUST GOING TO IGNORE REIST COMING TO NORTH AMERICA. POSSIBLY IN COLOUR(Dark Horse has coloured previous Black and White stories in omnibuses)

 

Well, IMHO we're going to have to wait until this Omnibus actually comes out before we're sure of what will or won't be in color. That being said, I don't really understand the logistics of this as well as some, so it could very well be that some of these comics will be reprinted in b&w. And, that will be fine with me since having them reprinted here is better than not having them reprinted at all.

Re: the "Four new Adventures" mentioned above, I'm guessing that's the small "World of Fire" paperback that came out back in the day. I do remember reading this years ago, and am surprised it hasn't been reprinted before now.

 

We should give a big thanks to our pal Eddie van der Heijden, who allowed Dark Horse to borrow some of his comics to produce this omnibus.

 

Thanks man!!! And don't forget Joe Bongiorno!!!!!!!

Some of my comics were in need of a nice vacation to the US anyway... away from the attic for a while, take in some culture in Milwaukie...

 

The World of Fire paperback was the second volume in the series; "Four New Adventures" was the first. IIRC, they were just published as "Star Wars (Four New Adventures) and Star Wars 2. The Four New Adventures volume had Way of the Wookiee, Day After the Death Star, Weapon's Master, and War on Ice. Those were in color; World of Fire was in black and white.

TC

 

Just picked up the first Wild Space Omni, and am very impressed. Kudos & sincere Thanks to everyone involved in putting this together. This is my favorite SW Omni yet. It's great to finally see all of this obscure/rare material all in one place. Other than #1-2 of "Devilworlds" and a handful of the other stories, I don't remember reading or even seeing any of this material before.

As was mentioned, many of the UK comics & all of the 3D comics are in b&w, which is fine with me. I like the Carmine Infantino artwork re: the UK comics, which looks superb as always. He is one of the few artists I identify with SW (Al Williamson is another one), since Infantino drew many of the early Marvel U.S. comics.

Also enjoyed the 3D comics, which understandably had the 3D effects taken out. The artwork to #1 of the 3D issue was especially impressive.

I'll post more once I get a chance to read all of this.

 

Yes, this is exactly the way this Omni's contents were reprinted. I was dissapointed that they didn't include the UK covers for the comics that were reprinted in Devilwords. However, since DH has excluded covers for their Omnibus collections in the past this is not unusual; and, I'm just glad that we got what we did here.

I am also puzzled by The Day after the Death Star being in b&w instead of color. You would have thought that since this was already reprinted in color by DH in the LS HC (that I don't have), that it would be a no-brainer to reprint this in color in the Omni (as was done with some of the Pizzazz stories & some of the UK stories, which were reprinted in color in Star Wars #0 & the 2-issue Devilworlds back in the '90's, respectively). However, I'm so happy to have this collection that this isn't a big deal for me.

 

Didn't they color "Aurra's Song" specifically for the Omnibus, too? Oh well.

 

Yep, they did. I do find it kinda strange that they didn't release as much of it colored as possible. But I'm happy enough to own these comics at all that I can't complain too much.
The only real thing I kinda miss with the Omnibuses is a lack of cover art. There's a lot of awesome art that was made for the comics that sadly normally gets completely left out

 

Great omnibus. I have all the original vintage publications these stories appeared in, but it's cool to finally have them all in a single volume.

I'm not too disappointed that those Infantino stories are in their original b&w versions as it retains the essence of their initial publication in SW Weekly, although it was an Interesting choice as Marie Severin did an awesome job of colouring those stories when they were reprinted in the SW Marvel Illustrated Books paperback way back in 1981.

 

I liked it. Am wondering if the next omnibus will include the strips with Blackhole, and Admiral Griff's star destroyers crashing into the Executor, and so forth- have heard of them but not seen them.