Obi-Wan & Anakin, a 5-issue limited series from writer Charles Soule (Lando) and artist Marco Checchetto (Shattered Empire) will debut in January, CBR reports. Here’s the official synopsis for #1:
“Before their military heroism in the Clone Wars, before their tragic battle on Mustafar, and many decades before their final confrontation on the Death Star… they were Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan learner, Anakin Skywalker. It’s been a few years since Obi-Wan pledged to train the young “chosen one,” but even as they have grown closer through training, it has been a difficult road. Now, called to a remote planet for assistance, Master and Padawan may be pushed to the breaking point. Writer Charles Soule (Lando, She-Hulk, Daredevil) and artist Marco Checchetto (Star Wars: Shattered Empire, Avengers World, Punisher) bring us a tale of the Jedi at the height of their power…”
Marvel has previously touched on the very end of the prequel era with the Rebels tie-in Kanan: The Last Padawan.
Aftermath: Life Debt and Aftermath: Empire’s End jacks on display at NYCC. Photo thanks to @LillianSkye_.
A new novel, the next two Aftermath titles and a handful of short stories were announced at NYCC this afternoon.
Aftermath: Life Debt (Summer 2016) and Aftermath: Empire’s End (2017) will be the next two from Chuck Wendig, while Claudia Gray has New Republic: Bloodlines set for a spring 2016 release. It’ll be set six years before The Force Awakens, and it doesn’t seem to be a Lost Stars sequel. (The Life Debt and Bloodline covers were spotted earlier today by Jedi Bibliothek.) UPDATE: Chuck Wendig on the upcoming books.
We also have short stories coming based around the aliens in Maz Kanata’s castle (as seen in Vanity Fair.) The first, ‘Bait,’ from Alan Dean Foster, stars a character called Grumgarr and will appear in the Star Wars Insider. Another, ‘The Perfect Weapon’ from Delilah Dawson, will be released electronically and feature Bazine, the woman in black. It’ll be released electronically in November, and there’s a temporary cover over at StarWars.com.
There’ll be four more stories from Landry Walker called ‘High Noon on Jakku,’ ‘All Creatures Great and Small,’ ‘The Face of Evil,’ ‘The Crimson Corsair and the Treasure of Count Dooku.’ They will also be released electronically, not as a Tales of book as we reported before. (Whoops.) All the e-novellas will come out on December 1, and the Landry ones will released in print, along with two more stories, in April.
At the panel, Pablo Hidalgo said that the Story Group took into account worldbuilding from George Lucas, the early Micheal Arnt script, and things Rian Johnson wanted to explore in VIII when building Journey to The Force Awakens. They’ve closely mapped out what happens after Return of the Jedi – revolving around Jakku – and the lead-in to The Force Awakens, but things between those two points are looser for creative freedom. He said to reread the Journey books in a year, and see what you catch.
This week’s new releases gives us a pair of links to characters from The Force Awakens. One is in Shattered Empire #2, doubling down on what we learned from #1, while the other is in Jason Fry’s Servants of the Empire #4: The Secret Academy.
Neither has been out very long, so the relevant info is below the cut. I can’t see either of these things staying quiet for long, though, so consider yourself warned and be sure to grab these books ASAP if you’re spoilerphobic.
Yowie the Skunk, Baby Jawa, and Jawajames are back with another Unboxing Star Wars video! This time, we check out a BB-8 shirt, dive into the Journey to the Force Awakens book, Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry, and also talk about what was cool in the world of Star Wars at Salt Lake Comic Con!
For more on how Cecil Castellucci developed the character of Leia in Moving Target, check back to her Force Friday author appearance.
Of the many great Star Wars panels at Salt Lake Comic Con a few weeks ago, one of the highlights was the “Clone Wars & Rebels: How Animation Changed Star Wars” panel. Moderated by Bryan Young, the panelists included Lucasfilm creative executive Pablo Hidalgo, veteran voice actor Dee Bradley Baker, and artist Scott Harben.
Bryan Young moderated another panel that would interest EU fans. He had authors R. A. Salvatore and Mike Stackpole discuss “Why We Killed Chewbacca” bringing in how the decision was made and the fallout from that event.
Between comics and comic reprints, there is a lot of Star Wars coming up this week. But first, on Tuesday, is The Rise of the Empire, a trade paperback that collects John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn and James Luceno’s Tarkin, plus three brand-new short stories from Miller, Jason Fry and Melissa Scott.
The Korean webcomic adaptation of the original trilogy from LINE Webtoon will be reposted in English, per StarWars.com. Updates will come every Thursday and Sunday at Webtoons.com.
Here’s my favorite bit, which speaks to why a lot of us Expanded Universe fans aren’t up in arms over the Legends thing or calling for more.
The more strict and detailed the canon becomes, the more reverence we devote to it. And the more it restricts the future of that narrative. The more it chokes off what can be told. Doors close. Windows slam shut and are boarded over. Options are lost. The more we care about what’s “true” — in a universe that has never been true and whose power lies in its fiction — we start denigrating those things that aren’t. We view alternate timelines as somehow inconsequential. We dismiss fan-fiction as just some wish fulfillment machine instead of what it often is: a way to tell cool new stories in a pre-existing pop culture framework that aren’t beholden to the canonical straitjacket.
As someone with a lot of history in the fan fiction realm – remember, this site actually served mainly as an archive for Club Jade’s first several years – that is the perfect description of it: Another way to tell cool stories.
No, I don’t view Legends as fan fiction – it’s still professionally published and licensed, by professional authors, which most fanfic isn’t. (At all.) And the Legends authors never had the freedom your standard fic author does, to ignore or use whatever. Even in the beginning, there were guidelines and restrictions, which is why there wasn’t a crazy Obi-wan clone in the Thrawn trilogy.
But clinging to the concept of canon has, over time, done just as much harm as good, and it’s just plain unrealistic in many ways – which is Wendig’s point, really. The world doesn’t work like that.
Aftermath: Life Debt (
