Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Just two new Star Wars comics coming on Wednesday, March 22. It’s a very Jabba week as Greedo heads to Batuu in Galaxy’s Edge #2 (though the summary still mention the Resistance, so… flashbacks?), and gets his own spotlight in Age of Rebellion: Jabba the Hutt.
Three new comics and a Legends reprint trade are coming on Wednesday, April 24. The theme park onslaught begins with Galaxy’s Edge #1. Will there be Coke bottles? Probably. Meanwhile, Doctor Aphra #31, Vader: Dark Visions #3 and The Empire Vol. 5 also drop.
There have been two book-based publishing panels here at Celebration so far, and luckily I managed to attend both! They’ve been low on major news, but they did still contain a few revelations about upcoming fiction.
The first, Lucasfilm Publishing, was Friday, not long after The Rise of Skywalker panel, which is pretty much why you’re getting this post on Saturday. (Fan! Blogging!) We did get a cover reveal for Zoraida Córdova’s Galaxy’s Edge YA novel, A Crash of Fate, which was compared to Lost Stars and features two old friends who reconnect.
Delilah Dawson confirmed that Cardinal will be joining Vi Moradi in her Galaxy’s Edge novel, Black Spire. It will have a very different feel from Phasma – she name-dropped the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine as an inspiration at both panels.
Meanwhile, Christian Blauvelt’s Be More Yoda and Be More Vader are getting two new companion volumes in the fall: Be More Leia and Be More Lando. And Jeffrey Brown returns to the GFFA with Rey and Pals. Check StarWars.com for some of the highlights (and decent images!), and my Twitter thread has a few other bits. (Yes, there will be a Journey to Episode IX. No other details, but it will happen.)
The second panel was Del Rey Behind the Scenes, and it featured Claudia Gray, Delilah S. Dawson, Alexander Freed, Tim Zahn and Cavan Scott with Marc Thompson moderating.
We did learn a few things about Gray’s Master & Apprentice and Scott’s audio drama Dooku: Jedi Lost. Scott was such a fan of a new character in M&A, Rael Averross – Dooku’s previous padawan and another mentor to Qui-Gon Jinn – that he became a big part of Jedi Lost.
As for Thrawn: Treason, we got a few more details – Thrawn gets drawn into the power games of Tarkin and Orson Krennic and “it doesn’t end how anyone expects.” Eli Vanto returns, as does Admiral Ar’alani and the Grysk.
For more, check out that Twitter thread!
There will be an author roundtable here on Monday, which seems like it will be the hotbed for announcements. I plan to attend that but wasn’t able to get a panel reservation, so… We’ll see. (Ahh, Reed.)
Meanwhile, there was a Marvel comics panel today – big news is that Greg Pak and Phil Noto will take over the main Star Wars comic in July – plus the cover reveal for Anthony Daniel’s memoir, I am C-3PO:
Delilah S. Dawson’s next Star Wars novel, Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire, isn’t just a theme-park tie-in – it’s also a follow-up to her first, Phasma. As widely hinted and speculated when the book was first revealed, the novel’s lead is Resistance spy Vi Moradi, who was an important part of the first book. Here’s the blurb:
After devastating losses at the hands of the First Order, General Leia Organa has dispatched her agents across the galaxy in search of allies, sanctuary, and firepower—and her top spy, Vi Moradi, may have just found all three, on a secluded world at the galaxy’s edge.
A planet of lush forests, precarious mountains, and towering, petrified trees, Batuu is on the furthest possible frontier of the galactic map, the last settled world before the mysterious expanse of Wild Space. The rogues, smugglers, and adventurers who eke out a living on the largest settlement on the planet, Black Spire Outpost, are here to avoid prying eyes and unnecessary complications. Vi, a Resistance spy on the run from the First Order, is hardly a welcome guest. And when a shuttle full of stormtroopers lands in her wake, determined to root her out, she has no idea where to find help.
To survive, Vi will have to seek out the good-hearted heroes hiding in a world that redefines scum and villainy. With the help of a traitorous trooper and her acerbic droid, she begins to gather a colorful band of outcasts and
misfits, and embarks on a mission to spark the fire of resistance on Batuu—before the First Order snuffs it out entirely.
I wouldn’t expect Phasma herself, given the book’s time frame, but there is another character hinted at up there. (Ssh, it’s a spoiler for those who haven’t read Phasma.)
Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire is due out on August 27 (up just a tad from the first
The full cover, with art from GFFA regular Darren Tan, is under the cut.
Continue reading “Dawson’s Black Spire is a not-so-stealthy Phasma sequel”
Yes, there’s even more Galaxy’s Edge content coming, because we live in a world where even tie-in theme parks have fiction tie-ins, and I give up. This is how we live now.
In addition to the already-announced comic, there’s Black Spire from Del Rey, a sequel-trilogy era novel by Phasma author Delilah S. Dawson.
In this novel, a prequel to the Disney Parks experience, General Leia Organa dispatches her top spy to Batuu in a desperate search for Resistance allies.
Some are theorizing that said spy could be Phasma’s Vi Moradi, and Dawson did retweet this, so perhaps…
(She’s also working on a storybook called The Skywalker Saga with artist Brian Rood. And she did a thread on writing for brands like Star Wars.)
Back to Galaxy’s Edge, there’s also A Crash of Fate, a young adult novel by Zoraida Córdova, and middle reader Star Wars: Myths & Fables by George Mann with illustrations by Grant Griffin. That one only features two Batuu stories, and there’s an excerpt of the Tatooine-set story “The Knight & the Dragon” at the link.
Anther comic (this time from IDW) and a cookbook are also in the works. A Crash of Fate and Myths & Fables drop August 6, while Black Spire is out September 3.
Galaxy’s Edge isn’t even open yet and I’m starting to get a little Batuu fatigue. The latest entry in pimping the upcoming Star Wars theme parks at Disneyland and Disney World is a Marvel comic series. Galaxy’s Edge will be a five-issue minseries written by Ethan Sacks with art from Will Sliney and covers by Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm artists. The Ithorian is Dok-Ondar, a “collector of rare antiquities,” was designed by Karl Lindberg and Iain McCaig.
The series launches in April, while the first of the parks to open will be Disneyland’s, in June.