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Star Wars: Return of the Jedi—The Original Topps Trading Card Series Volume Three
posted July 28, 2016
 

Creators: Gary Gerani, the Topps company, various early-'80s on-set photographers, Lucasfilm
Publishing Information: Abrams ComicArts, hardcover, 528 pages, August 2016, $24.95.
Availability: 1419720929 (ISBN10), 9781419720925 (ISBN13)

This very curious thing has been sitting on my desk for about a week. It's a page by page reprinting of the entire set of Return Of The Jedi photo-cards made by Topps back when that movie came out almost two full adult lifetimes now. I can't attest to its quality. There are elements of the presentation that I find fun but I find the cards themselves sort of fitfully ugly. I don't remember that being an attractively-lit movie and that bears out here with a lot of muddy imagery. It brings to mind few thrilling set pieces from that film, which makes sense because that film is fairly dull, constructed in the main from images that flash back to more effectively utilized visuals from the first two movies.

I also don't know why this is under Abrams ComicArt imprint. This book is the kind of thing my Mom lumps in under comics. Most active comics fans probably don't see it the same way of my parent, at least not automatically. There may be something going on under the auspices of making this particular part of the publishing empire a bit more specifically profitable, I'm not certain. All of the companies with a wider-than-comics mandate have done something similar, so it's not something on which I'm focused.

I have no idea who this is for, but it's clearly not for me.