Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
This week we’re seeing one new comic and several reprints/rereleases. First up, on Tuesday, August 7, is Beth Revis’ Rebel Rising in paperback. Then, Wednesday, August 8 brings Darth Vader #19, plus a second printing of Star Wars #50 and Star Wars Volume 8, Mutiny at Mon Cala, collecting #44-49 of the series.
The special New York Comic Con panel about the Star Wars 40th Anniversary anthology features several of the book’s 40-something writers, including moderator Pablo Hidalgo, Claudia Gray, Delilah Dawson, Jason Fry, E.K. Johnston and more.
The general publishing panel video is also out, and added to the original news post.
Tuesday is a big Rogue One day for releases, with two brand-new novels for younger readers. Beth Revis’ Rebel Rising is about Jyn Erso, while Greg Rucka’s Guardians of the Whills gives us some backstory on Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus. There’s also the paperback edition of James Luceno’s Catalyst, which gives us some background on Galen Erso and Orson Krennic, and first came out before the movie.
On the comic front, Wednesday brings Rogue One #2 and Poe Dameron #14.
It also happens to be the first week of May, which means May 4 is Thursday. We expect plenty of puns, some sales, and a movie marathon on TBS. Fair warning: Traditionally this has not been a huge day for news, so don’t get your hopes too high.
A cover and summary for Beth Revis’ young adult Rogue One tie-in was briefly live on a Disney Publishing site Wednesday, with the title Rebel Rising. Here’s the summary as posted, thanks to Making Star Wars. (UPDATE: Now live on StarWars.com!)
When Jyn Erso was five years old, her mother was murdered and her father taken from her to serve the Empire. But despite the loss of her parents she is not completely alone—Saw Gerrera, a man willing to go to any extremes necessary in order to resist Imperial tyranny, takes her in as his own, and gives her not only a home but all the abilities and resources she needs to become a rebel herself.
Jyn dedicates herself to the cause—and the man. But fighting alongside Saw and his people brings with it danger and the question of just how far Jyn is willing to go as one of Saw’s soldiers. When she faces an unthinkable betrayal that shatters her world, Jyn will have to pull the pieces of herself back together and figure out what she truly believes in…and who she can really trust.
It could be that the blurb wasn’t proofread or approved yet – the Jyn we see in the first Rogue One flashback on Lah’mu was 8, not 5 – which may be why it vanished. An excerpt (PDF link) remains live.
The book is currently due out in hardcover on May 2. (Updated 1/26 with a better quality cover image via Jedi Bibliothek.)
Details on the Rogue One book tie-ins and 40th Anniversary publishing program for 2017 were revealed at New York Comic Con Friday morning.
In addition to James Luceno’s Catalyst, the Rogue One fiction lineup will include a young adult novel about Jyn Erso from Star Wars newcomer Beth Revis (Across the Universe.) Greg Rucka (Before the Awakening) will return for a middle grade novel featuring Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe. The preliminary versions of the covers above were spotted earlier by Jedi Bibliotek. They’ll both be out on May 2.
Catalyst will be the first of the Rogue One books to hit the shelves, on November 15th. The second wave will drop with the film on December 16, and includes The Art of Rogue One, Pablo Hidalgo’s Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide and ebook versions of the two novelizations: Alexander Freed’s from Del Rey and the junior version by Matt Forbeck from Disney-Lucasfilm Press. Freed’s will be in hardcover on January 3, while it looks like Forbeck’s won’t be in print until March 28.
We’ll learn more about the 40th Anniversary publishing plans in the coming months, although the official site says “legendary Star Wars talent such as Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, and Tom Palmer would be reuniting” for an anniversary book from Disney-Lucasfilm Press. One component of the program would seem to be a new collection of the newspaper strips, also spotted by – you guessed it – Jedi Bibliotek.