Poor WW2… Jack and Jim are torn between their new love of Star Wars and their old flame, World War II
There’s no doubt, that for many boys, their former interest in real-life Warfare – started to take a back-seat after seeing Star Wars. Much in the way I expect previous generations before them had switched from playing cowboys and indians to soldiers. I wonder if many girls had the same experience? What did they lose interest in after seeing Star Wars? At least when you got a kick out of baddies Darth Vader and The Empire, it wasn’t as iffy as liking the German Wehrmacht’s cool uniforms and hardware. In Star Wars, it was pretend. No one was harmed in real life.
Angus or Ozzy?
My own strongest memory of this type of conflict and sense of loss – and even personal disloyalty! – came when I was around 14 or 15 years old. I’d been an AC/DC fan for a couple of years, being a fairly unsophisticated young music fan and they really rocked my socks off. So heavy! Heavy compared to my previous musical faves, ABBA, The Police and then Adam and the Antz. Especially heavy was the Back in Black album. My brother-in-law, Pat even brought me to see them before he was my brother in law around 1982. I was only 13 or 14 and it turned out that my first ever live music experience – apart from marching bands and school talent shows – would be AC/DC supported by Y&T – who I also really liked – in Dublin’s RDS venue. Quite a first experience! As you can imagine, it was mind-blowing for a youngster.
But what happened then, was that I heard Ozzy Osbourne‘s ‘Talk of the Devil‘ double-live-album. They were all covers of Black Sabbath songs and it was the heaviest, squealiest, most-amazing-guitar-playingist and raucous metal I’d ever heard. Every musician on it was top-class; and the songs and lyrics were streets ahead of the usual ‘I Want You Baby‘, ‘Rock Me All Night‘ and ‘Let’s get Smashed‘ type heavy rock songs. Suddenly AC/DC seemed a bit dull in comparison. I tried and tried, and made myself listen to their earlier, 1970s Bon Scott albums but they just seemed too soft and plodding. I felt guilty about it and found it very difficult to move on. Thankfully AC/DC’s Back in Black was still awesome – and still is today – otherwise I might have given up on them completely.
Above: 1982: The heaviest Heavy Metal album of all time (at the time). It must have made my mum and dad nervous. What a lovely Xmas present it was!
Star Wars’ Turn to Take the Back Seat
I was in a heavy-rock band for a few years, from my mid teens to very early 20s, singing and playing second lead/rhythm electric guitar – though most of our performamces were in the garage! Star Wars had taken a back-seat. So, by the time the movie Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, I think my interest had declined terminally and I never even went to see it!
My musical tastes broadened and matured a lot after those days, but funnily enough, I’ve spent the last 2 months in 2015, aged 47, listening to virtually nothing but Iron Maiden, especially their works of the last decade or so. What’s funnier still is that I kind of liked them as a young headbanger but kind of didn’t. What seemed like their tedious self-indulgence and pretentiousness then, in the 80s; now seems more like art, from a band with an absolutely unique voice. They’ve stuck to what they believe in musically and lyrically. They have conviction – and I admire that.
So readers: What conflicts did you you experience as a young fan?
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Thanks!
** Stay Groovy, all you 1970s kids! **
– John White
Planet of the Apes, westerns, Starsky & Hutch, The Muppet Show, WWII… all of them didn’t exactly disappear as obsessions but had to take a back seat to the Star Wars obsession. Yet Star Wars did contain elements of a lot of those things: plenty of western film influences in there, of course; WWII movies in the dogfights; Han and Luke’s buddy relationship had something in common with Starsky & Hutch, and so on.
Another fine strip, John. I don’t know whether people would have said they were “conflicted” in the 1970s (I don’t think I would) but I guess it’s part of the joke that you’re granting the characters an articulacy beyond their years. I love the Kermit notebook. It’s another of those little details that makes these strips so authentic (like the Morris Marina door handles I commented on way back, or the ash trays on the cinema seats).
I have a Muppet Show scrapbook around here somewhere with cuttings of JAWS 2 from Woman’s Own magazine in it! So there are 2 inspirations for this strip straight away!
I’m glad you like the wee details, I need to keep bearing that in mind Darren.
There was definitely a transition from playing with the 12-inch action figures, mostly GI Joe, to the 3 3/4 inch Star Wars scale. My friend John had lots of cool GI Joe stuff, with the dog tag pull chains, kung fu grips, backpack helicopters, etc.. I pretty much only had Mike Power, the Atomic Man, to contribute. But when Star Wars came out, their toys took over — they weren’t really compatible, sizewise and everything. I still have Mike, but I don’t remember what became of John’s Joes. I had an Evel Knievel, which was between the two size scales, with dirt bike and energizer, and I sold that all off at a garage sale!
Hi Phil,
It was a bit of a pain, the size difference! I love it in Toy Story though, when Andy finds ways to play with all of his very disparate collection of toys at the same time. Emperor Piggy Bank vs Space Cowboy and Space Dinosaur etc. I wonder if the small Star Wars figures were intended to save money for LucasFilm, by being cheaper to produce? Or did they cannily realise that kids prefer small things – that fit in their pockets? Or did they want to reel them into just playing with the Star Wars toys and vehicles, rather than mixing and matching? In Ireland we waited until Xmas 1978 to get the figures. Until then we had to improvise, painting German Stormtroopers helmets black and drawing a black waistcoat on my white Maskatron shirt with marker!
I thought at the time that the figures were really unimpressive, since I was used to Action Man and the great Lone Ranger action figures of the 1970s. Shows how much I knew! Apparently the four-inch height was vital to the figures’ success, since, as you say John, they were small enough to take to school, and also for the vehicles to be kept to a manageable size.
They were terrible really. LucasFilm always tried to maximise profits no matter what. They were quite silly looking, without many articulated joints. The plastic cloaks were terrible looking too. A Jawa which was about 1.5″ tall cost a princely 70p-90p as I recall. But – they recalled the movie, so for me they were magical things! How many hours did I spend poring over the drawings of them in that Star Wars Weekly competition page?
Well, I’m a massive Batman fan, most of my earliest memories revolve around my love of the character. I swear I learned to read from an old hardcover Batman Annual (a reprint of the Denny O’neil/ Neal Adams ‘Daughter of the Demon’ story IIRC).
Growing up in the mid seventies, my primary exposure to the character was through repeats of the TV series and the old cartoon (With Bat-Mite taking the Scrappy Doo role…)
Course, when Frank miller came along in the eighties, I totally rejected the Adam west version as childish and silly.
it took years before I could look at it again with more mature adult eyes, see the humour in it, and realise that Batman is a resilient enough cultural Icon to be able to survive multiple re-interpretations.
To this day I still get into arguments with friends in their 30’s about Adam West’s unappreciated comedy genius. He’s right up there with Shatner…
Thanks for the story Dan. So you rejected the West version immediately – or did you feel a bit sorry to let it go?