Great Moments In Comic Book History #36: Marvel Publishes Star Wars #1

As strange as it seems now, the Star Wars comic book series nearly didn’t happen.

In 1975, while Star Wars was still in pre-production, George Lucas approached DC Comics and offered them the chance to adapt his upcoming film into a comic book. When DC turned Lucas down, Lucasfilm’s publicity supervisor, Charles Lippincott, Jr., took the project to Marvel Comics.

At first, Stan Lee turned down the project because he didn’t want to commit to a series before the film itself had been completed. (Again, as strange as it sees now, Star Wars was not originally expected to become the commercial hit that it did.) Lippincott, still trying to set up a series somewhere, then tried to recruit Roy Thomas to write it. After he was allowed to look at a production sketch of the Cantina scene, Thomas realizes that Star Wars was tailor-made for a comic book adaptation. Thomas arranged for Lippincott to get a second meeting with Stan Lee and, this time, the comic book adaptation was greenlit.

Allowed to look at an early draft of the script and also to visit the set during shooting, writer Roy Thomas and artist Howard Chaykin collaborated on a six-issue adaptation of the movie. The series actually came out before the film. The first issue was released on April 12th, a full month before the movie was released into theaters. Along with Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, the comic book series play a huge role in publicizing a film that many were expecting to be dismissed as just being a B-movie for kids.

Because no one expected the film or the comic book series to be a huge success, Marvel was able to negotiate a very favorable contract with Lucasfilm, one that Marvel almost complete artistic control over the comic and which also allowed Marvel to use the Star Wars character with no royalty payments until the series sold 100,000 issues. When the success of the film led to the comic book become the industry’s top seller from 1977 through 1979, the financial windfall saved Marvel from having to file for bankruptcy.

For many future Star Wars fans, their first exposure to characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader came in April of 1977 when they looked at the magazine rack in their local store and saw the now-iconic cover of Star Wars #1.