Category: books and comics

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Read 50 pages of John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi

Kenobi preview artwork by Chris ScalfDel Rey has put up a big excerpt of Kenobi by John Jackson Miller on Scribd for fans to drool over, as one of their 50 Page Friday promotions. Kenobi comes out on August 27, so only a few more weeks to go before you read the Tatooine Western in its entirety.

Meanwhile, author Miller has been dropping trivia about Kenobi on Twitter daily under #KenobiCountdown. Rooqoo Depot has been collecting those released so far – week one & week two. Need more info on Kenobi? I interviewed John Jackson Miller at Comic-Con extensively about his upcoming novel.

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EUbits: Ewoks, excerpts, and bugs. Lots of bugs.

ewoks-comicAlready used up my yub yub quota this week, sorry. Heard some things here and there about an Ewoks comic through the recent cons, but not enough to go much on… But here’s a Newsarama interview with writer Zack Giallongo. The TPB is due in October; Start planning your celebratory buffet now. (via)

Officially… From the Del Rey folks, we have a Kenobi mini-excerpt, what other excerpts Razor’s Edge will contain, aand, on StarWars.com, Troy Denning writes about Crucible and his other Star Wars work. And bugs. Prefer not to think about any of that? Rich Handley and Abel G. Peña are exploring the Empire’s alien henchmen.

The blogside At Tosche Station, Nanci addresses the issues with the EU’s Jedi in recent years, but also takes the time to thank Del Rey for having so many women in the recent and upcoming lineup. And MTV has been doing a series on things that the new movies ‘need,’ most of which have been borderline ridiculous, but at least Jaina Solo and Lumiya made it.

Reference. The cover for Death Star: Owner’s Technical Manual

New blog. Check out Eleven-ThirtyEight, which focuses on EU-based meta and opinion pieces.

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Trailer for Dark Horse’s The Star Wars revealed

Dark Horse Comics has unveiled the final version of the trailer for their upcoming 8-issue series, The Star Wars, which brings George Lucas’ original draft screenplay to life. Or watch it in HD on the Dark Horse Comics facebook page. J. W. Rinzler’s series starts September 4th!

This video is fairly close to one of the two videos shown at Comic-Con at the Dark Horse Star Wars panel. Also check out my Comic-Con interview with Rinzler about The Star Wars and The Making of Return of the Jedi.TheStarWars-logo

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First mini-excerpt of Wells’ Razor’s Edge

Empire and Rebellion: Razor's EdgeStar Wars Books has posted our first mini-excerpt of Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge by Martha Wells.

Han took two long strides to catch up with her, shouldered past Jerell, and said, “I know what you’re doing.”

“I know what I’m doing, too,” Leia said, and congratulated herself on her even tone. She stopped at the first pod hatch and opened the control pad to initiate the automatic systems check. The pods were meant for the larger crew complement of the Gamble’s pre-conversion state; each one had room for five large passengers.

“Yeah, you’ll either talk them out of this, or die trying.” Han leaned against the bulkhead beside her, his voice low and grim. “Or make sure they die trying.”

Leia’s hand froze on the control pad. It was odd that, in this moment, it was Han of all people who seemed to understand what this meant to her.

Razor’s Edge is due out in hardcover on September 24.

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Roundup: Pregaming at Celebration Europe

@jamesjawa: Rehearsing on Thursday at the Celebration stage at #StarWarsCelebration - it's Warwick Davis! pic.twitter.com/Kx1TWLleS7

Celebration Europe doesn’t officially begin until Friday (which, for those of us in the states, means really early Friday) so the big event of the day in Germany today was the press conference. But StarWars.com did drop a nice video featuring Ashley Eckstein talking about fan groups.

From the fans, we have some pictures from the floor. Bleeding Cool has a couple pages of pics and no clue about Her Universe, while Jedi News gave us our first look at Hasbro’s Darth Plagueis figure.

And speaking of, we’ve been sadly neglectful of Caravan of the Force, in which several fans have been documentimng their travel from London to Essen.

Oh, and here’s a preview from James, even as he warns us that the wifi situation is lacking:

Now let’s hope the 501st don’t get him too drunk:

Newswatch! Can we expect any major news out of the con for Friday? The big-ticket panels are Attack of the Clones 3D at 12:30 p.m. CEST (6:00 a.m. EDT,) Ben Burtt at 1:30 p.m. CEST (7:30 a.m. EDT,) Doug Chiang and Iain McCaig at 2:00 CEST (8:00 a.m. EDT) and Secrets of The Clone Wars at 3:00 p.m. CEST (9:00 a.m. EDT.) Anthony Daniels is on at 4:00 p.m. CEST (10 a.m. EDT,) The Clone Wars screening at 5:00 p.m. CEST (11 a.m. EDT) and Ian McDiarmid is on at 6:00 p.m. CEST (noon EDT.) The night’s capper is an outdoor Return of the Jedi screening at 7:30 p.m. CEST (1:30 p.m. EDT.)

We have reports that a The Clone Wars DVD/Blu-Ray announcement is coming tomorrow, and everyone hope really hard that Chiang and McCaig show something, anything, that they’ve been working on for Episode VII. I wouldn’t expect any casting news until Kathleen Kennedy on Saturday, but stranger things have happened!

(Confused by the timezones? So am I. All praise World Time Buddy.)

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Out this week: Legacy #5, new Insider

Legacy #5It’s a good week for comics: Legacy #5 ends the revived title’s first arc with, apparently, some sort of bang. And for those who prefer collections, there are trade paperback editions of Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan and Agent of the Empire: Hard Targets.

It’s also time for non-subscribers to start keeping an eye out for Star Wars Insider #143, guest-edited by Warwick Davis and featuring a short story by John Jackson Miller that ties into our next novel release, August’s Kenobi.

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Roundup: Catching up with Star Wars at SDCC

James and Hondo

As expected, most of the Star Wars news out of SDCC was fairly low key. And, in case you missed them, here are James’ photos from the con: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Interviews. James caught up with J. W. Rinzler, John Jackson Miller, Legacy creative team Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman and the folks at Becker & Mayer.

Expanded Universe. Both Dark Horse and Del Rey had Star Wars panels Friday, and our own James valiantly live-tweeted both of them. There wasn’t much in the way of announcements, but we did get the debut of the cover for Empire and Rebellion: Honor Among Thieves.

People. MTV managed to drag a little something about J.J. Abrams out of Harrison Ford, while Mark Hamill reminisced about Comic-Cons past with The Hollywood Reportor.

Her Universe. Ashley Eckstein and company debuted a new booth and released Mara Jade and Jaina Solo shirts at the con and online… And now they’re pretty much sold out. Sorry.

TV. Phineas and Ferb is doing a kind of Star Wars crossover thing, to which I say… Okay.

Hasbro. We did get a better look at the new Mara Jadse figure, out with the second wave of the Black Series later this year.

Hallmark. The 2014 Christmas ornaments already? Hey, anything that saves us from waiting for the Dreambook is fine by me.

Also… Comic book movies galore, a new Catching Fire trailer and first looks at new Legend of Korra and Veronica Mars.

Soon, the time zone shenanigans get even wackier as James will be off to Germany for Celebration Europe… Where we hope/expect we’ll be getting some kind of sequel news or confirmation. Cross your fingers.