In the very first Star Wars comics, Luke Skywalker’s iconic lightsaber was originally pink when he first received it from Obi-Wan Kenobi.
When it comes to lightsabers in Star Wars, there’s been many different color variations used by both the Jedi and the Sith. While the most famous colors are green, blue, and red, over the series expanded universe, there’s been everything from purple, orange, white, and yellow lightsabers wielded by heroes and villains. However, Luke Skywalker’s original lightsaber wasn’t blue or green, instead, it was pink.
Before Star Wars: A New Hope by George Lucas came out in theaters, Marvel published two Star Wars comics ahead of its release. The ongoing series, appropriately titled Star Wars by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin seemingly had to fill in some of the gaps of the film, which led to one of the strangest decisions in the entire Star Wars comics universe: Giving Luke Skywalker a pink lightsaber at the start of his journey.
The strangeness begins on the cover of Star Wars #2, where Obi-Wan Kenobi holds a pink lightsaber as he and Luke are surrounded by aliens. It’s also worth noting that on the cover, every lightsaber is referred to as a “light-saber.” Inside the comic, the art does nothing to dispel the fact Luke’s lightsaber is pink. When Luke first receives his father’s lightsaber from Obi-Wan, it’s clearly pink.
If you’re thinking, “hey, maybe the colorist just screwed up on the single issue,” you’d be wrong. Luke’s lightsaber was pink in the next issue during his Jedi training, it was pink on other covers, and even during Obi-Wan Kenobi’s fight with Darth Vader, both of their lightsabers were pink too.
Perhaps, the artist and colorist used pink to show that a lightsaber was illuminated or glowing. But, that wouldn’t make a ton of sense considering how important the colors of lightsabers are to the overall Star Wars series. It’s not exactly a strange request to make the lightsaber’s colors accurate to the films – or to at least try to make them accurate. Instead, the original Star Wars comics are filled with pink lightsabers without any explanation.
Our research couldn’t find any particular reason why the lightsabers were colored pink. It seems it was just the best way to stylize them at the time. It’s possible the artists and colorists were on a time crunch and didn’t have enough time to put in each individual colored lightsaber. It’s a big thing not to include and would later be rectified in future Star Wars comics. But, for fans revisiting the series, it’s a confusing sight to behold for a fairly important part of Star Wars history.
