 This, as you can see, is a vintage Star Wars comic book. This is issue number 16, published in 1978, only a year or so after the first movie came out. One of the things that I really love about these early Star Wars comics is, up in the corner, the thing that they used as their call sign, if you will, for the Star Wars series was this crazy off-model drawing of Luke Skywalker. This is what Marvel Comics did with all of its series back in the day. They would have a rectangle in the upper left corner where the price and the book number was with a drawing of the main character of the book, and in this case it was Luke. And this little drawing usually didn't change for months and months at a time, sometimes even years. So this was on the very first issue of Star Wars at a time when the series was just starting out. Lucasfilm wasn't that concerned about controlling everything. It was just kind of a lark. Marvel had already been doing these these quick knock-off movie adaptations with Planet of the Apes, which turned out to be a surprise hit and a surprise seller. So they were doing stuff like John Carter, World Order of Mars, and Kill Raven, which was a War of the World sequel. They were doing Tarzan as well. I think this may have been a Kill Raven drawing, an adaptation of a Kill Raven thing. Anyway, I've always loved this thing. The edges of the book have been cut off here, so the number isn't showing, but this is issue number 16. It's dated October of 1978, which means it would have been on the shelves in August, maybe even July. Back in the day, Marvel and DC Comics had this running competition going on where they were always trying to show their publishers and their investors that they were publishing books earlier than their competition, so by around this time they were putting books on the shelves with cover dates that were two, three months ahead. So you should keep that in mind when you're dating books from this period. If it says October, that means it was on the shelf in August or July. This book would have been on the shelf maybe 15 months after the movie first hit the theaters, which was in May of 77, so the movie was still brand new, but there were these new stories, new Star Wars stories coming out from Marvel Comics. The writer of the series was Archie Goodwin. The first artist on the series was Howard Chacon, who drew the first six issues, which told the story of the movie, and a couple of issues after that, but then the regular artist became Carmine Infantino shortly after that, whose work I never liked. He was a real turnoff for me. But this issue, for this one issue, the artist was this newcomer named Walt Simonson. The interior art doesn't so much have Walt Simonson's signature style, partly because he was new then, but mostly because I believe it was inked here by Bob Vechek, who was not known for allowing the penciler's style to come through, to show through in his work, but the cover is Walt Simonson all the way. I mean, if you're familiar with Walt Simonson's art style, you can see it, even back then. He already had his unique signature here, which you can see down the side. Anyway, let's talk about what was going on here. Marvel Comics did something really smart and really interesting with the Star Wars series. The first six issues told the story of the movie, but then after that what were they supposed to do? The series from the beginning was such a huge seller that of course they were going to continue the series. And Lucasfilm very very quickly decided there were going to be movie sequels, but in the meantime what do you do? Archie Goodwin, who was giving the assignment of writing these things, he realized very quickly that with Lucasfilm planning new stories for the future that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Darth Vader were going to be really hard to write important stories for. And Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead so he realized that the place to go with writing a serial about Star Wars characters was Han Solo and Chewbacca. Because with these guys the sky's the limit, you could write anything. This character here that Archie Goodwin created, his name is Valence he is a mercenary, he leads a team of mercenaries who bounty hunt or do whatever they're paid to do. As it points out here in the corner, this particular mission Valence is paying for himself. He and his team are doing something that he wants to do and what they're doing is killing droids. He hates droids. He hates robots in particular, but machines in general and what he's rating here is a hospital, a remote hospital. He's killing all the medical droids and in particular he goes to the records room and destroys the records computer. Why in particular would he do that if it's really droids that he hates? A couple of his men they come across this doddering old man in the hospital. As he's mumbling to himself he reveals that his name is Don Juan Quixote and this is a character that Archie Goodwin introduced right after the first six issues with issue seven. See he can't use Obi-Wan so he creates this Don Juan character. He's a crazy old man who thinks he's a Jedi. He's not a Jedi but he thinks he is. And he becomes involved in a story starting with issue seven where Han Solo and Chewbacca and a group of other mercenaries, seven of them, go to protect a small town from pirates and from the empire. It's a magnificent seven pastiche. Like I said Archie Goodwin realized that this was the direction to go. He could do anything. But these guys hear this old man mumbling about Han Solo and they say wait a minute Han Solo every bounty hunter in the galaxy knows you can make a lot of money if you kill Han Solo. So they take off looking for this old man's compatriots who he names in his delirium who of course are the friends of Han Solo, the green rabbit named Jackson, and the lady dressed like a vaudeville hooker named Amazza. So they have to take off to meet up with the kid that they had saved before who is not Luke Skywalker by the way. They're not far in front of Valence and his pirates. A side note here. I'm going to ramble some more. The letters page here starts off with somebody asking hey what happened to the letters page why haven't you had a letters page in recent issues. There's a surprisingly candid response here. It basically says that the Star Wars comics have been selling so outrageously well, much more than they expected, that they decided they need to sell ad space in the books and they gave up the letters page for a little while. I thought that was surprisingly honest. And then they go on to point out that Archie Goodwin has a habit of being O.W. which means his books are L.A.T.E. So anyway, they have a bit of a firefight with Valence and his crew. They manage to kill most of them in a Bantha stampede. Valence survives and he throws off one last blast from his arm even though he doesn't have a gun anymore. But then he takes off leaving them saying whew I wonder what that was all about. At the end we see that Valence is a cyborg. That's why he hates robots so much. He was badly injured when he was a trooper with the Empire. His life was saved in a remote hospital where they replaced almost half of his body with machinery. And yes it was that same remote hospital and that's why he destroyed the records. He has an obsession with destroying robots and with destroying records of his past. Interesting character and I don't know that he was ever seen again. But this was an example of the kind of thing that could have been with Star Wars. Three years later when Lucasfilm kicked into high gear and got serious and Empire Strikes Back came around. All of this real creativity early on kind of had to stop. This expanded universe stuff that nobody talks about anymore and nobody seems to like. At the time was very entertaining because we didn't have anything else. There was the one movie and the comics. The novels hadn't really started yet. So there you go look back at Vintage Star Wars comics as I continue to shut up about Star Wars. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen and then subscribe so you can come back next time. 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