Lit Comics Let's Reread: Walter Simonson's Star Wars

So. The Marvel Star Wars series is, broadly, not very good. Sure, there's a lot to like about some of it, and a few little characters and aspects popped up during the late Legends period, but for most of the time, it sucks, and we as Star Wars fans have tried to forget about it entirely. And mostly for good reason.

But a few issues of that series got written by some relative luminaries, though. Alan Davis colored an issue, Alan Moore wrote a few, so did Chris Claremont, but for my money, the most interesting has to be Walter Simonson. Simsonson drew issues 49-66 of the series, and wrote or co-wrote issues 56-65 of the series as well. But he had a long and productive career outside of that. He wrote and drew one of the most famous runs of Thor - which was adapted for the film Ragnarok - and wrote and drew a long run of Fantastic Four. Simonson also drew the run of X-Factor that his wife wrote, too.

(He also did a Teen Titans/X-Men crossover, as well, that had Jean Grey and Cyclops punch Darkseid in the face).

Herein, I want to examine in detail the run that Simonson wrote and pencilled, which began in the aftermath of Empire Strikes Back, and - if my memory serves me well - ends a little bit after Return of the Jedi. I'm going to go through each issue with some images and commentary, and then end with some discussion questions and final thoughts.

Star Wars 56 was written by Walter Simonson and Dave Micheline, and pencilled by Walter Simonson, inked by Tom Palmer, lettered by Joe Rosen, and edited by Louise Jones. Louise Jones, later Louise Simonson - she married Walter Simonson - has an impressive record of her own, writing X-Factor, Superman, Steel, Power Pack, and New Mutants. Issue 56 came out February 1982. Just as a fun coincidence, Marvel also published both a Doctor Who comic and a Star Trek comic that month, as well. I'm reading this book on the Marvel Unlimited online service - well worth my ten dollars a month - but I believe they've all been collected in trade.

We open on Cloud City. Lando is power posing, wearing his sexiest cape and doing the ol' Captain Morgan stance over Cloud City. He's got the Falcon, just as he did after Empire Strikes Back, but is alone on Cloud City - it appears some time as passed since Empire, and R2, C3PO, Leia, and Luke are off in parts unknown. Anyway, Sexy Lando is posing dramatically, contemplating the now empty city of . . . well, city of Cloud doesn't make sense. The now empty Cloud City.


It appears that the Empire has emptied out the entire city, after they conquered it. The editor points us to issue 44, but, well, we all watched Empire, we know what happened. The Empire has exported the inhabitants - presumably the Uganaughts and the humans like the Ice Cream Maker Dude - and is trying to switch the city over to full automation. A couple little things of note: a) Tibanna gas apparently is an 'anti-gravity' gas at this point in continuity, and b) ruthless capitalist Lando is an interesting take on him.


Lando explores more of the now empty city, and finds an empty computer station. He inquires of the computer where exactly the people are, and the computer says that they were 'evacuated to Bespin,' which makes very little sense, considering that the planet is a gas giant. I know few people who can stand on gas. Anyway, while doing his indepth computing, he's attacked by (duh duh duh) Lobot! He's apparently gone insane!


Lobot is not only insane, but has super-strength, because that's how cyborgs work apparently??? I'm not sure that they really have decided on what cyborgs do, to be honest, or what they are. Lando's sexy cape is all torn, and he makes a break for it, Lobot hot on his heels. In the mean time, an Imperial ship comes over the horizon. It's a design that I've never seen before, and I sort of doubt that we will see again - three cylinders between a pair of TIE Advanced wings, with a long boarding ramp that looks a little bit like the Neimodian shuttle from TPM. The shuttle disgorges a group of Stormtroopers, both a group of boring normal ones, and a new variant - bomb squad stromtroopers.


