Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Retro Archie

Sabrina The Teen-Age Witch #53

As early as 1977, while Star Wars was still in theaters, scenes from the movie were released by both Kenner and Ken Films.  Kenner had a toy movie viewer that allowed you to crank a handle and view scenes that came in cartridges.  Ken Films released Super 8 reels with scenes from the movie.  The length of these early reels determined the runtime, with some as short as 4 minutes all the way up to 16 minutes.  These were the only way for home audiences to view scenes from Star Wars before the movie was released on VHS and Betamax in the early 1980s.

The cover to Sabrina The Teen-Age Witch #53 shows Sabrina and her two aunts, Hilda and Zelda, watching Star Wars on a projector perched atop their flying broom stick.  Because of the size of the projector, I can only assume it is meant to be a Super 8 projector and not a movie house projector.

Sabrina The Teen-Age Witch #53a - Archie Comics, U.S. (June 1979)
Star Wars on cover
They must be watching the lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Death Star, which is the only time we see Darth Vader brandishing his lightsaber in the movie.  On the other hand, they are witches, so it is possible they are watching Vader and Luke Skywalker's battle in Cloud City before The Empire Strikes Back was released to theaters.

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