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Went (fully masked) to a church book sale to poke around. “Hello, what have we here?” Come with me on a tour of an old favorite.
50 cents! Bet it cost more when I got mine from the Scholastic Book Fair during the Carter administration. Also: You used to see this posed Vader photo on 70s t-shirts. My friends and I loved it because you could see all the details of his armor.
Guarantee Geraldine Richelson didn’t get a royalty. Also guarantee that, while she knew the drill, she at least wrinkled her nose the 85,000th time she saw a kid holding the book she’d written.
Love the mix of posed shots and movie stills, including the Death Star with the radar dish on the equator. Black-shirt Luke was always strange to see. WAIT MAYBE THAT’S WHAT HE WEARS IN STAR WARS 2!!!!
“In another galaxy, in another time...” The fairy tale formulation of long ago/far, far away was such a great late add. But Richelson wisely opens with Luke and feeling stuck, and that classic still slays in any context. No matter how old you are, you know what Luke’s feeling.
This Vader still is another classic. The dead rebels. The mysterious figure in black. The villains’ casual stances. The obscuring smoke. It’s a work of art all by itself.
Caught you cheating, Scholastic — that top shot’s from the Death Star hangar. But entirely possible the designer didn’t know that and just had a bunch of stills to work with.
Here it is, the photo that birthed a million fake memories. We didn’t see this scene in the theater, but on this page. And pored over it so many times that we convinced ourselves otherwise.
Also ... a) those leather pants must have been murder on Tatooine; and b) Biggs’ chronology doesn’t work at all with Luke’s. Just in case you thought such things were new.
I always had a soft spot for the Tusken in the middle. His head’s so wide that he looks kind of cute, like a baby or a puppy.
The late additional filming made good cantina shots a rarity, with no Evazan, Ponda Baba or Greedo stills that I can recall from back then. But Scholastic got the band in there — they’re the true icons, IMHO.
This shot is another classic. No SFX, but you can tell something really bad is happening.
No good still of lightsaber practice = gotta cheat. Been there. But it’s iconic enough that we’ll allow it.
A page with a bunch of oft-used stills. Before VCRs, this is how we revisited Star Wars. Those classic stills were the language of the movie that Star Wars fans like me knew by heart.
And this one, wow. Even if Star Wars had become a cult movie and not a blockbuster, this still would have endured.
Ha, they had nothing from the “awful risk” scene. That posed Vader shot is kind of weird there, TBH. But hey, it is one you haven’t seen a million times.
Two more classics. Though that’s possibly the least useful angle on a Y-wing ever. My pals and I went nuts trying to figure out what the ship looked like based on that one.
Two things here. 1) We get the “switch to audio” bit you remember from the novelization, which I assume was never filmed. 2) Luke is Gold Five? He’s Red Five in the movie and Blue Five in the novelization. Believe that’s every possibility covered.
The Luke reaction shot — another staple of this era — doesn’t work, but Vader’s TIE breaking frame deserves a chef’s kiss.
Love this shot, though I always wondered where those other pilots came from. Anyway, farewell to our heroes. Hope Han and Chewie have some big scores as space pirates and Luke makes Darth Vader pay for betraying and murdering his father. Star Wars 2 is gonna be so great! /fin