The stormtroopers are here to find a series of twelve bombs that have been planted by the Uganaughts before they were deported, as obviously giant factories work a little poorly when they are filled with bombs. Sexy Lando, being a smart cookie, comes upon the stormtroopers and starts shooting. The stormtroopers return fire, and now Lando is running from both an army of stupid fascist murderers and a killer cyborg. So really just a tuesday for Mr. Calrissian.

In the meantime, we cut to the planet Arbra, where the Rebel Alliance has established a new camouflaged base. Leia pilots (?! didn't know she had that skill) a speeder into the treeline, between enormous trees growing out of the ocean. Guided by a few dudes, she lands, and wanders through the base, which apparently is filled with my favorite Star Wars animal, the Hoojib! Leia goes out and chats with Luke and Luke's cute girlfriend the Dark Lady of the Sith Shira Brie.


Back on Cloud City, Lando is still running from the Stormtroopers and the killer cyborg, shooting a few of the 'troopers with what appears to be Han's old gun, before finally taking cover in the very carbonite chamber where Han was frozen. In the meantime, Captain Treece (perhaps a distant relation to old-timey Jedi Vannar Treece?) and his bomb-troopers found the Uganaughts' first bomb. Which talks. Which is pretty great. And this bomb doesn't want to explode, cause, well, it's a person too.


Lando, turns, dodges, ducking between blaster bolts, and runs full tilt towards the Stormtroopers. He grabs a cable, and swings Indiana Jones style towards the stormtroopers, kicking them into the carbonite chamber. One button press, and BAM! Frozen stormtroopers.


Back at the bomb, the talking bomb tells the the bombtroopers that, psych! it wants to explode. It apparently is a suicidal bomb. It actually reminds me of an issue of Transformers, which involves a psychologist who had to convince landmines that they wanted to be defused. The city topples, leaning from the explosion.


Now, because only one of the threats have been stopped, the killer cyborg is still after Lando! Lando and the imperial, Captain Treece, who is also the new governor of Cloud City, team up to fight Lobot. Treece reveals that the Uganaughts have mined the city because they want to move the mining operations back to their territory, on the surface (!) of Bespin proper. According to Treece, at least. Anyway, Lando lures Lobot through the city, in a breakneck chase through some lovingly rendered technology until they reach the central freight-loading center, where Treece grabs Lobot in a giant robot claw. Kickass af.

While he's immobile, Lando grabs Lobot's techno-headband-thing, and fixes the 'motivational center,' restoring Lobot to being, like, a person with normal feelings. Lando deduces that the Uganaughts sabotaged Lobot, and once he's fixed, Lobot uses his cyborg powers to reach through the city and defuse all the bombs.


Cloud City is saved! All is well! Lando and his new buddies look dramatically over the saved city from a balcony . . . until Treece kicks him off the edge. Whoops!


So. I don't know about you, but I thought that was really fun. It was fast, well-paced, and a good adventurey tempo that keeps the reader involved. There clearly was a larger story with Shira and Leia and Luke involved, but I didn't know it, and I managed to keep a hang of what was going on. The art was lovely, and while the coloring was less lovely, I can live with that. Simonson is at an early stage in his career, both writing and penciling: this is before Thor, before FF, before X-Factor, and it shows. But the book is engaging regardless. A few questions to consider.

1. Most comics covered here are modern, with digital coloring. What do you think of the older, traditional inking and coloring?
2. How well does this fit with 'modern' continuity, both as it stands in the new Disney Canon, and with the EU as it stood in the last couple of years as its existence?
3. Pretend that you're a reader, circa 1982. Are you interested enough in this book based on this issue that you'd buy issue 57?
4. Capes: Hot or not?

Thanks for reading!

 

Disagree. The original Marvel Star Wars was wonderful. All of it. Especially the weird stuff.

Capes are hot.


Sent from my SM-G390W using Tapatalk

 

Wasn't this ship briefly featured in TESB? At one point a TIE-like craft transports from one ship to another and it looks almost like an inverted Bomber.

