I too got those issues in a three-pack.  

Jaxxon is from Coachelle-Prime.  Hmmmmm...another, more famous, rabbit had a habit of talking about the Coachella Valley and the big carrot festival, therein.  

Oh yes, Jaxxon is a definite homage to Bugs Bunny. Even his name is derived from the cartoon rabbit's method of addressing strangers with the generic nickname "Jackson" in the 1940s cartoons. Archie Goodwin also played up the Loony Tunes connection with Jaxxon when he took over as writer, naming two bounty hunters that were trying to capture Jaxxon in Star Wars #16 as Dafi and Fud (as in Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd).

Here's what Roy Thomas had to say about the Magnificent Seven-esque "Eight for Aduba-3" storyline, Jaxxon and George Lucas' reaction to him, and his own waning interest in the SW comic book in Alter-Ego magazine (Vol. 3) #68...

"George was unhappy with the way the storyline was going. George thought it was too close to The Magnificent Seven (who knows, maybe is was). What's more, George particularly disliked one of the seven being a six-foot alien who resembled a green Bugs Bunny in space gear. In the latter instance, I had been 'inspired' in part by seeing a Porky Pig looking alien in the cantina sequence, either in the rough cut or on some production sketches at some early point. I had figured that my 'green rabbit' Jaxxon wasn't really much weirder than a Wookiee, but obviously George, as the creator of the Star Wars mythos, felt differently. I respected George ... but this line of conversation was beginning to annoy me. That's not to say that George was necessarily wrong, of course. And in some way, his very rightness may be the point. I had discovered by now that, love the movie though I did, I really had little interest in continuing to handle the comic book version. Star Wars was George Lucas' fantasy, not mine."

Man, the coloring in that panel is fantastic, I love the way the yellow really sets the pilot stormtrooper apart from the back ground.

Yeah, Marie Severin's colouring is very good in these Pizzazz strips. Last issue was particularly nice on the colouring front. It's just a shame that the artwork is so damned sloppy...and remember, the panels I'm posting here are the ones that I consider to be the best of each episode. The poorest are really quite shoddy.




Oh yeah, Tom Palmer definitely embellished a hell of a lot in these issues, and that's a really good thing! That said, the art here does seem to range from very nice to decidedly less so. There are still definitely elements of sloppiness in various panels from time to time and I get the impression that Palmer's work on this issue was done somewhat hurriedly.




I'd never thought of that myself, but you may well be right.




OK, this totally passed me by. I've long thought that the colourful red and gold uniform that the Rebel technician is wearing on the page where Luke and Leia say farewell suck out a mile. He's very conspicuous. I'm woefully unfamiliar with Buck Rogers (outside of the late 70s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series), but quickly looking online for images of the comic strip, you're totally right. That's a definite and quite obvious tip of the hat to Buck Rogers.

Also, I never put two and two together regarding the Flash Gordon star design on Serji-X's double breasted jacket, but you're almost certainly right that this is another tip of the hat.

Cool! I learned something new about this issue. Thanks thwhtguardian!




I know. Weird, right? I almost put something in my review about this, but decided not to in the end. I guess beefcake sells comics.

I only picked up on the references on this reading myself so it was new for me too, and I never would have picked up on the Sergio one. I'm going to have to keep these little tid-bits in my noggin though, as I'd love to ask Howard Chaykin about these homages if I ever see him at a convention again.

Star Wars #9
Cover dated: March 1978
Issue title: Showdown on a Wasteland World!
Script: Roy Thomas
Artwork: Howard Chaykin (pencils)/Tom Palmer (inks and embellishing)
Colours: Tom Palmer
Letters: John Costanza
Cover art: Gil Kane (pencils)/Tony DeZuniga (inks)
Overall rating: 7 out of 10




Plot summary: Han Solo, Chewbacca and their motley group of Star-Hoppers arrive at the village that they've been hired to protect, only to find it under attack from vicious, winged creatures named High-hounds. The Star-Hoppers manage to drive off the beasts and Han saves the life of a teenage girl named Merri during the battle. However, peace is short-lived and Serji-X Arrogantus and his gang of Cloud-Riders soon attack. The Star-Hoppers valiantly defend the village, but the droid FE-9Q is destroyed during the fray and Don-Wan Kihotay is also struck down. Meanwhile, Merri's grandfather, a shaman referred to as "The Old One", summons a large, mythical reptilian monster to drive off the attacking Cloud-Riders.

