Star Wars Weekly

Star Wars Weekly was launched by Marvel UK on 8th February 1978, in order to capitaize on the success of the first Star Wars movie (two Star Wars Treasury Editions containing the Marvel comics adaptation of the movie in colour had already been released in Britain). The first issue, as was traditional at the time, carried a free gift: a cut-out Star Wars X-Wing Fighter, while issue #2 carried a free cut-out Imperial TIE Fighter. Like all Marvel UK titles at the time, Star Wars was an anthology; the lead strip (of course) was Star Wars (beginning with a serialization of the movie adaptation and contuing from #13 with new, Marvel US originated adventures of Luke Skywalker and Company), backed up by Marvel reprint strips including Tales of the Watcher (old fifties and sixties one-off science fiction strips), Star Lord (from #15), Adam Warlock (from #45), The Micronauts (from #51; the Micronauts would later move on first into Star Heroes and later Future Tense), Guardians of the Galaxy (from #73) and Deathlok (from #89).

With issue #118 (29th May 1980), the title was changed to 'Star Wars: The Empire strikes Back' and the comics adaptation of the second movie began to appear (this ran until #138, with a break in #135, which also introduced new backup strip Killraven). Issue #139(23rd October 1980) was the last weekly issue, the title becoming a monthly with #140. The title reverted to simply 'Star Wars' soon afterward.

In issue #151, the first UK originated Star Wars strip appeared: 'The Pandora Effect', by Alan Moore & Adolfo Buylla, while #153 gave us 'Dark Knights' Deviltry' by Steve Moore and Alan Davis. Alan Moore scripted backup strips appeared in ##154-156 (Davis drew the one in #156) and #159. The original series ended with #171 (dated July 1983, but issued in June).

The series was relaunched as the fortnightly 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi' (beginning with the movie adaptation and then, as before, continuing with reprints of the Marvel strip) on 22nd June 1983 and ran for a further 155 issues in this format until 31st May 1986, when it was cancelled and the Star Wars strip moved into the pages of Spider-Man & Zoids.

In addition, Marvel published Star Wars Summer Specials from 1983-1985 and Return of the Jedi Winter Specials in 1983-1984, and there were Star Wars Annuals issued in 1978 (published by Brown-Watson, but reprinting the Marvel movie adaptation) and 1979-1984 (the 1980 and 1981 annuals were both titled 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back' (the movie adaptation being reprinted in the 1980 edition), while the 1983 and 1984 editions were titled 'Star Wars:Return of the Jedi' (the movie adaptation of Jedi being reprinted in the 1983 edition); the 1982 annual was simply titled 'Star Wars', again). The 1979-1982 annuals were published by Marvel and Grandreams. There was also a Star Wars Special Edition, produced exclusively for BHS.