Lit Joe Books Star Wars: General News & Trades Discussion Thread

I was surprised that the 4th (yes there are now 4) publisher of Star Wars comics in the U.S. did not have its own thread.

Joe Books solicited a Rebels Cinestory in July 2016, but that book never materialized... until now. I just received my copy from Amazon today and since Joe Books is planning on releasing more of these Cinestory comics, I thought a thread was warranted.



Star Wars: Rebels - A Spark of Rebellion Cinestory Comic is a massive 378 page comic that adapts the first 5 episodes of the Rebels animated series to a fumetti-style comic. Joe Books seems to be doing well with their Disney-based comics, so it will be interesting to see how their Star Wars offerings are received.

 

Amazon also has solicitation for Star Wars: Rebels - Path of the Jedi due out in November 2017:



In February 2018, there will be another Rebels Cinestory based on Darth Maul.

 

Finally, we have a softcover and hardcover version of Star War: A New Hope Cinestory 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition solicited for October 2017:



What makes this interesting is Tokyopop had their Cine-Manga fumetti-style adaptations of the original and prequel movies, so will this be a reprint of that or another fumetti entirely?

 

Finally, here is an ICv2 article that talks about the new Joe Books Star Wars Cinestory Comics and it looks like there is also a Rebels - Grand Admiral Thrawn book forthcoming:

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/37636/joe-books-adapt-star-wars-a-new-hope

 

To be honest, I never saw the point of these things. It's like a bad summary of a story using loads of screencaps. Where's the added value? Why would anyone want to buy that instead of simply rewatching the episodes?

 

Can we expect any original material from this publisher, or photo comic adaptations are the only things we'll be getting?

 

Yea, I consider myself a canon literature completionist but I'm not even bothering with these.

 

I'm in the same boat as a canon completist, but seeing as a I have purchased the French language rebels chapter books, I couldn't not buy this.
It should be arriving in a week or so, but 300 odd pages is impressive

 

It is worse, because the transfer of the stills to the printed page leaves a lot to be desired. The pages are in color, but you would be hard pressed to know that on most pages because the panels are dark and grainy. The pages shown so far for the A New Hope Cinestory look much better. I'm guessing they are showing pages from the $30 hardcover version and not the $15 softcover version. I'm not sure what went wrong with this first Rebels comic. The animated series is very colorful. I haven't seen other Joe Books to know if this is normal for these Cinestories or not.

These are aimed at children and priced accordingly. For $15, you get a thick comic that should occupy a kid for an hour or so. Most standard comics are $4 for 20-22 pages of material. These are $15 for 370+ pages of material. And I suspect these will be seen at retail, whereas most comics are not.

I collect Star Wars comics, so I could not pass these up. Someday, I'm going to sit down and write an article on all the different versions of the A New Hope adaptations to comics. We have these different versions, so far:

Marvel
Dark Horse (based on the 1996 Special Edition)
Hungarian bootleg
4 or 5 Chinese bootlegs
Argentinian bootleg
Russian bootleg
2 Indonesian bootlegs
Tokyopop Manga
Tokyopop Cine-Manga
Disney-Lucasfilm Press
Joe Books Cinestory

Not to mention at least one digital online version from Korean.

 

It is hard to say. They started out in 2014 doing just Cinestories and reprinting Collections for Disney comics and they are now printing original comics based on Disney properties. It is possible they could expand into original Star Wars comics. I can see a situation were Marvel has the teen/adult comics based on the live-action movies, IDW has the pre-teen comics ala Star Wars adventures, and Joe Books does Star Wars animated series comics. The two Disney-Lucasfilm Press collections we have received are interesting. IDW is releasing The Force Awakens comic that was published overseas first which was part of the series that the two books collect. Does Disney-Lucasfilm Press not do any more comics now that IDW has the license?

What I hope we don't see is what has happened with other properties where one company gets the original trilogy, another the prequels, yet another the new trilogy, etc. We have seen that with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Terminator, Star Trek, and other properties and I thought the lack of cohesion really hurt in those cases.

 

While these adaptations aren't exactly setting the fandom on fire, it's worth noting that the "cinestory" concept can work well when done right - John Byrne's "New Visions" Star Trek comics from IDW, in which he combines original stories with art created by manipulating photos from Trek TV episodes, are outstanding. If Joe Books eventually moves on to original stories using a similar concept, they might well be worth a look.

 

Thinking about it the canon young readers book, Rebels to the Rescue is a cinestory, using images from the show to create a new original story