It’s still over a year until Star Wars reaches for the stars once again, but it’s a bit sooner ’til it hits the pages of Marvel Comics as it was announced this past San Diego Comic Con.
Writer Jason Aaron and artist John Cassaday are kicking the saga into hyperdrive through Marvel Comics’ new line of comic books based on the sci-fi franchise this coming January simply entitled Star Wars, the first of three titles launching next year.
Since taking the reins of Dark Horse’s stint on the saga’s comic adventures, Marvel’s releasing a pair of tie-in books to expand the universe further, continuing Star Wars: Darth Vader, penned by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Salvador Larroca in February, as well as the five-issue miniseries Star Wars: Princess Leia by writer Mark Waid and artist Terry Dodson in March.
Lucasfilm’s canon committee, the Story Group, will be overseeing the ambitious endeavor while overseeing the Star Wars Rebels cartoon and J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII next year, among other projects.
The trio of new comics follows the Battle of Yavin at the end of the original 1977 Star Wars movie, and Aaron’s comic catches up with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 weeks after the destruction of the Empire’s all-powerful Death Star.
Han, Luke, and Leia are all still new to one another and Aaron is treating it in the same vein as a movie itself, all with the knowledge of just what will follow in the actual movies to come. The Rebels have blown up the Death Star and dealt the Empire a sizable blow, and looking to press their advantage, they naturally plan a sneak attack to follow up their victory with another one.
And so the first issue opens with the heroes staging a daring raid on an Imperial locale “that of course goes exactly as planned as their plans always do,” Aaron remarks in talking with USA Today. While Luke is learning the tricks of the Jedi trade, Darth Vader is just as eagerly searching for just who that kid was that blew up the Death Star, and as Aaron teases, father and son are always just a step behind one another. Aaron warns that as confident as Luke is, “he’s going to get himself and all his friends killed.”
All the while, Aaron simply wants to “recapture some of those same feelings that I had when I first saw these same characters on the big screen.”
There’s a lot of Star Wars things we want, including in EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront, but it’s all a bit of conjecture from here on out. Perhaps we’ll just have to read how until then.
Source: USA Today