Lit Good titles to read from the Marvel era?

I realized I have completely forgone reading the Marvel comics due to some preconceived judgment that they were outdated, however, I rented a few from the library today and I flipped through it to see a velociraptor in an Imperial uniform, so I think I'm pretty much obligated to start up now.

 

There are a lot of goodie's from the Marvel era. When at best, they capture that awesome feeling of chaos I guess my fav stories are those where features either Shira Brie or the Zeltron Dani. (I can't check the issues from where I am now, but if you go to the wook, you can find them listed under their names) The Shira arch because it creates a good suspese, and give us a few lovely Luke/Lando and Luke/Chewie moments - and the Dani arch because of the crazy chaos. There's almost always a bit of silliness in the Marvels, but I dont see them fit ill with the SW universe in general.

 

I prefer silly things over Anakin brooding about everything that is wrong with his life

 

That would actually not be Marvel but likely the Dark Horse Reprint of Classic Star Wars Paper Strips from the Los Angeles Times. As on Marvel issues worth reading. Hmm... my Top 5 are

the Valance Story (#16, 27, 29)
#30
#73
#83
#86

Though there is a lot of awesome stuff in general hiding in the Marvel comics pages.

 

Okay I got the Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures collectio, along with "Escape to Hoth".

I'm assuming Escape to Hoth is actually a marvel comic?

edit: nevermind. i got all three volumes of the "original series" comic strips

 

Basically, there's something great in each Marvel omnibus. I would say that they're all worth getting. Start from the beginning, which the weakest, and keep going as the stories get stronger and stronger.

If the character you saw was Stafuv Rahz, though, you were actually checking out one of the collections of the Star Wars daily comic strip, specifically the volume of Russ Manning stories. That volume contains some really cool elements, like the introduction of Blackhole, but generally it's the cheesiest and least interesting, important, or well-written of the classic material. The strongest is actually from the team that took over the comic strip after Manning left, Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. Those stories are pure gold. Classic pulp-adventure fun; important and interesting plotlines like the debut of Executor, the evacuation of Yavin IV, the discovery of Hoth, saving Ackbar; and absolutely gorgeous classic-style art from Williamson.

EDIT: CSW: TEA is the collection of Manning's run on the daily comic. Escape to Hoth is the final of three volumes collecting the Goodwin-Williamson run. The first two are just entitled CSW: Volume One and CSW: The Rebel Storm.

 

Marvel had lots of great titles... though the stories behind the cover title not always lived up to them

yeah, TEA-time always is great!

 

Anything including the Tagges (especially Orman), Valance or the Wheel is good. Of course, there are quite a few other neat stories in there as well.

 

I'd second the suggestion to just read all of them, but my favorite issues have to be the Shira Brie/Lumiya arc: #56-63, 88, 95-97, 100, and 107.

 

Thirding the "read them all" approach -- I began reading them under the impression they were a haphazard collection of random arcs with no relation to one another, and shortly realized I had to get the omnibuses because the cherry-picking method wasn't working out.

Did you ever read the old Republic and Empire comics, IG_2000? Because they're closer to the vein of Republic rather than Empire -- that is, the later Republic comics would frequently reference characters and events from earlier comics, whereas the Empire series was a hodgepodge of different stories.

 

Yes, I agree that the entire Marvel SW series is worth reading - good stuff, overall. Though the post-ROTJ issues (#81-on) get a lot of flack, I think they're interesting & worth reading. The Nagai issues were especially nice, and they had some great artwork.

 

Really? I haven't read the Marvel comics in over 25 years as I lost them, but from what I remember the artwork got progressively worse at the end of the Marvel run (here two Marvel comics were published in each issue). I think the arc involving Shira Brie had some really, really great artwork. How I miss those old comics...

 

The Marvel series was very good at the beginning, I think. Especially the issues that were written by Goodwin.
I did not really like the last issues. The whole Nagai-Tof War was a bit over the bill.
I really hated that insectoid assistant of Ackbar...

