Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Stop compiling those exhaustive lists of your favorite Star Wars books: A Lucasfilm source tells EOnline’s Leslie Gornstein that Episode 7 will be “an original story.” Gornstein goes on to say that “Episode 7 will literally be nothing you’ve ever seen or read before from the Star Wars universe.” Not surprised. Not surprised in the least…
I’m not going to be the first person to say this, and I certainly won’t be the last: Don’t expect the sequel trilogy to follow the existing Expanded Universe. We know that George Lucas has done story treatments for these films that he’s handing over to Kathleen Kennedy and Disney’s LFL, and Lucas’s take on the EU has been, for most of its existence, that they’re an alternate universe. He has been a distant and uncaring god, at least as far as post-Return of the Jedi is concerned. He has used things from the EU occasionally, but I wouldn’t expect straight adaptations of any of the existing books or comics – at least not as actual episodes.
Today, the internet exploded. So why wait?
Continue reading “#StarWars Tweets Special Edition: Disney buys Lucasfilm”
What will happen to the Expanded Universe? Well, it’s too soon to tell, honestly, but a sequel trilogy could certainly mean upheaval in the galaxy far, far away – and the post-Return of the Jedi continuity that’s been in the works for the past several decades. My bare bones advice? It’s time to start hardening yourself to a more fluid concept of continuity and canon. (You might also want to check out IGN’s Joey Esposito’s great post on the 007 approach to continuity.) But it is far, far too soon to speculate about what new Star Wars movies will bring to the party when we don’t know anything about them aside from their basic existence. (Yes, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on all that later, but one thing at a time!)
One place we can speculate on is who’s going to handling that future in publishing. We’ve seen no indication that Disney is going to shake up the way Lucasfilm works, so we can assume that Lucasbooks will remain the guiding hand. But what of the licensees themselves? They all have contracts, so things will stay as they are for now. But once those contracts are up?
This time, we prep for Halloween, think about the GFFA’s toilets, used the force to open automatic doors and all the rest of the #SWEU, Star Wars life and snark. You know, the usual.
Continue reading “Partying as Alderaan: Last week’s best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets”
In stores on Tuesday is the paperback edition of James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis. (Now in the hands of the Emperor himself!) If you’re curious, you can read my sort of/kind of/not really a review from back when it came out in hardcover, but here it is in short: If you’re interested in the prequel era, the Sith and various bits of continuity that revolve around The Phantom Menace, try it. If you’re like me and more focused on the post-ROTJ stuff… It’s probably not worth the bother. But to each their own.
Anyway, moving on, it’ll also be a bit Sithly if you read to your local comic shop on Wednesday for Darth Maul: Death Sentence #4.
And, looking at our upcoming releases for the rest of the year, Sith fans also have The Old Republic: Annihilation coming up on November 13.
Random Penguin parody logo by Peter Muller.It’s official. Random House and Penguin will be combined, parent companies Bertelsmann and Pearson confirmed today. Both Random House and Penguin have imprints that hold Star Wars book licenses, most notably Del Rey and DK. This isn’t the first time a publishing house with franchise connections has merged – In 1998, Bertelsmann bought Random House, whose Del Rey imprint had recently acquired the novel license from Bertelsmann’s Bantam.
Essential guides. The folks at Star Wars Books revealed some of Doug Wheatley’s art for the new Essential Characters. The book is currently set to come out next August.
The blogside. Del Rey’s ‘ Darth Internous,’ aka Tom, wrote about how to balance your fandom when it becomes your job at Suvudu. On the fan side, Nanci at Tosche Station begins her Jedi Prince retrospective with The Glove of Darth Vader and The Lost City of the Jedi, while Roqoo Depot’s Skuldren and Synlah speculate about John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi.
Interview. Fangirl Blog talks to James Luceno about Darth Plagueis, continuity and the New Jedi Order.
NYCC. We didn’t hear much – or anything, really – about the Dark Horse panel with Brian Wood, but if you’re still dying of curiosity, Bleeding Cool has the audio.
It’s the talk of the publishing world today: Parent companies Pearson and Bertelsmann are discussing combining the publishing houses Penguin and Random House. Together, the two publishers would control more than 20% of the U.S. market,. so antitrust issues are sure to be a concern.
Both companies have Star Wars licenses: Random House’s Del Rey handles the adult Star Wars novels (as is Bantam, which handles the backlist,) while Penguin publishes books for younger readers, mostly based on The Clone Wars. DK is also a part of Penguin.
io9’s Charlie Jane Anders looks at what the merger might mean for the genre as a whole.
This week, we venture into New York City (again,) yoga, Yoda, and the usual collection of #SWEU, Star Wars life and snark.
Continue reading “Sweet Vader helmet: Last week’s best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets”
It’s an expensive week – if you’re into cartoons or comics, anyway. As previously reported, the 4th season of The Clone Wars will be out on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday. You might also want to check for The Old Republic Encyclopedia, which actually came out last week.
As for comics, we’ve got three trade collections due in on Wednesday: Agent of the Empire: Iron Eclipse, Dark Times: Out of the Wilderness and Knights of the Old Republic: War.
You’ll also want to keep an eye out for Star Wars Insider #137.