Comments on: Scott’s Classic Comics Corner: Grand Finales and Quick Exits (pt. 2)

By: Blackjak

Blackjak — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:23:13 +0000

Hey, I LIKED the green bunny! And the orange fish guy in the helmet (Was it Kiro?)
I even liked the beginning of the post-Jedi stuff… The Empire employing non-human stormtroopers was a nice touch… The last couple of issues just went utterly down the tubes… probably, as pointed out, due to being crammed and rushed… I completely forgot Whilce Portacio was the artist on the last one… He didn’t get better… HE EVOLVED INTO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ARTIST… The interior of #107 was AWFUL! LIke he hadn’t ever seen the movie, or even a decent picture of Artoo…

Oooo.. and don’t forget the first appearance of the original Jabba the Hutt!! An orange humanoid with buggy eyes! somewhere in the first dozen issues I think…

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:55:42 +0000

Yeah it was David Michelinie who wrote those issues (the Simonson ones) and have to say they are superb. There is this really great Empirial Officer who’s name completely escapes who was such a well rounded charactered and such a breath of fresh air in the Rebel’s good Empire bad black and white world of Star Wars. Great issues.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:11:40 +0000

I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but another reason for the high price tag associated with Star Wars #107 is that it is an early work by Whilce Portacio. During his popularity peak in the 1990s, this was a high-demand issue for many people to track down.

I used to own the entire series years ago, then gave it all away. It’s become a fun task to try to reassemble the run again now. However, knowing how bad some of these stories are makes it hard to pay much more than cover price for these issues again!

By: Trout

Trout — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:02:00 +0000

You’ve gotta include the last issue of the Peter David “Captain Marvel”. The way Marvel handled that book was a mess, and you could tell David was pissed when he had to close that title; but he made some fun of it.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:14:47 +0000

I’m pretty sure it was David Michelinie who wrote the Simonson issues referred to above. I like the immediate, post-Star Wars Green Bunny issues a lot, but agree that it’s really that run between Empire and Jedi where the Star Wars comics shine.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:25:28 +0000

I remember the last issue of the original Nova series (#25), where the usual “He’s here, the living rocket!” was replaced by “He’s GONE, the living rocket!” on the cover.

The bummer was that it completely screwed up a major storyline that Marv Wolfman was developing, called “the World’s War”. It was supposed to crossover between the Fantastic Four and Nova, but Nova was cancelled two issues into it. It went on for quite a while in the FF afterwards (the climax was a confrontation between Galactus and Wolfman’s signature Nova villain, the Sphinx), but you could tell that Wolfman’s enthusiasm for it had died. Wolfman jumped over to DC not long afterwards.

By: sgt rawk

sgt rawk — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:02:35 +0000

I remember the last few issues of Spider Woman having really cool photo covers. And declining art. Although, I loved Steve Leighaloa … Leihial.. I loved the inker.

By: Jeremy A. Patterson

Jeremy A. Patterson — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:32:25 +0000

I have some more great final issues worth noting:

The Original Shield #4 (The 1980s Red Circle line was an interesting line-up, this issue was a mixed bag: Dick Ayers’ art had become more simplistic compared to the earlier installments of the series, but at least it was a self-contained story [The other issues were part of serialized stories!])

Archie’s Super Hero Comics Digest Magazine #2 (This is a prime example of why Archie could cram great stuff into their digests! They managed to have Simon & Kirby, Gray Morrow, Wally Wood AND Neal Adams all in that issue! There was no mention of any Archie-published final issues in this series so far, so I felt they could make it!)

The Mighty Crusaders (1980s series) #13 (This was the ‘last hurrah’ of the 1980s Red Circle heroes, & it was a bit shallow last hurrah.)

Charlton Action Featuring Static #12 (This is the ‘last hurrah’ of Charlton circa-late-1985-early-1986. Apparently, George Wildman felt that there has to be something notable so that people would take a look at the Fall 1985 Charlton comeback. His solution was a book with new Ditko material. As a result, he gave the new book & ‘Tales of the Mysterious Traveller’ to Ditko associate Robin Snyder. The covers of the two issues of the new book had the words ‘ALL NEW’ plastered on the covers. The main reason for the failue was the numbering system Charlton had at the time: The final Charton book was Professor Coffin #21!)

There are other notable last gasps as well: Laugh #400, Pep #411, Archie Giant Series #633, , Jughead’s Time Police #6, House of Mystery #321, Jonah Hex #92, Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #71, & of course, Alf #50!

