Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
There’s one middle grade reference book, one comic and two trades being released this week. First up, on Tuesday, April 3, is the Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles by Landry Q. Walker.
Then, on Wednesday, April 4, head to your favorite comic venue for Star Wars #46 or the latest trade in the series, Ashes of Jedha, which collects #38-43. Marvel is also shipping a hardcover collection of their 40th anniversary cover art, if that’s your bag.
Over at IGN, an interview with costume designer Michael Kaplan, and how the looks evolved for characters both old and new.
→ Our own James interviews Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens author Landry Q. Walker at StarWars.com, while comic writer Charles Soule talks to ComicBook.com about Poe Dameron #1. Soule also did a guest post for StarWars.com.
→ We all heard about Force for Daniel, but Lucasfilm and J.J. Abrams showed the movie to dozens of terminally ill fans.
→ Vulture takes a look at who’ll buy physical copies of The Force Awakens. I’m guessing… A lot of people? They also look back at the box office.
→ A look at how Rey’s isolation is framed in the film.
→ StarWars.com also presents their list of the ten best The Force Awakens moments.
There’s a lot this week, first and foremost The Force Awakens on Blu-ray Tuesday. There’s also a number of book for young readers, namely Pablo Hidalgo’s Star Wars Character Encyclopedia, Landry Q. Walker’s Tales From A Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens and Elizabeth Schaefer’s The Force Awakens Storybook.
Comic fans will have reasons to shop as well, as Marvel drops Poe Dameron #1 on Wednesday.
We’ve got a new episode of Unboxing Star Wars! Yowie, Baby Jawa and I review the Star Wars Rebels episodes ‘The Forgotten Droid’ and ‘The Mystery of Chopper Base’ and then I give my take on: The Force Awakens: Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens Volume I by Landry Q. Walker, from Disney-Lucasfilm Press. Meanwhile, Baby Jawa does baby things and we also look at some R2-D2 socks, a Millennium Falcon pocket watch from Japan, and the really nifty Vote Leia posters promoting the upcoming Claudia Gray novel, Bloodline.
Quick reviews
→ The Force Awakens: Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens Volume I (release date: April 5, 2016) – Thumbs up! Six short stories about some minor TFA characters give us a variety of genres, all from one author, and all very enjoyable! Fun stuff!
→ ‘The Forgotten Droid’ – Loved it! Chopper has his own adventure and does the impossible: makes a friend. Great work by Stephen Stanton as AP-5!
→ ‘The Mystery of Chopper Base’ – Decent. We get some bug hunting action with the spiders, and some tension as the Ghost crew prepares to bid farewell to Kanan and Ezra.
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Note: Disney-Lucasfilm Press provided a copy of The Force Awakens: Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens Volume I for review.
Stitch Kingdom has short blurbs for the two new stories that will be featured in the print edition of Landry Q. Walker’s Tales From a Galaxy Far, Far Away Volume I: Aliens.
The first features Unkar Plutt, played by Simon Pegg in The Force Awakens:
The repugnant scrap trader Unkar Plutt may finally have met his match in the twisty tale ‘True Love.’
And the second features Strono “Cookie” Tuggs:
When his sous chef turns up dead, the cook at Maz Kanata’s castle holds an unusual competition to find the culprit in ‘A Recipe for Death.’
The four other stories in the book – ‘The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku’, ‘High Noon on Jakku’, ‘The Face of Evil’ and ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ – were released as eBooks in December. Tales From a Galaxy Far, Far Away Volume I: Aliens will be out in hardcover on April 5.
Jedi Bibliothek was first to spot two upcoming Star Wars coffee table books from Becker & Mayer. Both appear in the book producer’s 2015 autumn catalog (PDF) so we can probably expect them in the fall.
The first, On the Front Lines: Notes on Tactics, Armor and Valor from Galactic Conflicts is a look at warfare in the GFFA from Daniel Wallace. Here’s the blurb:
From the Clone Wars and the Rebellion to the clashes with the First Order, the galaxy is defined by war. Star Wars: On the Front Lines chronicles the tactics, weapons, and armor used in pivotal battles along with profiling acts of valor. By focusing on elements of the battles that occurred “off screen,” this collection brings the struggles faced by ground soldiers and starfighter pilots to life like never before and places the reader on the battle lines.
The second is the “in-universe” Star Wars: Propaganda from Pablo Hidalgo.
Whether it’s a Star Destroyer hovering over a planet or an X-wing delivering a message of resistance, propaganda images have become synonymous with life in the galaxy far, far away. This in-world art book explores the creation and stories behind these images of power and persuasion—where the images appeared, why particular planets were targeted, and who were the in-world artists behind the works.
Also featured in the catalog are a trade edition of last year’s Star Wars: Costumes and several crafting titles.
Earlier, Jedi Bibliothek also discovered covers and details for The Force Awakens Storybook (among others) and Landry Quinn Walker’s Tales From A Galaxy Far Far Away: Aliens. (Aliens collects the eBook short stories released last month, and is supposed to contain two new stories.)
These last two scheduled for early April releases, which lines up with the Blu-ray evidence.
The Journey to The Force Awakens continues today with the release of the four Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens eBook short stories from Landry Q. Walker: ‘The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku’, ‘High Noon on Jakku’, ‘The Face of Evil’ and ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. These are only in ebook format for now, but a print anthology (with two additional stories) will be coming from Disney Lucasfilm Press in the spring.
Meanwhile, for those looking to avoid anything that may touch on The Force Awakens for the time being, there’s also Star Wars #13 on Wednesday.
A fifth short story, ‘The Perfect Weapon’, came out last week. Although we’ll certainly be getting comics throughout the rest of the month, this leaves us with no prose releases until the floodgates open on December 18.
Discovered this morning, covers for Landry Q. Walker’s forthcoming short stories in the Journey to The Force Awakens line. They all have a second tagline, Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens, because we’re back to adding as much gobbledygook as possible to titles, I guess.
They Might Be Geeks was the first to spot them, while better quality copies were dug up by Jedi Bibliothek.
The four stories are from Disney Lucasfilm Press, and will be out as eBooks on November 30. If you lack an ereader, a print anthology (presumably named Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens) is coming in the spring. It will include two additional stories.
A fifth short from Del Rey, Delilah S. Dawson’s ‘The Perfect Weapon’, is out on November 24.
Florian was first to spot these small summaries for the four Journey to The Force Awakens stories by Landry Walker. Each has a price of $2.99 and release date of November 24 – a week earlier than the December 1 date given at NYCC. Delilah Dawson’s The Perfect Weapon, which doesn’t have a summary yet (it’s the only digital short from Del Rey instead of Disney Lucasfilm Press) also has an Amazon release date of the 24th at the moment, though it’s only priced at $1.99.
→ All Creatures Great and Small : “A storyteller uses his captivating skills to calm frightened villagers on Jakku.”
→ High Noon on Jakku: “A renegade droid causes problems for Constable Zuvio on Jakku.”
→ The Face of Evil: “A notorious thief learns to be careful what she wishes for on Takodana.”
The four Landry stories are expected to be released in print, along with two new entries, in the spring. A sixth story, ‘Bait’ by Alan Dean Foster, will appear in a December issue of the Star Wars Insider.
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.
As for Shattered Empire, Greg Rucka revealed that he hadn’t actually pitched the book to include movie characters like Luke, Leia and Han when the first cover was revealed. But he also promises that #4 will be a love letter to Luke, comparing him to Qui-gon Jinn.
You can listen to the panel audio over at The Wookiee Gunner, who also has helped me fill in a few gaps here.