Hello and welcome to Laughing Place’s issue-by-issue analysis of the original Marvel Star Wars comic book. Issue #6 was first published on September 13, 1977, at the end of the “summer of Star Wars,” which was appropriate as it wrapped up the six-issue adaptation of the first movie. Note: After this installment this Star Wars comic analysis feature will become weekly instead of daily.
- Cover: Luke Skywalker is depicted battling Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel, something that wouldn’t happen until the sequel film The Empire Strikes Back. Where are they standing and why is Leia cowered beneath them? It’s more conceptual than representative of the issue’s actual content.
- Page 1: This issue’s title is “Is This the Final Chapter?” and according to Wookieepedia, the letters column printed within announced the continuation of the series past the movie adaptation. So the answer was a definitive “no.” A caption here describes the X-Wing starfighters as looking like “angry mosquitoes” which is an apt simile I hadn’t heard before. Red Squadron is still called “Blue Squadron” and all the pilots’ corresponding call signs have been changed to match that alteration.
- Page 3 (panel 1): There’s a reference to the “space-gods.” I wonder which ones.
- Page 3 (panels 2-4): It’s interesting to see the stormtroopers, TIE Fighter pilots, Death Star gunners, and Imperial officers talking amongst themselves like this, reacting to the rebel incursion.
- Page 4 (panels 2-5): This sequence of Luke escaping an exploding fireball from the Death Star’s surface isn’t in the film but adds another beat to the action here.
- Page 6 (panel 1): The comic’s writer Roy Thomas chose to remind us of Han Solo and Chewbacca’s existence and absence from this battle, probably just to help sell the payoff later.
- Page 7 (panel 6): The caption gives Porkins’ first name as Tono, though he would later be officially dubbed Jek– and then renamed Jek Tono Porkins to account for both sources. Biggs just calls him “Piggy.”
- Page 8 (panel 6): Vader seems to know about the Death Star’s vulnerable point. You’d think he would have had that boarded up or something.
- Page 9 (panels 1-4): The sequence of events is a bit different here than in the movie. On-screen, Red Leader Garven Dreis realizes his proton torpedoes “didn’t go in, just impacted on the surface” before his X-Wing is destroyed by Darth Vader. In the comic, Vader kills “Blue Leader” before he can see the outcome of his fired shots.
- Page 10 (panel 2): Another change here– instead of Luke manually switching off his targeting computer, he finds that his X-Wing has lost contact with the computer central on Yavin 4. Unrelated, Obi-Wan’s voice is oddly described as “young-old.”
- Page 11 (panel 5): The caption calls Biggs’s X-Wing an “X-Fighter.”
- Page 12 (panel 6): Vader shouts “By the immortal gods of the Sith!” Another line it’s difficult to imagine in James Earl Jones’s voice.
- Page 14 (panels 1-2): I guess Luke’s targeting computer is working? Maybe Artoo fixed it.
- Page 14 (panel 5): The surface of the Death Star seems to abruptly come to an end in the artwork here.
- Page 15: I never thought about having to avoid looking at an exploding Death Star, but it makes sense.
- Page 16 (panel 1): What’s a “technico”?
- Page 17 (panel 1): Now they’ve got Leia’s last name right (Organa), after previously incorrectly identifying her father as Bail Antilles.
- Page 17 (panel 3): The captions explain why Chewbacca doesn’t get a medal during the ceremony– he’s too tall for Leia to reach his head! It does say he’ll get one later, though.
- Page 17 (panel 4): “Next issue: A new adventure of the Star Warriors!”
