Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Today sees the release of John Jackson Miller’s (award-winning!) Kenobi in paperback. I liked the book back when it first came out, giving it a grade of B+ in my review.
Meanwhile, another Dark Horse comic wraps up on Wednesday with Rebel Heist #4.
The Scribe Awards, put on by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, have been awarding tie-in writing for the past eight years. This year, John Jackson Miller won the Speculative Novel category for Kenobi.
Several Star Wars books have been nominated for the awards before (including Miller himself) this is the first Star Wars win, though Star Wars authors Alan Dean Foster, A. C. Crispin and Kevin J. Anderson have all been honored as Grandmasters.
Killing two birds with one stone, Del Rey has annouced a new novel starring Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos for next summer. Christie Golden is writing, but it’s based on unaired scripts from The Clone Wars S7, a storyline scripted with George Lucas. It will deal with some very “adult themes,” though probably not the sexy kind.
Meanwhile, comic fans, Pablo said that we can expect to hear from Marvel about their Star Wars plans at their Cup O’ Joe panel on Saturday (2:45 PDT/5:45 EDT.)
Dan Brooks once again live-blogged at StarWars.com, and TFN has audio. Head below the cut to see the tweets – some interesting things were said about the state of canon and the Legends label.
Continue reading “SDCC: Del Rey announces Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos novel by Christie Golden”
SDCC signing schedule for John Jackson Miller and Doug Wheatley. And your chance to get the advance version of A New Dawn.
Del Rey will be holding giveaways for special (paperback) advance editions of John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn, the first of the new canon novels, at San Diego Comic-Con next month. Miller will also be on hand for signings.
The special edition of the book will also contain excerpts of the other forthcoming novels that have been announced so far: Tarkin, Heir to the Jedi, and Lords of the Sith.
A New Dawn will be out in hardcover/eBook on September 2, followed by James Luceno’s Tarkin on November 4.
Del Rey celebrates the 4th with a mini-excerpt from John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn. The Rebels prequel novel will be out September 2.
Earlier today, we had our first official statement on the Expanded Universe’s place in the light of the new films. Now, we get more on the novels going forward. After John Jackson Miller’s A New Dawn (September 2,) we’re getting Tarkin by James Luceno (November 4) and…
Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne (January) was originally announced as part of the loose Empire and Rebellion trilogy pre-Disney… They dropped the subtitle on Honor Among Thieves, but that and Razor’s Edge both fall under Legends with the rest of the old EU, per Lucasfilm editor Jennifer Heddle. In any case, this book is a first-person Luke Skywalker story. (First person? I’m suddenly a lot less excited, but whatever, I’ll read it.)
Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp (March) features Palpatine and Vader “stranded in the middle of insurgent action on an inhospitable planet, they must rely solely on each other, the Force, and their awesome martial skills to prevail.” And Kemp says the book also features “a character who I’m not allowed to name just yet, but who appeared in The Clone Wars animated series.” Subtle!
These are being announced by both Disney Publishing and Random House… Curious, no?
Yeah, we’ve got us an alternative universe, StarWars.com has announced: “In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe.” However, the EU as we know it is not going away – some of it is being re-released under the ‘Legends’ banner. And Star Wars going forward will be using many of it’s elements.
On that note, we have several adult Rebels, novels on the horizon, the first of which, A New Dawn, will be by John Jackson Miller. (On his own blog, Miller wrote about his trip to Lucasfilm to film the video.)
As an EU fan? This is more or less what I expected, and I welcome that there’s now a greater freedom for the films to explore the post-ROTJ era… And leave a lot of the EU’s less savory aspects behind.
News. Dark Horse revealed a new miniseries by Mind MGMT’s Matt Kindt, Rebel Heist, on Comic Book Resources last week. The four-issue series starts with a Han Solo issue in April and will feature art by Marco Castiello (Purge.)
Excerpt. There’s a bunch of Maul: Lockdown available at Random House’s catalog.
Interviews. John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema are also on Comic Book Resources, talking Dawn of the Jedi, while Ostrander talks to Eleven-ThirtyEight.
Notes. John Jackson Miller has added production notes for Kenobi to his site.
The blogside. Abel G. Peña and Daniel Wallace continue their look at the Imperial Warlords at the official blog, while Mike Cooper at Eleven-ThirtyEight asks fandom to stop trying to quantify everything.
This weekend is New York Comic Con, and Star Wars will be out in full force – even more than their presence at San Diego Comic-Con back in July. From October 10 – 13, the Javits Center in New York City will be wall-to-wall fandom, and topping it off for Star Wars fans will be Pablo Hidalgo’s panel on Rebels on Saturday at 2:45 pm. On Tuesday, @StarWars warned that there will be a giveaway item at the Rebels panel – some sort of Imperial propaganda.
Del Rey announced their lineup of authors doing signings at their Star Wars Books booth (and free book giveaways), with John Jackson Miller, Drew Karpyshyn, J. W. Rinzler, Ryder Windham, Jason Fry, and Chris Reiff making appearances.
Rooqoo Depot has a great listing of more Star Wars goings-on, including a list of the Star Wars panels (Anthony Daniels! Origami! Making of Return of the Jedi!), as well as booth signings for DK Books and Dark Horse Comics.
For those looking for exclusive merchandise, Hallmark has a Rancor ornament, Kotobukiya has an R2-Q5 ARTFX+ Statue, and Dark Horse has a NYCC sketch cover variant for The Star Wars #1. Her Universe will be selling at the official Reed Pop store.