Hungarian A Birodalom Visszavág

Star Wars was understandably released to Soviet Bloc countries much later than Western countries.  Poland was the first Soviet Bloc country to release the movie in March 1979 followed by Hungary in August 1979.  In 1982 the next country, Bulgaria, showed the movie.  It wouldn't be until 1990 that the movie would official premiere in the Soviet Union.

Star Wars' release in 1979 did disappointing box office numbers for Mokép, the distributor of the films in Hungary.  For the debut of the Empire Strikes Back on January 28th, 1982, Mokép did more marketing.  For example, they commissioned an unlicensed comic book adaptation, scripted by Tibor Cs. Horváth and drawn by artist Attila Fazekas, that would be available when the movie premiered.  Fazekas had not seen the movie, but instead relied on pictures found in foreign magazines and made up the look of several creatures including the Wampa, Mynocks, the Dragonsnake, and Ugnaughts when he had no material to reference.  The adaptation is only 28-pages, with crossword puzzles filling the remaining pages in this 36-page comic.  Several scenes were altered or cut in the story so it would fit in the low number of pages.  For example, the Probe Droid is destroyed by Rebel pilots in Snowspeeders, Princess Leia is knocked unconscious by a collapsed ceiling when Echo Base is attacked by the Imperials and wakes up in the Millennium Falcon already in space, and Darth Vader is never shown hiring bounty hunters to pursue the Falcon.  In fact, Boba Fett is treated more like an Imperial soldier in the story, even getting shot by Lobot when our heroes are escaping Cloud City.  Despite the frantic pace of the adaptation, the final page shows two panels with C-3PO asking Chewbacca to finish his repairs.  The comic adaptation, like the movie, was a hit and an unlicensed two-part adaptation of the original Star Wars movie was published later in 1982 by the same creators.

Like the two-part Star Wars adaptation, A Birodalom Visszavág Teljes Képregény - Keresztrejtvények or The Empire Strikes Back Full Comic - Crossword Puzzles, is smaller than a standard U.S. comic, measuring 5 3/4" x 8 1/4".  It is also has black and white interior pages.

A Birodalom Visszavág Teljes Képregény - Keresztrejtvények a - Tibor Cs. Horváth and Attila Fazekas, Hungary (1982)

Unlike many of the other unlicensed movie adaptations found in other countries, these Hungarian comics have extremely nice artwork.  Lucasfilm must agree because they permitted a two-part adaptation of the Return of the Jedi also drawn by Attila Fazekas.  These comics were released in 2012 and 2013 as a Hungarian Star Wars Fan Club exclusive.

When acquiring a copy of this comic for your collection, you need to be aware that many of the copies have the crossword puzzles partially or completely filled in.