Star Wars Weekly (1978 UK) #1 CGC Graded 8.0 Very Rare Beautiful KEY w/ fighter

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Star Wars Weekly (1978 UK) #1 CGC Graded 8.0 Very Rare Beautiful KEY w/ fighter:
$225.00

Very rare in the US in this condition. Fresh Slab!! Graded 8.0 verify the #’s CGC 1229090001

With the arrival ofStar Warsinto UK cinemas on December 27, 1977, theStar Warsgalaxy expanded beyond the borders of the United States and the other countries fortunate enough to have received it and across the pond to the country it was largely shot, the UK. And with a voracious public keen for any snippets of information on the film, a comic seemed an I inevitability. Luckily for us kids of the day, Marvel UK and Stan Lee were about to provide it.

Cover dated February 8, 1977, and costing 10 pence (back in the days when a ten penny mix could buy you 20 sweets)Star Wars Weeklyhit newsagents shelves with a bang, wrapped in the same cover art as the US Marvel issue 1 (and leaving Luke with a red blade, Han in a blue blazer, and Leia in green) but emblazoned with very different words. “Enter: Luke Skywalker! Will he save the galaxy or destroy it?” Typical Marvel bombast in the age of the Merry Marvel Marching Society, Make Mine Marvel, and Excelsior! It promised us “A Valuable First Issue,” but perhaps even Marvel didn’t realize quite how valuable it would prove to be.

Speaking with Marvel UK editor and British comics legend Dez Skinn last year, I broached the subject of just how perilous the situation was for Marvel back in the late ’70s, with a shrinking comics market, outlets closing, and the landscape changing on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Marvel UK was hemorrhaging money. The only thing that was making any money wasStar Wars Weekly. It was doing so badly they tried to sell the company off. Nobody wanted it, nobody found it viable. The only interest they got was from IPC becauseStar Wars Weeklywas outselling2000ADand they only wantedStar Wars Weekly. They didn’t wantSpider-Manand theHulkandThe Avengers, they didn’t want any of that. So that didn’t work for Marvel because they were already licensingStar Warsfrom Lucasfilm, so they wouldn’t get much out of a shared sub-license.”

Unbelievable to think that the mega franchises that Marvel now encompass could have become the property of IPC and not Disney (which was itself in a slump during the ’70s). But back to that first issue.

Famously, artist Howard Chaykin and writer Roy Thomas hadn’t seen the film when they made the comic, working only from the few meager transparencies that 20th Century Fox released for the film, and so what us UK kids saw in the comic was far removed from what was in the movie. And it’s worth mentioning that by early ’78 there were still parts of the UK that hadn’t yet got the film, so they knew no better. In 2015 there is a level of expectation alien to the creators and audiences of ’77, ’78. But back in the days of disco, flares, Choppers, ABBA, Spangles, and ELO, we were a lot more laid back. Those panels fairly exploded with the adventurous spirit ofStar Warsand even today, after Dark Horse released an excellent Special Edition adaptation in ’97, that original version is the one we go back to.