 

Yes, I have to respectfully disagree as well. I used to really dislike the Marvel series, for an awfully long time. But within the last decade I started to mellow out on them, and a few years ago read through a big chunk of the series back to back. There are definitely some issues throughout and a few eras of the run that are of less quality, but I do think it as a whole is a lot better than people give it credit for. I would give it a higher rating on whole than the mainline 'Star Wars' titles of both late Dark Horse and the new Marvel.

 

Well I ain't we and I will remember it three times as hard for every single one of you who has tried to forget it.

 

Well, I am open to being convinced otherwise on the merits of the old school marvel Star Wars.

 

I also respectfully disagree - in fact, I would put the ol' Marvel run up there with my all time favorite Star Wars materiel, though I will also concede I am not as picky of quality when it comes to my favorite franchise. I think, however, a re-read is a grand idea and I'll happily dust off the old back issues to read with you!

I really like the older pencil and coloring, something about it is extremely appealing to the eye and definitely draws me to older comics.

 

Ohhh I actually own that issue because it was on sale at a Hamilton Bulldogs Star Wars Day game and I dig the cover lots



Didn't know it was Walt Simonsons first issue as writer on the book, bonus!

Hah, I was digging through Wookieepedia and I don't have this issue but check out Star Wars #49



Honestly? That's not entirely inaccurate from the movie we got literally judging the book by its cover.

 

Avidly collected these when they were being published, and read them many times. There's hinky things about 'em -- you're just about to discover something that I knew was goofy even at the time, which is that the term "gas giant" has been even more severely misunderstood than it seems in this issue.

The read-along part of the thread is great and I don't want to be part of derailing it into "Marvel SW sucked / no it didn't", so I'll be real quick here, I like this more loopy whimsical SW stuff more than the overserious later EU -- this continuity is messed up, but it tallies better tonally with the films -- frankly, all of the films, from then to now -- than something like the NJO. That's the kind of stuff that gets discussed over in the "What did SW fans think of continuity back in the day thread" which I enjoy a lot -- the answer is generally "we knew the films were going to trample the continuity of the spinoffs at will and we didn't worry about it". However we were annoyed when the writers totally blew already established continuity stuff, like Bespin, and the bizarre notion that Wedge was stranded on Hoth and also seemed to somehow be the same person as Biggs, or... something.

 

Well, as much as I love Hux - and I do love Hux, don't get me wrong - there's no way he could rock that mustache.

I think one of the great strengths of the Star Wars EU is how it is able to play with so many different genres in a way that many other franchises can't. Like, TOTJ is straight up fantasy. Black Fleet Crisis and X-Wing are mil-sci-fi. Courtship at least tries to be a romantic comedy. Rogue One is a war film, but Solo is a bit of Ocean's 11 with a bit of Fast and the Furious mixed in. I've got no problems with the modern comics, which are kind of grim, really, whether if it's Poe Dameron or Legacy or whatever, but they do seem to forget that there's a lot of humor in the OT. I'm really enjoying that these comics are revelling in that.

 

Hey I think I actually have this. I got it in omnibus form like seven years ago, and did a quick read through.
But it's back at my parents house, so I won't have a chance to do it again for a few months at least.
A lot of the comics from that era are pretty crazy to me, as someone who grew up with the PT.

 

No I don't think the Original Marvel ones were better. They contained a lot of stuff that doesn't gel with mainstream Star Wars. I don't read the canon ongoing Marvel one but it does sync well with the rest of the saga so thats a plus.

 

I will have to be another respectful disagreeer. There are comics luminaries all throughout the entire original Marvel run. Walter Simonson is one of many. Archie Goodwin made major contributions. Every major writer and artist who came on board already had established their reputation from something else they did. I was a kid in the 1980s, and yes, there are times when I have disliked the original run. It's funny how we can grow to love what we dislike.

 

Just for the record, because I forgot to mention this, but I'm updating every other day. Cause, yknow, life and all that.

