Review: 'Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics Volume 3'

The classic newspaper strips collected in IDW’s Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics Volume 2 hit their stride as writer Archie Goodwin got a complete handle on the films’ plot threads and the characters’ voices and recently-recruited artist Al Williamson mastered their likenesses. The third and final volume of this series continues those highs with more tales set between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. They find the rebels evacuating their base on Yavin 4 and finding a temporary new home on Hoth, and Obi Wan Kenobi making his first ghostly appearance to Luke. We also find out why General Dodonna never made it to Hoth.

One of the more ingenious decisions in creating these strips was to limit the action to the period between the second and third films even though almost half of these strips were published after the release of Return of the Jedi. This saved Goodwin from having to come up with a lot of crazy situations to keep the Rebels engaged after their defeat of the Empire or leaving Han Solo on ice for three years. Goodwin devised ways of introducing characters such as Admiral Ackbar (debuting in newspapers six months before his cinematic debut), Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna, Boba Fett, and Dengar in ways that are respectful to what happened on screen (less respectful to Kenner, Dengar goes by his originally-intended name: Zuckuss). The final strip brings us right up to the initial events of The Empire Strikes Back…complete with a cornily on-the-nose declaration from Darth Vader.

Story-wise, the only downsides are the irritating tendency to sideline Princess Leia (Williamson’s ability to write her bickering with Han Solo is spot-on, though) and the superfluousness of the Sunday strips, which tend to offer nothing but redundant exposition. The Sundays’ full-color art is nice, though, and it looks particularly grand on IDW’s authentically non-digitized pages. Once again we get a lovely hardcover presentation with an informative, extended introduction by Rich Handley and a neat ribbon bookmark. Best of all are the stories and art, which may amount to the finest non-canon Star Wars stories of all.

Review: 'Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics Volume 2'

Russ Manning had been illustrating the Star Wars comic strip since it started running in newspapers in 1979, but terminal health issues forced him out of the job in mid-1980. After a seven-month period in which Alfredo Alcala took over, the project officially fell onto Al Williamson’s drafting table. With all due respect to Manning, who’d done a more than capable job, Williamson was the best person for the job. While Manning’s artwork was less cartoony than the work illustrators such as Howard Chaykin and Carmine Infantino had been doing in Marvel’s comic books, Manning didn’t make much effort to really capture the likenesses of the likes of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford or the costumes of Darth Vader and Chewbacca. When Williamson delivered an adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel, comic book readers received the closest experience to watching the movie at home in the days before its VHS release. With an illustrious background that included work on E.C.’s sci-fi titles and Flash Gordon, Williamson was not surprisingly George Lucas’s first choice for the job even before Manning got it.