Star Wars #54

Years ago (a lot of years ago) i used to get the Star Wars comic every week. We're talking back in the late 70s and early 80s here. Like much else from my childhood the comics have long gone as i didn't have the foresight to know that people would pay good money for such things on a global visual network yet to be created one day. However one comic did survive as it was left at my Grandmothers' house and years later i made sure i would keep this one...

Star Wars #54 then was released on Valentine's Day 1979 and includes a Star Wars comic strip and two other stories (The Micronauts and The Warlock which i wasn't that interested in back then and not so much now either). The Star Wars comic started off a weekly comic telling of the first Star Wars movie but once they blew up the Death Star and Darth Vader went spinning off into space they had to continue the comic with an early example of the Extended Universe at least until Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.

The story here concerns Luke, Leia and Tagge who appears to be some kind of galactic mafia boss who hates Vader. Luke and Leia are trying to discover why and how Tagge can fly TIE fighters into the atmosphere of the gas giant Yavin while at the same time evading Tagge's TIE fighter patrols. Of course the story here was set between the two films and no one but George Lucas knew that Luke and Leia were siblings, so we get a little bit of mild incest.

The cliffhanger has their ship under attack by TIE fighters and the intriguing teaser that next week is called "R2 D2 Casualty Of War", as to what happened in Star Wars #55 i couldn't remember, but obviously R2 was fine as he made the next film OK. Later on i began buying the collected volumes...