Comic review: Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #3 brings the Jedi into the fray between Maul and Sidious, and gets a thumbs up from James.
Comic review: Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #2
Comic review: James says Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #2 is a must read.
Out this week: Darth Maul, Son of Dathomir #1
Wednesday brings the release of Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #1, which wraps up the character’s arc from The Clone Wars. It’s our first fully canon comic, due to being based on scripts and designs originally conceived for the show. Also coming this week is the second trade collection of the Ania Solo Legacy, Outcasts of the Broken Ring.
Comics aside, our next book releases will be William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return and the Crucible paperback, both on July 1.
Interview: Joe Schreiber on Maul: Lockdown
With Maul: Lockdown on sale this week, I had a chance to have author Joe Schreiber answer a few questions about his new novel. Joe was gracious enough to discuss the character of Maul and other aspects of Lockdown, including his collaboration with Jim Luceno to have it connect with Darth Plagueis. Having previously brought the living dead to Star Wars in Death Troopers and its prequel, Red Harvest, Schreiber is no stranger to the darker side of the galaxy far, far away.
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Filoni weighs in on Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir
On his Facebook today, The Clone Wars’ supervising director Dave Filoni weighs in on how the storyline that’s becoming the Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic would have fit into the show:
The story of Darth Maul had become an important one for the series and it was only fitting that we chose him for a comic adaptation. The comics will be based on four finished scripts that were written for Season 6 . These scripts came out of one of our story conferences with George Lucas. As they moved through the production pipeline, they became finalized scripts with a great deal of the actual design work completed. The designs you will see, the plot lines, and character development in these comic books are all coming directly from the TV production. I turned over all of the art to Dark Horse so they could create an accurate representation of what we were planning for the show.
He also hints that the ending of this storyline might not necessarily mean the end of Maul.
Dark Horse to wrap up Darth Maul’s arc on The Clone Wars
While we’ve known that the “bonus content” being worked on for The Clone Wars wasn’t necessarily going to bring closure to the series, Lucasfilm told Newsarama that at least one of the show’s loose ends will be told in comic form this spring, giving a big finale both for Darth Maul and for Dark Horse Comics.
Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir will be a four-part comic starting in May, based on unproduced screenplays. Newsarama interviews the writer, Jeremy Barlow, on what’s in store for this tale. With a title of Son of Dathomir, one might expect a return to the planet, and revenge against Darth Sidious, but Barlow also teases some more locales and characters as well, including a new one named Brother Viscus.
Newsarama points out that while this unproduced story arc is being told first in comic form, it doesn’t mean that it will only be told in this form. I wouldn’t take this as anything more than Lucasfilm simply leaving the door open, and not as a sign that it will be actually realized in animated form.
Although Newsarama is calling this storyline the series finale, the show’s “final arc,” there’s been some clarification from Lucasfilm folks:
The Maul comic is very cool, but it *wasn’t* the series finale. It was a 4-part arc that fell beyond what was already in production.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@infinata) January 8, 2014
If there's still confusion: the new Dark Horse miniseries only deals with a Darth Maul arc from near end of the series. Not a series finale!
— Jennifer Heddle (@jenheddle) January 8, 2014
Long story short: It wraps up the Darth Maul arc, but isn’t the show’s intended finale. Pablo also says it wasn’t intended for S6.
Darth Maul: Lockdown has a blurb
Knights Archive spotted that Random House has posted the blurb for Joe Schreiber’s Darth Maul: Lockdown:
Set before the events of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, this new novel is a thrilling follow-up to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
It’s kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy’s worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object capable of obliterating the Jedi and conquering the galaxy.
Sith lords Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious are determined to possess the prize. And one of the power-hungry duo has his own treacherous plans for it. But first, their fearsome apprentice must take on a bloodthirsty prison warden, a cannibal gang, cutthroat crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and an unspeakable alien horror. No one else could brave such a gauntlet of death and live. But no one else is the dreaded dark-side disciple known as Darth Maul.
Announced back in January, the book is currently on the schedule for a January 21st release.
Rumor: Obi-Wan and Maul to face-off in spinoff?
Cosmic Book News is at it again! Today they’ve set on another spin-off concept, one featuring Obi-Wan during his Tatooine exile with old buddy Darth Maul and a possible appearance by a young Luke Skywalker. (via)
A similar story was published in 2005 as the lead story of Star Wars: Visionaries. But as story concepts go, we’ve heard worse, and Ewan McGregor hasn’t been shy about his willingness to return. But, as always, it’s only a rumor.
The Clone Wars continues Maul’s machinations with ‘Shades of Reason’
Darth Maul has assembled his army from the underworld, and his next step is to help Pre Vizsla take over Mandalore from Duchess Satine, in this week’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars – ‘Shades of Reason’. Interesting title for a storyline about the action-heavy Sith Lord. Once viewed as an instrument of rage, he’s now taken on the mantle of mastermind. In the clip above, he spells out his plan to his allies. Satine gets upstaged by Pre Vizsla when publicly addressing the crisis manufactured by Maul, in the clip below.
Continue reading “The Clone Wars continues Maul’s machinations with ‘Shades of Reason’”
And the mystery novel is… Darth Maul in prison
Of course it’s a Darth Maul novel.
Just announced over at io9: Joe Schreiber (Death Troopers) returns with Maul: Lockdown, a new novel featuring Darth Maul. They’re pegging it as a “follow-up to last year’s Darth Plagueis.” Here’s the blurb:
In a tale of retribution and survival set before the events of The Phantom Menace, Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious dispatch Sith apprentice Darth Maul on a secret mission to infiltrate a criminal empire operating from inside Cog Hive Seven-a hidden prison teeming with the galaxy’s most savage criminals. There, he must contend against the scummiest and most villainous in gladiatorial death matches while carrying out his masters’ clandestine commands. Failure is not an option; success will ignite the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi Order.
io9 says it’ll be out “at the end of 2013,” which I suspect means a post-holiday spot similar to Plagueis and Scoundrels.
James interviewed Schreiber back in 2011, after the release of his second Star Wars book, Red Harvest.
This must be our mystery novel, and while I can’t say it’s something that appeals to me, it takes all kinds. While he’s been all over The Clone Wars lately, Maul hasn’t headlined a novel for adults since Michael Reaves’ Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter back in 2001.