J.A.P.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:46:54 +0000

Gar – Thanks for the kind words. I’m actually talking mainly about the initial Goodwin/Chaykin adaptations. Issue #17 is another stanout for me. I slogged my way through the Infantino drawn issues. Williamson’s Empire is indeed a thing of beauty. I blogged about it a couple of months ago at Seduction of the Indifferent – search ‘Williamson’ and it’ll turn up.

wil – I’ve owned #88, but not that last issue, so I’m not sure what happened. Perhaps it was all a dream and Fawcett City never existed!

Biggles – thanks! I have one more batch in mind – but it’s a topic I may revisit in the future. As I’m supposed to be dealing with mainly pre-1980s books here – we’ll eventually get a bit obscure, but if people are up for it, that’s cool!

By: James

James — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:31:35 +0000

I have a soft spot for some of the SW issues Walt Simonson penciled (can’t remember the writer’s name offhand).

By: Biggles

Biggles — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:26:10 +0000

Now, I will not hear a word against Jaxxon. He rocks!!

By the way Scott, I’ve really enjoyed these and hope you have more.

By: Ethan Shuster

Ethan Shuster — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:58:38 +0000

Now, let’s not, as usual, trot out the green rabbit as the example of why Marvel’s Star Wars sucked. There were many very good comic stories from Marvel back then, and many entire arcs of goodness. The storyline you referred to is the first post-Star Wars arc and is admittedly sucky.

I have heard that issue #107 was the abrupt conclusion to a storyline that the author had planned to continue for at least another whole year. #107 is definitely a rush-job, in writing, art and even colors. A few issues previous there was some good stuff being put out.

Though, I would say that the best Marvels were put out between the movies, and not after them. In fact, a major character from a couple of story arcs became one of the main villains of one of the recent series of SW novels.

By: wil

wil — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:48:54 +0000

Can anyone tell me what actually happens in that Marvel Family issue? I remember seeing the cover in an old book about the history of comics and always wondered if it showed them dying, or living happily ever or whatever? Was it Whatever Happened to the Big Red Cheese?

By: GarBut

GarBut — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:48:28 +0000

This is a terrific little feature, Scott. Edifying, thought-provoking and fun; also, casts some light on some oft-ignored stuff.

I do have to take issue with the assertion that “when the Star Wars book was launched in 1977, it was comic book magic.” I bought almost the whole run, monthly, for the first four years and was consistently disappointed. A talking bunny rabbit on the cover of #9? Even 10-year-old GarBut knew that this was NOT Star Wars proper, nor magical (even if he couldn’t resist buying it–stupid kid). That said, the art for the Empire adaptation was phenomenal.

By: CBrown

CBrown — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:20:35 +0000

Lando and Chewbacca look like they’re having a gay old time there. Come to think of it, so do Luke and R2!

By: Colin

Colin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:07:07 +0000

I read somewhere that the only reason the Star Wars Marvel comics ended was because Lusas Film withdrew the license and it was still selling well at the time. Apparently Lucas was sure about the direct he wanted future stories to take and so shut it down. Hence 107 is a very rushed conclusion to a lot of story threads that were meant to run and run.

Can’t for the life of me remember where I read this and therefore can’t back this up. Anybody else heard this version of the story?

By: HammerHeart

HammerHeart — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:43:53 +0000

I used to own that final issue of Marvel Team-Up… and it DID indeed suck. That BWS cover was awfully misleading.

By: Andrew Collins

Andrew Collins — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:36:36 +0000

There was a great article in BACK ISSUE magazine a few years ago where they talked about what happened with the Star Wars comics post-Jedi. Jo Duffy and the other writers had to face constant interference and approval arguments with Lucasfilms. Apparently, at that time Lucas was still undecided if he was going to make anymore sequels, so he was reluctant to allow other writers to “advance” his plots any. The main cast members were limited in what could be done with them, leading to the mediocre stories that we got there at the end. By 1986, Star Wars fever had died down considerably as well (odd as that may seem now) and Marvel decided the license wasn’t worth renewing.

By: R

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:28:21 +0000

Nice to see Zorak popping in to say farewell to the StarWars crew.

By: Blackjak

Blackjak — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:22:40 +0000

Star Wars #107 was (and still is) AWFUL…

The continuation of the storyline was fine, I didn’t even mind the incorporation of Hoojibs, but someone clearly didn’t give a shit anymore and the scripting AND artwork went downthe toilet…

Just look at that cover… It’s not like the artist wouldn’t have had access to enough reference material to get colours and shapes right… (unlike to forgiveable colouring errors on #1, which I think Brian once told us was due to only having black and white refernce photos…)

Weirdly enough they had been building up a bit after the end of Jedi, and I was really enjoying it…

#107 even feels like a rushed tie-up…

It was (and is) still priced highly because (a) it was Star Wars, and (b) it had a small print-run…