(Be sure to read Part I (1974-75) and Part II (1976) of this series to get the full scoop on Star Wars pre-release buzz!)
The first half of 1977 naturally saw an uptick in Star Wars coverage as news moved from the trades to publications targeting the fan community directly. With the first printing of the Star Wars novel hitting book stores in December, 1976, much of the early coverage for 1977 dealt with reviews of the story and questions about how it would translate to film. While the mainstream press seemed to take a back seat to covering Star Wars in the last months before its release, the inside word from the fan community was that Star Wars was amounting to something big -- no, something epic.
Be sure to click the thumbnails to read sections of the articles within.
January, 1977
February, 1977
March or April, 1977
March, 1977
March, 1977
March, 1977
In Spring of 1977, the Star Wars Corporation made its last major convention appearance over Easter weekend. Charles Lippincott, who attended the Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Con in Los Angeles along with producer Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill, returned to his bungalow at Universal Studios to discover thousands of slides and artwork had been stolen from his office. If nothing else, it was a clear indication that there was already a growing appetite for all things Star Wars even a month before its release.
April 8-10, 1977
April, 1977
Spring, 1977
May 11, 1977
June, 1977
June, 1977
Additional mentions or related coverage not depicted:
- March 8, 1977: Marvel's Star Wars comic #1 ships
- April 12, 1977: Star Wars #2 ships
- May 10, 1977: Star Wars #3 ships
- May 22, 1977: Most mainstream press coverage occurred in and around the week of Star Wars' release on May 25. One well-known review occurred in the Los Angeles Times just a few days before the film's debut, when Charles Champlin echoed the sentiment of many critics at the time: "Now [Lucas] has united his loves in Star Wars, the year's most razzle-dazzling family movie, an exuberant and technically astonishing space adventure in which the galactic tomorrows of Flash Gordon are the setting for conflicts and events that carry the suspiciously but splendidly familiar ring of yesterday's westerns, as well as yesterday's Flash Gordon serials."
Information contained in this and the related stories were culled from many sources, first and foremost from the author's collection, collector Guy Harrison, and two expansive Star Wars bibliographies compiled by fans Bob Miller and Lita Sheldon during the late 1980s.
