Star Wars (comic strip)
A Star Wars comic strip ran in both daily strips and Sunday strips, originally distributed between 1979 and 1984 by two American newspaper publishers, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and Watertown Daily Times.
In 1991, Russ Cochran published a 2500-copy limited run of a three-volume hardcover boxset of all of Goodwin and Williamson's Star Wars comic strips from between 1981 and 1984. From 1992 to 1994, Dark Horse Comics collected colorized compilations of the newspaper strip in its Classic Star Wars series. Between 2017 and 2018, The Library of American Comics published a three-volume reprint series of the complete comic strip.
Overview
A black-and-white newspaper comic strip spun off from Star Wars began in 1979. The daily strips and the Sunday strips originally told separate stories, but after six months the first writer and artist of the strip, Russ Manning, was replaced as writer, reportedly because newspapers wanted a story that was "more like a comic book". The strip merged the two different storylines into one continuity. Manning died due to cancer in 1981 and a new artist, Alfredo Alcala replaced him for a brief run. Next, the strip was taken over by writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson, who had both worked on Marvel Comics' self-titled Star Wars series, continued until the end of the strip in 1984. The strip has 26 storylines in total. The Sunday page also included a topper strip called Star Wars Scrapbook. This strip was written by Archie Goodwin, and ran from May 24 to December 27, 1981.Story arcs
''Sharlee''
''Black Hole''
''Planet of the Wookiees''
''Tatooine Sojourn''
''Princess Leia, Imperial Servant''
''The Second Kessel Run''
''Bring Me the Children''
''As Long As We Live''
''Planet of Kadril''
''Han Solo at Stars' End''
''The Bounty Hunter of Ord Mantell''
While the Rebel Alliance is still stationed on Yavin 4, Luke and Leia are scouting a planet as a potential new base. After an Imperial scout walker destroys their ship, Han and Chewbacca arrive in the Millennium Falcon just in time to save them. While evading Imperials escaping the planet, the Falcon has to perform a taxing maneuver, forcing them to land for repairs on Ord Mantell. There, Leia is captured by bounty hunter Skorr. Luke goes to help her, but is overpowered. Skorr's men use the Rebels as leverage to force Han to surrender himself. Han arrives in a skyhopper, plausibly to exchange himself for his friends, keeping the Falcon running to make it appear that Chewie will come save him. Chewie arrives, but in a cargo flyer, using its tractor beam to rescue the Rebel trio. Skorr uses a homing beacon to track the Rebels, but by the time they realize this, an Imperial fleet has closed in on them. The Rebels plant the homing beacon on an escape pod and send it towards the Imperials, leading Skorr to be captured, and the Falcon free to return to Yavin 4.''Darth Vader Strikes''
Acting on a tip from an apparently sympathetic Imperial officer, Luke goes undercover as a droid mechanic on Darth Vader's new construction project, the Super Star Destroyer Executor. The officer arranges for a group of saboteurs to meet underground, where Vader plans to capture the Rebel spy. R2-D2 releases steam to cover Luke's escape on a supply barge, accompanied by the droids and a new friend, Tanith Shire.''The Serpent Masters''
Shire reveals that she has stolen several such barges by sending them crashing to the planet they are headed for. On the surface, the flying-serpent-riding scavengers of the cargo take Tanith and Luke into their crater as slaves. Luke and the droids realize the serpent masters are using a high-pitched noise to control the beasts, and R2-D2 emits this so Luke can ride one of the dragons and battle the supreme leader. This results in the defeat of the tyrants, and the slaves are freed.''Deadly Reunion''
Luke and Tanith depart in a short-range vessel, and decide to head to a nearby planet to rendezvous with Leia, who is due to be picked up in the Falcon. Just then, the Empire arrives in the system, forcing a mass evacuation, which includes Tanith. Han arrives to rescue Luke and Leia, but a chase from TIE bombers leads them to follow a mysterious signal into a gravity well around a collapsing dwarf star. Han and Luke manage to procure access to bomb charges from the estranged Imperial scientist that he used to initiate the star's collapse. Using it to boost the Falcon into hyperdrive, the Rebels manage to escape without being vaporized.''Traitor's Gambit''
Yavin 4 is under Imperial attack, so Leia recommends Han take them to a water world where she has a contact interested in joining the Rebellion. Upon their arrival, Han voices his distrust in the contact, Silver Fyre, whom he knows to be a distrustful pirate. Fyre's second in command, Kraaken, overhears Han and Luke discussing intel they gathered about the Executor''The Night Beast''
The Rebels return to Yavin with Fyre's forces as reinforcements. A TIE bomber crash awakens a dormant monster in the Massassi ruins. Luke investigates its origin, discovering the temple's original inhabitants left the creature in a stasis chamber to protect their planet when they were forced to leave the galaxy during an ancient war. Luke suspects the creature may be Force-sensitive and eventually succeeds in calming it long enough to lead it onto a transport ship programmed to follow its masters across the stars.''The Return of Ben Kenobi''
Luke goes to investigate a Rebel weapons smuggler's report that Ben Kenobi is among the living. This turns out to be an imposter hired by Vader to lure Luke into a trap. However, the actor sympathizes with Luke and foils the dark lord's plot, allowing Skywalker to escape.''The Power Gem''
Han and Chewie investigate the possibility of retrieving an ancient power gem to penetrate the Executor''Iceworld''
