Star Wars #1: Marvel's 1977 gamble that paid off twice
Star Wars #1, published by Marvel in 1977, is the first issue of the company's licensed adaptation of the original film. Roy Thomas wrote it and Howard Chaykin drew it, and the series went on sale before the movie had opened nationwide, becoming one of the best-selling comics of its decade.
Marvel took a licensing bet in 1977 that almost nobody else in Hollywood wanted to make. Twentieth Century Fox had a science fiction film with an unproven director and a cast of relative unknowns, and the toy and merchandising rights were considered such a poor bet that George Lucas kept most of them for himself rather than fighting the studio for a bigger paycheck. Marvel licensed the comic rights, and Star Wars #1, adapted by Roy Thomas and drawn by Howard Chaykin, went on sale in comic shops weeks before the film had even opened in most of the country.
An adaptation nobody was sure would sell
Thomas and Chaykin worked from an early script and publicity stills rather than a finished film, which shows in small details the movie itself changed before release. The first issue covers the opening stretch of the story: Princess Leia’s capture, the droids’ escape to Tatooine, and Luke Skywalker’s introduction as a farm boy with no idea what he is about to be pulled into. The adaptation ran six issues, and Marvel kept the series going with original stories afterward, a bet on a franchise that did not yet exist in the way we understand the word now.
Why this issue landed the way it did
Marvel’s timing turned out to be the whole story. Star Wars #1 hit newsstands and comic shops in April 1977, with a July cover date, ahead of the film’s wide release, at a moment when Marvel’s sales across its line were sluggish enough that executives, including Jim Shooter in later interviews, have credited the Star Wars license with meaningfully helping the company’s finances through a difficult stretch. When the film became a cultural phenomenon that summer, the comic was already on shelves waiting for an audience that suddenly could not get enough Star Wars in any format. Marvel reprinted the early issues repeatedly to keep up with demand that caught the publisher off guard.
What it built
The Marvel Star Wars series ran 107 issues through 1986, becoming the only ongoing expanded-universe storytelling many fans had access to in the years between films, well before the expanded universe became an industry of its own. Marvel regained the license decades later, in 2015, restarting the numbering and publishing new adaptations and original stories that continue today, a second act for the same relationship that started with this 1977 gamble.
The collecting picture
Star Wars #1’s first printing sold well enough on its own, but the real story is the additional printings Marvel rushed out once the film’s popularity became undeniable, identifiable by details like the price box. The rarest version is the 35-cent price variant, a small test run printed alongside the standard 30-cent first printing. First printings command the clearest premium, but even later printings remain popular with collectors simply because they mark the exact moment a franchise nobody was sure about became the biggest thing in American pop culture that year.
Star Wars on VeVe
VeVe’s Star Wars franchise catalog spans figures, vehicles and artworks across the saga, including Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and vehicle pieces like the Millennium Falcon and X-wing. Our troopers collecting guide covers a specific corner of that lineup in more depth. A licensed digital piece works as a numbered edition displayed in the app, its record public rather than tucked away in a private database, and what a VeVe collectible is explains that model if it is new to you.
To see the current Star Wars catalog, start a free VeVe account. New collectors get US$10 in credit toward a first piece, no card required, covered on the free credit page.
Chaykin’s version of a galaxy nobody had drawn yet
Howard Chaykin worked without the benefit of a finished film to reference, and his linework gives the early issues a texture distinct from anything in the movies: heavier shadows, a rougher, more pulp-influenced sensibility that owed more to pulp science fiction than to Lucas’s production design. Some details in the comic, ship names, minor costume choices, do not quite match the film that eventually reached theaters, a small mismatch that has become its own point of interest for collectors comparing the adaptation to the finished movie. Chaykin left the series after a handful of issues, but that early run set a visual tone other artists spent years trying to match.
A comic that outran its own movie
Marvel’s Star Wars #1 is one of the rare cases where the comic beat the film to the public and then had to scramble to keep pace with what the film became. It is a reminder that even the franchise now treated as inevitable was, in the spring of 1977, still a gamble that a licensing department decided to take a chance on.