'Star Wars' Collectibles & Toys Review: 'Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars'

Cover art by Ernie Chan. (C) 1978 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  Photo Credit: Wookieepedia

I was 15 years old and still getting used to living in a new townhouse in a still-new development called East Wind Lake Village in unincorporated Dade County when I first saw a copy of Marvel Comics' Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars. Even 40 years later, I can recall with startling clarity walking into the neighborhood's Top Banana - a convenience store owned and operated by Miami-based Farm Stores, a company famous for its drive-thru convenience stores. This particular Top Banana was only a few blocks away from the new townhouse, and every so often Mom would ask me to walk there to buy a gallon of milk or a pint of Farm Stores ice cream.

Like many convenience stores, the Top Banana at the Blue Grotto shopping plaza had a large magazine display stand next to the cashier station, and in addition to the usual mix of issues of Time, People, TV Guide, and other magazines, it also had comic books available for sale. I usually didn't pay much attention to those; I liked reading them on occasion but wasn't a big-time collector, either.

On this particular milk run, however, this Treasury-sized (10X14) compilation of Marvel's six-issue adaptation of Star Wars, with its dynamic cover art by Marvel Comics artist Ernie Chan drew my attention to it like a magnet attracts an iron filing. I mean, how could it not? I had seen Star Wars for the first time six months earlier, and even though I had the Ballantine Books/Del Rey novelization, I really wanted the comics adaptation, too.

Because I was at that Top Banana to buy milk, I first walked to the dairy section and grabbed a gallon of whole milk. Mom usually sent me to the store with a "sawbuck" - a $10 bill - to cover the cost of either a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs (the two staples she usually sent me out to buy) and, if I wanted, anything I wanted to get, which was usually a half-pint of ice cream  or - in those days - a pack of Topps Star Wars trading cards.

As I placed the gallon of milk ($1.71, if memory serves) on the counter for the cashier to ring up, I looked at the Marvel Special Edition #3 with a longing that only Star Wars fans who grew up on the eve of the VCR Revolution can relate to. The cover price ($2.50 plus the then-current 4% sales tax) was more than the cost of the milk, but I knew my mother wouldn't mind. So without giving it more thought, I took the oversized format comic and placed it next to the gallon of milk,. 

For me, finding Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars was like celebrating Christmas in June, or July, or whatever month it was when I bought it. 40 years ago, unless you had a lot of money and could afford a videocassette recorder (which were super-expensive back then), there were only a few means for movie fans to "take their favorite films home," including:

• Novelizations or tie-in books
• Posters 
• Trading cards
• Original soundtrack albums
• Comic books
• Action figures

Interestingly, I'd read the original six-issue series of Marvel's Star Wars comics, which was written and edited by Roy Thomas and drawn by Howard Chaykin, with additional support (lettering, coloring, and inking by Chaykin, Steve Leialoha, Bill Wray, Jim Noval, Carol Lay, Marie Severin, and other Marvel Artists. While Mom, my older half-sister, and I were living in a small two-bedroom apartment in Sweetwater waiting for our townhouse to be ready for occupancy, Carlos Vega, one of the few friends I'd made in the El Portal Apartments complex, loaned me his individual copies of the six issues. 

The 114-page Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars consisted of:

Star Wars #1, which Marvel published in April of 1977, weeks in advance of the movie's premiere on May 25, 1977.  Cover art by Howard Chaykin, based on a pre-release poster he created for a science-fiction convention in 1976. (C) 1977 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corp. 

• Star Wars #1
• Star Wars #2: Six Against the Galaxy!
• Star Wars #3: Death Star! 
• Star Wars #4: In Battle with Darth Vader
• Star Wars #5: Lo, the Moons of Yavin!
• Star Wars #6: Is This the Final Chapter? 

Cover art for Issue # 5 by Dave Cockrum and Rick Hoberg. (C)  1977 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corp. 

Although the comic book covers bore little resemblance to the details of the film (if the Death Star had gotten this close to the Rebel base on Yavin Four, you can bet your best action figures that Grand Moff Tarkin would have simply used the battle station's superlaser and blasted the jungle moon to smithereens instead of using turbolasers to bombard the Rebels), they were typical of the Marvel style. 

As for the adaptation itself, Roy Thomas obviously had to work - as novelist Alan Dean Foster surely did as well - from an early version of the fourth revised draft of George Lucas's screenplay. The "title crawl" at the start of the six-issue series is different from the one seen in the finished film, Red Squadron - the Rebel fighter unit that Luke Skywalker joins during the Battle of Yavin - is referred to as "Blue Squadron," and several scenes deleted from the movie (including Luke seeing the battle between the Imperial Star Destroyer Devastator and Princess Leia's Rebel blockade runner and his encounter with best friend Biggs at Tosche Station) are seen here.

By the time I bought Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars in the summer of '78, I was aware of those discrepancies and others (Chewbacca the Wookiee looks bulkier and more of a bruiser in the comics than he appears in the films), Nevertheless, until I got my first VCR (a $400 unit) in 1984 and a used VHS copy of Star Wars, the oversized comic book was the only visual medium I had available to help me relive the experience of my favorite film. 

In addition to compiling the six issues of the Star Wars comics adaptation, Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars also features a two-page spread that showcases the cover art for Issues 1-6, as well as a movie credits section (not all of the movie credits, mind, but the main ones), and a special "pinups" section of art by Howard Chaykin and others drawn for other editions of Marvel Star Wars comics adaptation.

Interestingly, although the 10X14 Treasury edition is larger than the original single-issue edition and contains the same material, Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars does not replicate the presentation of Chaykin & Company's art with 100% fidelity. 

The pages of Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars are, indeed larger, but if you look carefully at the panels, you'll note that you rarely see any of the characters' feet. This is because, during the process of laying out the pages of Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars, most of the panels had to be cropped in order to fit them in the redesigned page space. 

But, all in all, this is just a minor error and doesn't loom as large in my mind as other, more glaring errors that made their way to the published issues (in one panel, Leia's hologram message includes the typo You'ry my only hope! ). 

Although my copy of Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars is over 40 years old now and no longer in mint condition, I still have it. The spine and cover show a lot of wear and tear, and I don't read it as often as I used to when I was younger.