 

The early Goodwin/Infantino issues. The whole run between Empire & Jedi. All of the Jo Duffy/Cynthia Martin issues post Jedi. That's the best of Marvel SW.

 

I've noticed people on these forums are often polarized over the Nagai/Tof/Zeltron/anything-Mary-Jo-Duffy issues. Personally I liked them, but I can definitely see where the "over-the-top" sentiment comes from. The number of WTF?-moments rose exponentially at that point.

Come to think of it, the entire course of the Marvel run paralleled the OT in a way (chronology aside). The first third or so was like ANH, where you're not really sure what the hell's going on but it's fun and zany so you keep with it. The (roughly) second third is more like ESB, where stories get darker and it's more srs bsns and plot twists (Lumiya I'm looking at you). Then there's the last third mostly occupied by Jo Duffy zaniness (definite Hoojib-Hiromi/Ewok parallels) and the massive showdown at the end.

I never noticed that before. Huh.

 

The thing with the Duffy run of the comics is that there was a really serious underpinning of this big war story and some very dark characters and situations . . . and also there were some crazy, goofy comedy elements thrown on top. It's more over-the-top and more schizo than the older issues, which didn't go serious and epic in such a big way, but also integrated their campier elements into the pulp stories more seamlessly.

 

Here's what's interesting re: my opinion of the post-ROTJ Marvel comics, specifically the aforementioned Nagai issues, most of which had artwork by Cynthia Martin (a great, very underrated artist, IMHO):

Back in the day when these comics came out, I didn't like them - I remember getting #81 (the one where the heroes go back to Tattoine after the Battle of Endor, and Boba Fett temporarily escapes from the Sarlaac for the first time) & maybe a handful of the other issues, but by the time the comic got to the Nagai & the Green Pirate types, I had lost interest. I didn't like the art & thought the stories were boring, so didn't collect these issues.

Fast forward to the late '90's - I looked at some of these issues at a local library, and thought they were alright. And, when the entire Marvel series was reprinted by Dark Horse (2002-2003), I bought these reprints & was able to revisit these later issues - and, I really enjoyed them! I guess I was looking at them from a different, older perspective. CM's artwork was interesting & unconventional, which may have been why I didn't like it as much back in the day.

To make an analogy, it's kind of the way I felt about one of my favorite '80's rock/pop groups, Men at Work. In the early '80's, they came out with two classic, iconic albums, Cargo & Business as Usual. Later, they came out with Two Hearts, an album I bought, listened to, & strongly disliked at the time. Flash forward to ten years later - I listened to some of the songs from Two Hearts again (after not having heard them for years), & really enjoyed these songs - this was despite having disliked them years earlier...

 

IG_2000 I also suggest reading them all. If you're really trying to narrow it down to avoid reading the whole run, I can tell you what I liked and didn't like about the ones I have so far (I just started collecting this series, I have them all up to 23 right now), but there would necessarily be spoilers involved and I'm not sure if you want that. I also have a volume of Dark Horse's Star Wars Classic TPB's (and two issues) which you were talking about first, but it sounds like a different volume then you have. Let me know if you don't care about spoilers, otherwise just let me know your favorite characters and other things about Star Wars and I will try to recommend based on that.

 

Reading them all is good, but I still feel "Star Wars 80: Ellie" is not only the best of the bunch, but a very good story by any measure. The final pages should be used in classes to teach how to tell a story through images and visual metaphor.

 

I'm currently in the process of reading them, and having just gotten up to the adaptation of TESB, I gotta agree with other users that the Valance stories and the Tagge stories rock. I can't wait to see what the writers do with the remainders of the Tagge family after TESB.

 

Read them all. They're fantastic. Even the absurd ones.

 

Well, the "silliness" in the Marvel Star Wars stories greatly contributes to their charm, methinks. In my humble opinion, one of the greatest thing with SW is that you can write either as hard sci-fi or more lighthearted fantasy. Both can work. If you like, you can make it sword and sorcery in space. Furthermore, silly situations appear in real-life, don't they? So why not in the Star Wars universe?