For over 30 years, I have been convinced that as a marketing device, getting the Marvel Star Wars comics deal worked. But, as I sat down to really pull all the pieces together, I've been really forced to re-evaluate my preconceptions. I'm looking at what went down, what people claimed went down and what the different plays really meant... and there's nothing worse than Monday morning quarterbacking.
It's like after the release of Star Wars, when George hired new people to come in and run the company, Charlie Weber and his entourage were on my case for the Kenner deal. They felt that had we waited, we could have gotten a better deal. Right, like had we known Star Wars was going to be a mega-hit, we would have done things differently. That's all well and good, but the fact is nobody knew, so this harping about we shoulda waited didn't sit with me too well... But it got George's ear, and George was getting pissed that everybody else was making money but him. And everybody was making money off of him. So George took the words of Charlie Weber to heart and started making comments about how we made a bad deal... Never mind that George knew about the deal and signed the contract. Well, that didn't sit too well with Marc Pevers and I. Marc eventually sued George over comments he made which Marc felt hurt his career... George wanted me to side with him, but I thought Marc was right. We made the best deal we could at the time. And that, in a nutshell, is what led to the end of my relationship with George.
It's Monday morning quarterbacking...
And I have to say, my comments about Marvel and the Star Wars comics is really going to be Monday morning quarterbacking... Years and years later, after the game has long been played... I'm looking at the moves and am going to lay out my point of view of what went down, and how all the parts ended up becoming what they did.
Not tonight. Tonight I'm going to bed. It's waited for nearly 40 years, so a few days more won't mean much... But I wanted to write a post about the MARVEL STAR WARS COMICS tonight because I owe a big thanks to the many of you who helped me find the pieces of the puzzle.
This MARVEL STAR WARS PT 2 article will be a long article and will be posted in many segments because it's about comics. You need to be able to see the work I am talking about.
facebook is probably not the right place to load an article with lots of graphics. in many parts because facebook may feed it to you in a non-sequential order. Hopefully, these posts will be moved over to the blog so you can follow the story in the sequence it is intended to be read. I will pick up from where I left off -- making the deal with Marvel in MARVEL STAR WARS PT 1 - and cover the first few comics.
I will not write about the whole history because it's too damn long, and I wasn't around. No point in my filibustering. I'm just covering the start, which is when I was involved. Many of you will be thrilled to know the first segment will include the full interview done July 27, 1976 between Howard Chaykin, George Lucas, Roy Thomas, Marcia Lucas and I. It's a Making of Interview I really didn't want to put up... But.. a short version of this Marvel Comics Making of Interview was edited by Rinzler and published in STAR WARS INSIDER #122. Because this interview is so critical to what happened, I decided you should read it.
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