Journey to The Force Awakens: Writer for Marvel’s Shattered Empire revealed

Journey to The Force Awakens: Shattered Empire #1Naturally, it was Florian of Jedi Bibliothek who discovered the writer of Marvel’s first entry in Journey to The Force Awakens, Shattered Empire. A catalog lists Greg Rucka, who had an influential run writing Batman (among many others.)

Rucka was already on the JTFA slate with the Han-centric YA novel Smuggler’s Run.

We don’t know much about Shattered Empire overall; though the series was announced with a Phil Noto cover image, the catalog lists the book’s artist as TBD. It also lists it will be a trade paperback, not individual issues, though the original announcement calls it ‘an event series.’ A series of trades? At this point, I fully expect we won’t get a formal announcement until Marvel’s panel at Celebration Anaheim.

>Today’s talker: How slavish devotion to continuity can damage a series (and a fandom)

Today’s talker: How slavish devotion to continuity can damage a series (and a fandom.) Continuity is important (and Club Jaders were big advocates for more of it back in the early days of the Expanded Universe) but when it outweighs and hinders the story and characters, it can become a problem. That’s something we saw in the waning days of the old EU. The solution? It’s somewhere in the middle.

EXCLUSIVE: A major plot detail from Journey to the Force Awaken’s Aftermath

aftermath-ap1-teaser2We learned a little about Aftermath, Del Rey’s key piece in the Journey to The Force Awakens, a few weeks ago: Namely, that Twitter-winning author Chuck Wendig is writing it, and that it involves “a fan favorite from the films” and “other familiar faces.” And Club Jade has learned who a few of those faces are.

So. Spoilers. Under the cut.

EXCLUSIVELY.

Continue reading “EXCLUSIVE: A major plot detail from Journey to the Force Awaken’s Aftermath”

Out this week: Kanan #1, A New Dawn in paperback

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It’s apparently Rebels week in releaseland, as we have the paperback edition of John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn out on Tuesday. The hardcover dropped back before the show had even aired, so I expect the story of how Hera and Kanan met will find more of an audience now. James liked it! And hey, it’s John Jackson Miller, hard to go wrong there.

(If you have read A New Dawn, Miller posted the first part of his production notes last night. Naturally, they contain spoilers.)

For those already all in on Rebels lit, Marvel launches their fourth Star Wars title Wednesday with Kanan: The Last Padawan #1. It’s also a Rebels prequel, and Marvel’s first foray into the prequel era. StarWars.com has a five-page preview.

Is there a Battlefront novel in the pipeline?

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This one has been floating around for a bit, but if you look at the timeline in the upcoming novel releases, (see the previews for Lords of the Sith or the A New Dawn paperback) you’ll see a list of much of the canon content thus far. (Basically, everything save the comics.) Included on this list? Battlefront. We know a new Star Wars Battlefront game is coming, but a timeline placement for it between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back seems odd, seeing as we’ve heard that the game itself will cover several eras. (With much of the publicity art so far devoted to the Battle of Hoth from Empire.)

But it would make sense if this is actually a Battlefront novel tie-in that covers only one portion of the game. Jedi Bibliothek (translated) thinks this book may be Untitled Novel #24, which is set for November 3, 2015. It also features a bio for Steve Perry, but as usual, that is neither here nor there at this point.

We had feared (or hoped, in some cases) that #24 would be The Force Awakens novelization, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.

One woman’s guide to the Legends Expanded Universe

swbooks-legendsSince it’s the weekend, I thought I’d do some low-grade pimping. A couple years ago, I wrote a beginners guide to Star Wars novels on my personal blog, and I recently updated and overhauled it to reflect the current status of the older novels. (For the record, I still don’t mind.)

At the time, I figured if you were reading Club Jade, you weren’t a beginner, but it seems that since then, we’ve picked up some new readers. In any case, if you have any curiosity about what to read in Legends, these are my recommendations, and they are deliberately few. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do this for the canon novels…

Rumor: Live-action series to include character from upcoming novel

kemp-sithWell, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Jordan at Cinelinx has followed up his earlier report about the live action series, and in it he gives the name of the book character who may cross over… Moff Delian Mors, the Lords of the Sith character who’s already made waves by being the first canon LGBT charater.

While I applaud the addition of a LGBT character to canon, I’m still not sure if I’m going to even be able to read the book itself. I’ve bounced off Paul Kemp’s Star Wars stuff in the past, and I don’t find that his behavior makes me want to try again. Nor do I find this (possible) timeline placement for the (potential) show particularly encouraging, either. But as always, we’ll just have to see how things turn out.