 

They were mainstream Star Wars at the time. They only had to gel with the movies and themselves.

They got it wrong sometimes because SW wasn't its own established thing and you'd have journeyman writers and artist come in who were used to doing pew-pew rayguns and Martians and Skrulls and bubble helmets and stuff, sure. But that's still fairly close to SW roots in a lot of ways. To this day if you're looking at what gels with the SW films, all three trilogies, and what kind of stuff would tonally fit that world? Jaxxon over the Vong. You know it to be true!

Um, and, the mustache dude on that cover? That dude is a chick. She's just drawn a bit oddly at that angle, but that issue has what must've been one of the first female Imperial officers depicted. I truly LOVED that issue, not just for its cool art (I wasn't a fan of the Infantino art at the time and Simonson like Williamson was a real treat after years of inaccurate tech and ship drawings), but for being a rare attempt to deal with the legacy of the Jedi. That said, I also remember the coloring in that issue being a majorly botched job for some reason.

 

Along with the above, I also appreciate that the original Marvel run, along with Brian Daley's stuff, really captures the sense of Star Wars being classic space opera in the sense of the 1930s-50s serials and pulps. They're writing stories of that genre that happen to also be Star Wars stories, rather than writing something that is merely a self-referential 'Star Wars' only. They're different from the stuff that Lucas came up with, but inspired by the same sources that Lucas drew inspiration from. By the time of the Dark Horse era, and certainly the new Marvel era, that's largely gone and we see people writing Star Wars spinoffs that only draw inspiration from (usually a small range only of) prior Star Wars products.

 

Lol She looks like Freddie Mercury.

 

That's Zeta Traal. The "mustache" is her prominently-drawn upper lip with a shadow on it. Here's her getting smacked by Luke, who may or not be wearing a wig at this point in the story.

 

How weird were the Marvel issues? Not as weird as some people think. The Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson issues followed by the David Micheline/Walter Simonson issues were top notch - the whole build up & follow on to Pariah was brilliant. Some of the best Star Wars comics I have ever read.
Many of the stories hit on where the saga was going - the Tarkin storyline is a good example. & then you have the whole Mary Jo Duffy getting a story bumped & demanding to see the script for Jedi because she had pretty much written the whole of Endor without having seen any of the film.

The Marvel writers were very much on point with Star Wars @ the time.

 

Which makes sense. Lucas and other SW creators of the 70s and 80s were influenced by the space fantasy stories they grew up with - Buck Rogers, sci-fi serials, and so on. Naturally, later generations of SW creators were influenced by the space fantasy stories they grew up with, which were... Star Wars.

 

I think that's one thing that separates TFA from the rest of the Disney-era movies. Their writers and directors drew from a wide range of cinematic influences; Johnson especially not only clearly cast a wide net, but in similar directions that Lucas did in the 70s. Abrams, on the other hand, primarily called back to Star Wars itself.

 

So, issue 57. It's a direct follow-up to our previous issue. The writing is by David Micheline and Walter Simonson, pencilled by Walter Simonson, inked by Tom Palmer, letter by Joe Rosen, colored by Glynis Wein, and edited by Louise Jones and Jim Shooter.

We open where the last issue left off, with Lando - unfortunately, now capeless, and much less sexy - plummeting off the edge of Imperial occupied Bespin, having been pushed by treacherous Imperial scum, Captain Treece. The 'star warrior' (kickass!) is plummeting a mile and a half, through the atmosphere of Bespin!


Suddenly, Lobot - having been cured of his insanity last ish - follows his boss off the side, grabbing a jetpack, and despite Treece's objections, takes a flying leap. Note, as well, Lobot's stylish shoes. Apparently, Bespin has some classy tailors.