Back on Yavin 4, Princess Leia receives a communication from Luke Skywalker, informing her and the Rebel Alliance that he's found a planet in the Drexel system that might be suitable for a new Rebel base. The transmission is terminated suddenly, with Luke clearly encountering some kind of trouble, and a worried Leia departs Yavin 4 to find Skywalker.


Comments: This is another strong issue art-wise, with some lovely looking Tom Palmer inking over Howard Chaykin's pencils. Palmer has clearly done an awful lot of embellishing on this issue and his work is so confident and strong that it's actually kinda hard to see any of Chaykin's influence at all. Mind you, that's not necessarily a bad thing in my view; if you've been following these reviews, you'll have realised by now that I'm far from being a fan of Chaykin's work on this series. Actually, I've read that Alan Kupperberg was helping Chaykin out with some of the layouts in these issues from the end of his time on the series (Kupperberg will even get a credit next issue, which is also the final Chaykin one). Talking of Chaykin, there's a really bad looking Star Wars pin-up by him in this issue, that's even more scribbly and rushed-looking than his art for issue #1 was.

However, having said all that, the sequential storytelling in this issue is as excellent as ever, and the "camera angles" and staging that Chaykin would've established in his layouts obviously plays a significant part in that. The big battle against Serji-X and the Cloud-Riders towards the end of the comic is excellent, with a number of fantastically rendered and nicely laid out action sequences; the best of which is probably the one in which FE-9Q brings down a skyspeeder and a furiously enraged Chewbacca bludgeons its rider to death. There's a real animalistic fury on the Wookiee's face in this sequence that I love.



Palmer's colouring is very nice too in this issue, with his palette working well for the "western frontier town" style setting. I also really like his use of Zip-a-Tone shading, which we saw last issue, but which really gets used to great effect this month. Overall, the art is very pleasing here on all fronts and I'd have to say that this issue is probably a strong contender for best art in the series so far. The opening splash page of the Star-Hoppers of Aduba-3 astride their Banthas, on their way to the village, is particularly nice.

Roy Thomas's script is as good as always, but there are a couple of plot points concerning Luke's discovery of the planet Drexel and the old shaman's summoning of the beast that I don't believe he's really thought through properly (I'll address these in a couple of paragraph's time). On the upside, I really like the way that Roy manages to give all of the Star-Hoppers a very distinct personality for the reader to latch on to, despite us only having met them last issue.

The Star-Hoppers all give a good account of themselves in the battle sequences and there's a lot of action crammed into this issue, but the pacing never feels rushed at all. There's also an interesting burgeoning romance hinted at, with Jaxxon flirting with Amaiza, although she appears uninterested. Don-Wan Kihotay is still my least favourite of the Star-Hoppers and Thomas still has him talking in the parlance of a chivalrous knight from days of old. In fact, Palmer (or maybe Chaykin) even dresses the old codger up in a suit of futuristic looking space-armour here, just to ram home the idea that he's a Jedi "Knight".

Roy's sub-plot concerning Luke Skywalker's search for a suitable location for a Rebel base is quite interesting and I have to say that I like the name Drexel for the planet that Luke finds; it really sounds like a Star Wars-y name to me. However, you have to wonder why Luke is bothering to report back to Rebel Alliance HQ about the planet before he's even been down to the surface to see if there are any threats – which, it turns out, there most definitely are!

Another thing that doesn't quite add up is the fact that the old shaman of the village, who believes that he can summon a giant beast from the mountain side, has never thought to do so before now. I mean, we found out last issue that Serji-X Arrogantus and his Cloud-Riders attack the village at the same time every year, so clearly it's happened at least twice before, if not more times. So why didn't "The Old One" summon the beast the second time Serji-X attacked? Why wait until now to do it? It really makes no sense at all.

In spite of those couple of head-scratching moments, with Luke and "The Old One", I think that this is one of the best issues of Marvel's Star Wars comic so far and certainly the best since the adaptation of the movie finished. The artwork is really nice and Roy Thomas does a bang up job on the plotting and scripting.

Incidentally, this issue has special nostalgic significance for me because the very first Marvel Star Wars comic that I ever owned was Marvel UK's Star Wars Weekly #18, which reprinted the last half of this issue. I would've been 5 years old when my mother bought this issue for me...




Continuity issues:

• Don-Wan Kihotay's name is incorrectly spelled as Don-Wan Kioti in this issue.

Favourite panel: This one, of course...




Favourite quote: "Fie upon you, foul feathery fiend. In the name of justice, let this planet be cleansed of such filth as you and your brethren." – Don-Wan Kihotay gives a High-hound what for in the old-school vernacular.

Wait, Asimov? What the heck is an Asimov story doing in this magazine... what was it?