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My 30th Anniversary Star Wars Memories By Mark Newbold My first memory of Star
Wars is back in 1978, when my Dad took me to see only the third film I’d
ever seen at the cinema, at the ABC in
My Moms friend Marilyn bought me issue 6 of Star Wars Weekly (in a fit of madness I
decided age 9 that I didn’t like Star
Wars any more and threw them all out, a decision I still regret to this
day), and back then, age 7 and reading mad, I was hooked. It was all everyone was talking about at
school back then, every boy wanted to be Han, every girl Leia. I even named my first Goldfish Chewbacca… Other purchases soon followed. The first ‘proper’ book I remember reading
was the Star Wars novel, given to me
by my Uncle Peter and I read it 50 plus times until the spine gave out. Back when my good friend Lee Powell was
reading Asimov and Clark, I would be re-reading Star Wars, Splinter and Stars
End for the umpteenth time. My Uncle
Tony sold me the double album for a pound (and it was pound notes back in 1978,
which meant it was big persons money) as well as the cinema programme he’d got
at the Birmingham Odeon, which I promptly cut into bits and glued into a folder
– it was from that book that I remember Harrison Ford was born in 1942 in
Chicago and had two sons, Carrie Fisher had been in Shampoo with Warren Beatty and Mark Hamill
had starred in General Hospital. Great memories all and the start of my
collection which, to my wife’s consternation, still grows today. The first action figure I bought is especially
treasured. Bought from the toy shop on
Swan Island in Burntwood where we used to live, my
Death Star droid was played with incessantly, and although he was swapped for a
newer version with a friend (hello Andrew Green, wherever you might be) I
traded him back – the paint worn off his big black eyes, sewing thread to
tighten his loose limbs. Over the years
I bought another 120 original figures, but none give me the warm glow of that
first one. Back in ’78 Star Wars was a revelation. Clips shown on TV were like gold dust and, because no one I knew had a VCR, were committed to memory for us to recreate with our action figures. And my childhood friends all collected the figures as well. Gary Mears, later to be a senior art director at Cosmopolitan, collected the figures, as did a good friend Adrian Bell. Lightsabre contributor and creator of Ryath Centaur Paul Squire had the biggest collection of everyone. Lee Powell, my best pal as a kid and the creator of the Romanoe character in our stories, had a huge collection (and he sold me my Han Solo figure and Empire Strikes Back album) as did Nigel White, who claimed his Dad worked for Palitoy and he had every figure in his loft, which surprisingly none of us ever managed to gain entry to…
Over the years more books were released and the universe
expanded with every weekly release of the comic, back then our best connection
to the Star Wars galaxy. Our first family holiday abroad was to Malta
in October 1978 and at the airport I bought two books, one by Alan Dean Foster
and the other by Brian Daley. 29 years
on I forget the Foster novels name (his name would re-enter the scene shortly)
but the Daley book was Han Solo at Stars
End and that book began my fascination with all things smuggler. I read it constantly during those two weeks,
taking in every detail of Solo’s pre-Star
Wars adventures and upon my return I was even more of a Star Wars addict. Thinking back, that’s when it all really
began to gel for me (minus my mad moment with the kitchen bin and my Star Wars comic collection). I would save my £1.00 a week pocket money for
figures, which had gone up from 50p to 99p by 1979, and read my weekly comic
non-stop from week to week, devouring the back up strips and firing my love of
American comics (Mom and Dad always encouraged me to read). Me and Paul Squire spent the only year in the
same class being taught by the brilliant Mr Holmes, and playing with our Star Wars figures in the holidays – lots
of great ideas were born there. 1980 bought the next episode, and unbelievably it totally crept up on me. My first proper memory of Empire was seeing it at the Burton Odeon with my good friend Roger Alexander, who’s dad was the manager. In fact, I also remember sitting in his Dad’s office speaking to his secretary while having a coughing fit a wearing a Dogs of War camouflage cap while looking at photo’s of all the people his Dad had met at premieres – David Soul, David Essex, Christopher Walken – and eagerly awaiting the main film of the two we were there to see.
Herbie Goes Bananas. Yes, I still can’t remember why I wasn’t bubbling with
excitement at seeing Empire, but Herbie was the
main attraction. At least, it was until
I’d seen Empire. Everybody knows the story of that film 27
years later, but back then the revelations disclosed in the film were
mind-blowing, especially to a 9 year old boy.
Again I was hooked, and those comics just kept on coming. Star
Wars Weekly became Empire Weekly,
and then Empire Monthly – a long time
to wait for my Star Wars fix, but by
then I’d also subscribed to another publication. Bantha Tracks. Back then the fan club was our direct link to the creators
of Star Wars. Totally different than today’s Hyperspace and Insider, Bantha Tracks was a newsletter
bringing news of exciting projects and merchandise that could only be bought in
the States. Interviews with such legends
as Stuart Freeborn and Ralph McQuarrie (who years
later signed my #15 of Bantha Tracks, much to his delight after
signing endless copies of his portfolios) and news of Raiders of the Lost Ark
and the forthcoming Revenge of the Jedi. And speaking of Raiders,
I could have seen it at the Cannock ABC but for some reason we decided to see Condor Man instead. Well, Raiders
did look pretty scary. Amazing stuff which all fed my Star Wars addiction and led me to enter the Bantha Tracks Contest with the second Star
Wars story I’d ever written, after a failed cine film effort with school
friends Lee Powell, Roger Alexander and Adrian Bishop. Quest for Freedom was that story, written to follow
on from a monthly issue entitled Hello Bespin, Goodbye.
For some reason I forgot that the following issue would continue the
adventures in that story, but clearly I was inpatient to read the further
adventures of Lando and Chewie,
Lobot and Treece. Undeterred that began my fascination with the
written adventures of Star Wars and
soon I was writing like crazy. Oh, and October 1982 brought Star Wars to video and to terrestrial television, enabling me to watch the film more than 150 times like so many others.
1983 brought the final chapter of the saga. I still have great memories of seeing Return of the Jedi, again at the ABC in
Cannock with my family, missing the first 20 minutes and staying for the first
hour of the next showing before driving home and watching my Dad pull his calf
muscles as he chased a cat off the drive, reducing me and my Mom to tears of
laughter. Now somewhat of an expert on Star Wars, reading the making of books and
still collecting the figures avidly I remember Jedi also being on of the first films I saw on pirate video, along
with a disturbing amount of adult and until recently banned horror films. And looking back nothing excited me as much as August 1983
when I had a letter published in Return
of the Jedi Weekly under my current blog name alter ego of Jan Lomona, and received a number of letters assuming that Jan
was short for Janet. The 12 year old me
was not best impressed. And those are just the early memories. The between saga years – meeting Jonathan
Hicks and starting NHP, the end of
the Palitoy collecting years, Ewoks and Droids, 1987 and West End games, the widescreen editions, Dark Empire
and Heir to the Empire, Kenner
re-launching the figures in 1995, Shadows
of the Empire, Empire Day 1996, the Special
Editions and that first amazing Episode
1 trailer – all leading to The
Phantom Menace and in July 1999 the launch of Lightsabre. This has been an amazing 30 years, filled with ups and
downs. There were times when it looked
like the saga was over, when the figures hit the bargain bins and the books
didn’t sell anymore. But now, two years
after the end of the prequels it looks like Star
Wars is stronger than ever and with the forthcoming television series and
the official website promising amazing advances 2007 is as good a time to be a Star Wars fan as 1977. Here’s to at least 30 more.
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