Lobot dives, high speed, and grabs Lando, the two of them falling through the air together, until Lobot triggers the jetpack in his arms. It doesn't halt their fall, but it does slow it, and the two hit the gasbag of a Uganaught boat-airship-thingy. It's the boat-airship-thingy of a newscrew, and Lando and Lobot . . . let's say liberate it. They use the thingy to flee from a following Imperial speedboat, and rig up a catapult to disable it.


In the meantime, Luke and his girlfriend land on the now-deserted Cloud City, and get Bespin's central computer, via Artoo, to tell them the details of what happened last issue. Unfortunately, Treece recognizes Luke - who is a wanted felon, after all - and the two flee into the city, chased by a squadron of stormtroopers.


Back on the planet's surface, the newscrew has taken Lobot and Lando to the King of the Uganaughts, who tells Lobot and Lando that Treece had turned Cloud City into a slave labor camp, and was embezzling money from the Tibanna sales. In the wake of this revelation, Lobot and Lando team-up with the King of the Uganaughts, and they take an airship back up to Cloud City.


Back on Cloud City, Shira and Luke get pinned down by another one of those strange looking Imperial Troop Transports, stuck between a group of stormtroopers on the ground and the imperial ship in the air. I'm going to take this opportunity to reiterate how great Shira is. She's funny, she's cute, she's handy with a blaster and has a good vibe with the other characters. I know what happens to her in the end, I've read LOTF like the rest of you, but man, that ****ing sucks. I mean, I've never gotten to the Lumiya stuff in the Marvel books - cause, well, only so much time in the world, and a lot of comics - but Shira as it is is fantastic.

I'm gonna throw a hot take here, to be honest. I sorta like Shira more then I like Mara Jade, as far as Luke Skywalker Love Interests go.


Anyway, Luke and Shira make a break for it, and they run into Lobot and Lando, who infiltrated Cloud City with the help of the Uganaught news crew, and threatens the imperials; leave, or Lobot will blow them to bits. Treece, however, is kind of a great shot, and he either kills or immobilizes Lobot. I think it's just immobilizes, but hey, he's not in ROTJ, what do I know?


Anyway, while Lobot may be disabled, and not able to detonate the bombs that the Uganaughts had planted throughout the city, but Luke, well, Lukeyboy has some mad force skills, and he arms the bombs with his thoughts. Give it just a second, and . . .


Kaboom! Eleven bombs detonate. Tibanna gas leak from the city's walls, and the great and wonderful Cloud City starts sinking. The Imperials - perhaps smartly - make a break for it, and flee, only for Luke to reveal that . . .


He just detonated the primers, not the actual bombs, and it only lost a little anti-gravity gas, with self-repair drones (?!?) already fixing it. Luke and Shira and Lando crack some jokes, and bam, everyone lives happily ever after.

Again, I thought that this was a lot of fun. I don't necessarily think that this was as good as the last one - it's sort of by the numbers, unfortunately - but it's still a fun read. The unfortunate comparison, I think, is the Brood Saga over in X-Men, which was running contemporaneously to this, and is unquestionably a better comic, but they both have a good mix of character beats - Lando, Shira, Luke - and high-speed action. Questions to considers.

1. Shira. What do you think? I've mentioned my own thoughts, what are yours?
   
2. What do you think of the Uganaughts role here? I got both some solid Return vibes - with the Ewoks in the Uganaughts role - and some solid TPM vibes, with Boss Nass.
   
3. Finally, maybe it was just me, but I don't see the characters as being very on mold with their actors. How closely should comic adaptations stick to the visuals of their film bases, as opposed to taking some artistic license?

 

I've never thought about it before, but Shira actually reminds me a lot of Qi'ra, both in characterization and (very broadly) story arc. I wonder if Jon Kasdan read these comics.

 

Huh, yeah, there are some parallels.

 

"The hapless Star Warrior" is a great line. Sometimes the constant narrator dialogue boxes in 70s and 80s comics get a bit wearying - basically in Marvel it sounds like everyone is trying to sound like Stan Lee's hyperbolic narration - but sometimes you really find gold in there.