TIE Transports in Marvel’s Star Wars Comics

The original Marvel Star Wars comics from the seventies and eighties have been offered in numerous forms, most recently as a three volume collection (Volume 1*, Volume 2*, Volume 3*), but regardless of the format the artwork and ideas presented in those early stories are still entertaining over three decades later. I shared some Infantino Stormtrooper art last week and today I’d like to return to Marvel’s work, this time to look at how they twisted the TIE Fighter to new uses.

Over the years we have seen numerous TIE Fighter designs — from the first variant (TIE Advanced) seen in the original film to Fantasy Flight Games’ TIE Punisher* — and even as far back as the early eighties Marvel was joining in on the TIE Fighter game and devising ships of their own. Presented below are a handful of TIE Transports taken directly from those early comic books.

• Issue 53 – The cover (above) and an internal panel (below) show us an over-sized TIE Bomber-like design being used as a transport ship. In the story giant Stormtroopers (that cover, above, in which Leia is being carried by a giant Stormtrooper isn’t just artistic license at work) fly a massive TIE and kidnap the Princess. The ship would have been less visible if not for the cover.

• Issue 56 – This unusual TIE-like transport features three central compartments, various antenna, and a bizarre pincer-like appendage on the ship’s front, making it the strangest of all of the TIE Transports we’re looking at today. The ship appears in issues 56 and 57 and based on the landing ramp and crew scale relative to the ship I think we can also safely say it’s a beast of a ship. More freighter than fighter.

• Issue 57 – The TIE Transport from issue 56 returns, but in these images (below) it is so sketchy and odd that I am not sure I would have even recognized it as a TIE if not for its appearance in the previous issue.

• Issue 60 – This time around we get a transport that’s closer in style to the TIE Bomber but keeps the third compartment concept that we saw on the ship in issues 56 and 57. The size of the ship appears to be considerably smaller than the transport in 56, and the overall appearance is a lot more TIE-like than that other transport design. No weird pincers or antenna here, just a TIE Bomber with an extra component so that it can carry Stormtroopers.

• Issue 65 – The last of our TIE Transports is also my favorite of the group. Even though we never see much of this TIE Transport design, I think it’s closest to being something I’d like to see brought into the Star Wars universe today. This would make a great ship in the X-Wing miniatures game (Amazon.com search*), and way back in the late eighties I even used this ship concept when running the Star Wars RPG from West End Games*. It’s a large ship — just look at the ramp and hatch — and this strikes me as an even better shuttle design than the official design we were given in Return of the Jedi. Oh well, maybe someone will bring this back one day.

Relics of a Simpler Time

These TIE Transport starships are just another example of how much Star Wars has changed since Marvel first held the license to publish Star Wars comics. Back in the seventies and eighties, the Marvel team invented all sorts of odd things in the Star Wars universe, and I miss those days when we could expect to see something new almost every issue.

These days the Star Wars universe is tightly controlled and managed, but maybe there’s still a little room for creators to play and devise completely odd new stuff. I sure hope so. I’d love to see a few more TIE Transport concepts make their way into today’s Star Wars comics, novels, and games. Or maybe just an old favorite re-introduced to the world.