Star Wars Omnibus - A Long Time Ago 1

Over the last few weeks and months i have reread my sole surviving Marvel Star Wars comic from the early 1980s and also bought another one on Ebay. I did ask myself though at the time if these had been republished in collected form and indeed they have so instead of wasting 5 pounds on a faded tatty comic why not spend just twice that on a big thick (oo-er) volume?

This collection begins with the Marvel comic adaptation of the film of course, but interesting as that is i was more interested in seeing how they continued the storyline after the destruction of the Death Star while waiting to adapt Empire Strikes Back a few years down the line. To be honest the original stories do not begin that well...

The first story is a retelling of the Magnificent Seven in all but name (at least that is kind of apt considering the Kurosawa influence on Star Wars in general) with Han Solo assembling a motley crew of mercenaries to fight off some alien hoards to defend some poor villagers. All seems fine though the story is very unlike Star Wars, apart from Solo and Chewie all the characters seem rather Marvel generic and it just doesn't feel Star Wars...

Things begin to improve later on when Darth Vader makes a reappearance and the Empire in general becomes the focus for the storyline, an interesting new universe begins to emerge involving the Empire's allies the House of Tagge.

Of course the problem for the comic's creators was that they only had the first film to play with for background, nowadays there is a much more expanded universe. Thus some events and characterizations in these stories are a bit off and the later films do contradict some of the events which take place here (yes Luke and Leia get some lovey dovey action... FTW!)

Despite these niggles overall these are a great set of comics and well worth the money.