Marvel today announced (via Comic Book Resources) that they’re doing a 5-issue adaptation of The Force Awakens for June. Aftermath author Chuck Wendig is writing, with Luke Ross on art.
→ Jedi News noticed that The Force Awakens Blu-ray is now listed as a three-disc set – two Blu-rays and one DVD – on Blu-ray.com. Everyone is still playing coy on the release date, but it’s probably April 5.
→ Co-producer Ben Rosenblatt talks to The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s final shot.
→ Jason Fry explains how General Hux’s father became part of his Rebels tie-in series, Servants of the Empire.
→ Variety looks into how ILM made Starkiller Base crumble. Spoiler: Computers.
On Wednesday, the Vader Down storyline wraps up in Star Wars #14 and Darth Vader #15. There’s also the second Darth Vader collection, Shadows and Secrets, in trade… And although it shipped last week, Obi-wan & Anakin #1 was actually supposed to go out this week, so if your comic shop got the memo you may not have been able to find it on sale.
In other book release news, Del Rey officially announced today that Claudia Gray’s New Republic: Bloodlines and Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Life Debt have both been pushed back two months each. (Something that’s been reflected on our book release schedule for a while now.) Bloodlines is now due out May 3, and Life Debt on July 19. They’re our next two new novels, though there are a handful of paperback rereleases in the meantime, including the first Aftermath on March 29.
Del Rey and StarWars.com introduced the final cover for Chuck Wendig’s second Aftermath novel, Life Debt, today.
The book is the first of two sequels to November’s Aftermath, the first post-Return of the Jedi novel in the new canon. It proved to be somewhat controversial due to a delightful variety of factors. Wendig has particularly come under fire for his willingness to address people angry about the book having gay characters.
Still, for that that, Aftermath debuted at #4 on the New York Times bestseller list, and I dug it.
Having the Millennium Falcon on the cover doubles down on the assumption that this book will expand on and continue the Han Solo and Chewbacca interlude from Aftermath. Wendig has confirmed that trilogy will continue to follow the first book’s main characters.
Life Debt is due out May 31, 2016. The third novel in the trilogy, Empire’s End, is expected to drop in 2017.
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.
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.
Marvel today announced (via Comic Book Resources) that they’re doing a 5-issue adaptation of The Force Awakens for June. Aftermath author Chuck Wendig is writing, with Luke Ross on art. 
Del Rey and 
Since the book’s release, Chuck Wendig has been regularly featuring Aftermath reviews that object to the book containing gay and lesbian characters. (
Aftermath: Life Debt (
