My God, it's full of stars!

When I started this blog at the end of 2014, I never imagined the impact it would have on my collection.  I knew I wanted to write about international Star Wars comics, but I figured I would just scan books from my growing collection and write about them.  Most of the time, that is exactly what I do, but in some cases I find myself tracking down comics to buy, because I have an idea for a posting that I think would be interesting.  Sometimes those purchases lead me to discover new niches of Star Wars comic collecting I didn't even know existed.

Space Warped #1a - BOOM! Studios, U.S. (June 2011)
U.S. edition of French Naguere les Etoiles

When BOOM! Studios' published the 6-issue mini-series Space Warped back in 2011 for their KaBOOM! imprint, I did not purchase the series.  I was still collecting a wide variety of comic titles and had not focused my comic collection to just Star Wars comics and Space Warped seemed peripheral to the Star Wars comic collection I had.  (The focus did not occur until I learned Marvel was getting the Star Wars license and I made the decision to try and buy as many of the Marvel Star Wars comics, variants included, as I could afford.  I knew Marvel was going to have more variants than Dark Horse, I just did not image the vast amount of variants!)  Earlier this year, I decided to buy the Space Warped series and write a posting about it.  As I was doing research, I discovered this series was imported from France where it was called Naguere les Etoiles.  Not only that, the creators of this Star Wars parody, Hervé Bourhis and Rudy Spiessert, added another chapter spoofing Episode I which has not been translated for U.S. readers.

That research of the French parody led me to more parodies, specifically a series from Spain.  The cartoonist Enrique V. Vegas has been parodying popular films, and naturally, this includes the Star Wars movies.  He has parodied each of the original Star Wars trilogy films: Los Cabezónes de las Galaxias or The Heads of the Galaxy, Le Pire Contre-Attaque or The Worst Counter-Attack, and El Returno del Cabezón or The Return of the Head.  Those have been collected as Les Rebelles de la Galaxie or The Rebels of the Galaxy.  There is also Las Guerras Cabezón or The Head Wars and El Despertar de Cabezón or The Head Awakens.  I suspect, like the French books, we'll see more of these parodies from Vegas.  I do not believe these comics have been imported to the U.S.

The Calgary Herald Comic Book Volume 2 #17a - Calgary Herald Newspaper, U.S. (March 17, 1979)
1 page Star Wars comic strip

The Trib Comic Book Volume 3 #25a - Winnepeg Tribune Newspaper, U.S. (June 23, 1979)
1 page Star Wars comic strip

Sunday Bulletin Comic Book Volume 1 #2a - Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, U.S. (April 5, 1991)
1 page Star Wars comic strip

Another niche I started researching has to do with comic books published by newspapers that contain the Star Wars comic strips.  I knew the Star Wars comic strips were reprinted in periodicals that were sold by comic specialty stores; for example, the Amazing Heroes magazine reprinted the Star Wars comic strips long before Dark Horse collected them in the Classic Star Wars titles.  (There is also the recent IDW's Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics Volume 1 with a second volume planned.)  What I didn't know was newspapers gave away comic books weekly, usually with the Sunday edition.  These comic books collect the Sunday comic strips.  The earliest comic books were reprinted newspaper comic strips, so it makes sense these exist.  There are comic books from the period that the Star Wars comic strip ran from 1979 to 1984 which contain reprints of those strips!  I'm doing my best to dig up information on these comic books, but to be honest, the information is scarce.  If you were lucky enough to have lived in a city with a newspaper that printed comic books and you have information about these, I would love to hear from you!

There are other areas I still have yet to encroach; there are Rebels comic stories being published overseas that we do not see here in the U.S.  I'm also aware that my foreign comic posts mainly focus on the original Marvel era, but there are foreign editions of Dark Horse and modern Marvel comics as well.  I do have foreign comics from these periods that will interesting to post about; there have been unique covers published overseas for Marvel's new Star Wars line that have not seen print in the U.S. for example.  My collecting focus has been predominantly on the comics published during the original Marvel run and I still have many comics to show from that period, but I will start posting more about foreign editions from the other eras eventually.

This is my 625th blog post and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface on this incredible hobby.  The number of hits this blog has received has increased incredibly over the past year so I know there are a lot of Star Wars comic fans out there.  That interest is what keeps me motivated to keep writing!  If there is anyone who would like to contribute to this site, please contact me.

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I swear that David Bowman says, "My God, it's full of star!", when he entered the Monolith in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It turns out I, and many others, were mistaken; Bowman does say a similar phrase in the novel, but he does not actually say those words in the original movie.  He did utter that phrase in the sequel however, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.  This reminds me of a famous Captain Kirk quote, "Beam me up, Scotty!"  Believe it or not, Kirk never uttered those words in the original television series or movies.^[1]

References:

1. Beam Me Up, Scotty!