Luke and C-3PO evade a group of TIE fighters by hiding their ship in the slipstream of a comet's tail, but are unable to pull free before crashing into an ice planet. A woman riding a tauntaun finds them. Her father, a former Imperial governor, thinks it best to eliminate any possible leaks as to their location, but Luke defends himself. Luke and the woman go to salvage the communicator from his ship, but the governor attacks them; both he and his daughter are apparently killed, but they are revealed to be robotic replicants of their human counterparts.''Admiral Ackbar''
Leia and Han pick up Luke on Hoth. They plan to meet with Mon Calamari's leaders, newly sympathetic to the Rebellion, for support in relocating their base, but they find only wreckage at the rendezvous point. They are able to learn that Admiral Ackbar and his men took escape pods to a nearby planet, where Imperials are also searching for them. Upon their landing, giant worms drag the Falcon to the bottom of a lake. Han and Luke battle the Imperials, and when they return to the others, Ackbar positions them by the lake so the giant worms will abandon the Falcon for the Imperial ships. This allows the heroes to escape the planet.''Doom Mission''
The Falcon jumps to a debris field which was recently the site of a battle between the Rebels and the Executor. Luke notices a Rebel scout ship jump to hyperspace. When they return to Yavin, Dodonna's son, Vrad, returns in the ship Luke saw, allegedly after taking damage while battling the Executor. Luke and Vrad both volunteer to put the power gem to use against the Executor. This worries Luke, who confronts Vrad about his suspicions that he avoided the battle and faked the damage to his ship. Vrad lands the fighter on a planet where he intends to abandon Luke and flee both the Rebellion and Empire, but Vader senses Luke and turns the Executor towards them. Vrad departs, and Han reveals that he followed Luke in the Falcon in case anything happened. Vrad then attacks Vader's flagship, but is destroyed against its shields. This allows the Falcon to get in a shot which helps slow Vader's ship so the Rebels can evacuate Yavin. Dodonna promotes Luke to commander, and stay behind on the planet to bomb the attacking Imperials, sacrificing himself in the process.''Race for Survival''
The Imperials surmise that the Rebels will escape through a weak point in their blockade, and set a trap for them. Luke scouts ahead, sees the waiting Imperials, and warns the others, but his ship is destroyed in the process. Han scouts an alternate path which seems hopeless because it passes through the stellar flares of an unstable star; he rescues Luke and they learn that Leia is leading the fleeting into the alternate path. He uses the Force to sense when the stellar flares are coming, but this clues Vader into his location. However, an admiral accidentally pilots three Star Destroyers directly into the Executor''The Paradise Detour''
The surface of the planet is tropical, and Luke follows the voice of a woman whom he believes to be Tanith Shire. He rescues her from a monstrous plant before realizing that she is another woman altogether. He encounters several more illusions and realizes that the woman is actually an ancient witch. Luke lets her drain her energy by making various attacks. The Falcon then rejoins the Rebels on Hoth.''A New Beginning''
The Falcon''Showdown''
The bounty hunters take the pirates' ship, with Luke and Han aboard, to Ord Mantell to meet Fett, and find Vader there, discussing plans with Fett. The latter suggests that he capture Han and use him to lure Luke to Vader before he collects Jabba's bounty on Han. The bounty hunters let the pirates go, but lock them in their hold. Skorr allows Han and Luke to break free, wishing to kill them in order to get his revenge, but Han is able to defeat him.''The Final Trap''
The Star Warriors return to Hoth, but discover that C-3PO and R2-D2 are in distress. They arrive on Verdanth to find the droids being attacked by an Imperial probe droid; Vader, alerted to this activity, uses a cybernetic Force-empowered device to attack Luke through the probe droid. Han blasts it, and Vader orders more probes to find his Rebel prey.Collections
In 1991, Russ Cochran published a 2500-copy limited run of a three-volume hardcover boxset of all of Goodwin and Williamson's Star Wars comic strips from 1981 to 1984, signed by both creators, and featuring new cover illustrations by the latter.Comics from this series were collected twice by Dark Horse Comics. The first collection was released in 1992 with the title Classic Star Wars. It collected the later years of the strip done by Goodwin and Williamson, excluding the Sunday strips, and it colored the black-and-white daily strips and rearranged them to fit the comic book format. In 1994, Manning's strip was released as Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures, including both daily and Sunday comics, with the exception of two storylines. One of the excluded storylines was later collected in a one-shot comic book, exclusive to Kay-Bee Toys.
In early 2017, a collection series by The Library of American Comics was announced. IDW Publishing President and COO Greg Goldstein stated that this collection would be the first fully complete version of the strip, including all strips in chronological order and with the title headers for all Sunday strips and bonus panels, material which usually had been discarded in the previous collections from other publishers. These were released in three volumes as Star Wars: The Complete Classic Newspaper Comics. The first volume was released in conjunction with Star Wars
| Volume | Release date | Title | Period | Page count | ISBN |
| 1 | May 9, 2017 | “Star Wars: The Complete Classic Newspaper Comics – Vol. 1” | 1979–1980 | 260 | |
| 2 | March 13, 2018 | “Star Wars: The Complete Classic Newspaper Comics – Vol. 2” | 1980–1982 | 295 | |
| 3 | September 18, 2018 | “Star Wars: The Complete Classic Newspaper Comics – Vol. 3” | 1982–1984 | 272 |