In the wake of Timothy Zahn’s bestselling sequel novels and
the first rumblings that George Lucas would be creating prequels for the big
screen, Star Wars mania was once
again in full force in the early nineties. While the world waited to see the
words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” again at the cinema, easier
to produce (and frankly, less disappointing) classic-style Star Wars properties filled the gap. That means new figures and
vehicles were being hawked at Toys R’ Us stores and new Topps trading cards
were being peddled at candy and stationary shops.
The new line of cards was known as Star Wars Galaxy, and instead of offering grainy, blurry movie
stills like the original Topps series did, this new line largely featured
original art in a wide variety of styles and mediums. The work might mimic
classic movie poster art or Marvel’s popular comic series or even the
California Raisins, as one ingenious clay rendering of Jabba the Hutt and
Salacious Crumb proved. Artists included such big names as Sergio Aragonés of Mad Magazine, poster artist Drew Struzan, and legendary comics artists Jacks Davis
and Kirby.
Star Wars Galaxy
got really interesting when the artists rocketed their imaginations beyond the
familiar film frames to imagine Han Solo and Boba Fett trying to kill each
other on Dagobah, an army of probots trying to nuke Luke and his tauntaun,
Lando losing the Millennium Falcon to Han in a card game, Boba Fett pulling off
his mask to reveal a scarred face, or Princess Leia going for a Dewback ride in
her infamous bikini (hyper-sexualized images of bikini Leia were a real
favorite of these horny artists).
As it has already done with Topps’ original Star Wars cards (and will soon do with
the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi runs), Abrams
Books is collecting Star Wars Galaxy
into a new volume. I praised the Star
Wars cards less for their quality—once again, they were usually blurry and
grainy and accompanied by goofy text—and more for their scrumptious nostalgia
value and the witty and informative annotations by original trading-card
mastermind Gary Gerani.
Perhaps out of respect for the artists collected in Star Wars Galaxy: The Original Topps Trading
Card Series, Gerani keeps his sarcasm in check to mostly just describe each
artwork and state the name of the artist. In his introduction, Gerani suggests that the original cards included images of Marvel comic art, promotional art, production art, and other previously issued pieces and nothing like that is included in this book. The back of each original card also
contained text by Gerani and professional Star
Wars geek Steven Sansweet, and none of that is here either. This makes it
a considerably less fun read than Abrams’ first collection of Star Wars cards. Visually, it’s a lot
more interesting than volume one because of its high-quality reproductions of
some very cool artworks.