Saturday 2 March 2013

AFICIONADO ARCHIVES REVISITED: 'WORLD OF FIRE'

Luke and Leia have their hands full fighting an Imperial garrison, in an action-packed cover for the UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY comic. Image via the REBELSCUM site.

My local newsagents never had the original US full-colour STAR WARS MARVEL COMIC monthlys (I would eventually acquire most of them through the likes of book stores like FORBIDDEN PLANET and DARK THEY WERE AND GOLDEN EYED later in my childhood), though my dad religiously got me the STAR WARS WEEKLY COMIC published by UK's MARVEL office. Despite it B/W printing, one of the nice things about the title was that it often printed original material and stories that wouldn't appear States-side until a few years later, and not necessarily in the main title, but special SW publications or in other magazines, like PIZZAZ. One such notable strip in the UK edition was towards the end of the original comics run-before it became THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK WEEKLY in May 1980: World of Fire, a terrific Luke/Leia adventure written by X-MEN legend Chris Claremont, with art by Carmine Infantino and inks by Gene Day. It would become one of my all-time favourite SW adventures. Back when the first issue of AFICIONADO came out in 2003, it was also to be the premiere Archive feature.

A few years ago, I revised the original archive with additional material and scans, but never got round to putting it online. In this Tenth Anniversary of AFICIONADO, readers can now check it out here: STAR WARS ARCHIVE WORLD OF FIRE


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