Books Star Wars Scum and Villainy: Case Files on the Galaxy's Most Notorious Criminals

I apologise if there's a thread for this. I searched and couldn't find one. I just found this listing on Amazon UK. It comes out on 16th October 2018 and it’s written by Pablo Hidalgo. Haven't heard anything about this. I just found it today, randomly. It sounds great! I’m in love with any in-universe reference books. They've even got a blurb:

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Most Wanted is an in-world book that traces the exploits of Star Wars criminals through illustrated memorabilia paired with narration by three generations of galactic law enforcers.

Whether beneath the peaceful era of the Republic or amid the fear of the Empire, criminals of the Star Wars universe have thrived. The exploits of the most notorious smugglers, pirates, gamblers, syndicates, and gangsters have shaped the history of the galaxy.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Most Wanted is a highly illustrated in-world book that presents the collection that once existed on Hosnian Prime. Narrated by three generations of galactic law enforcers, this collection profiles the most notorious and influential members of the underworld through stories, firsthand accounts, and collected memorabilia.

This never-before-seen assortment of warrants, wanted posters, mug shots, menus from business fronts, reenactments, artifacts, and much more bring the galaxy’s most wanted to life.

 

This sounds really good ! I wonder if this book comes out the same time as solo on home video seems like a good tie in ?

 

Cover:

 

Yes! Yes! YES! Sign me up!

 

More Enfys Nest? Yes please!

 

If it's anything like Pablo's Propaganda book, it will be very good stuff indeed.

 

Also, it seems as though we are getting more actual art, as oppose to stills from the films. That's always welcome in my book.

 

Not wild about that cover.

 

Yeah, it really ties all the different sources together.

 

Pablo Hidalgo interview.
https://www.starwars.com/news/pablo-hidalgo-scum-and-villainy

Spoiler

StarWars.com: Considering your well-documented love of the Mos Eisley cantina, I’m not surprised you wrote a book called Scum and Villainy. As a longtime Star Wars expert, what appeals to you about the seedy underbelly of Star Wars?

Pablo Hidalgo: Variety. This is where individuality really shines. From a distance, political factions often tend to blur into uniforms and banners, but in the criminal underworld, you’re more likely to find really colorful individuals trying to leave their personal mark, because they’re not fighting for a greater cause. They’re just in it for themselves. So you end up with a really rich rogue’s gallery of characters.

StarWars.com: The conceit that the book is culled from the files of a familial line of police officers is really fun and pretty unique for a Star Wars book. How did you land on that?

Pablo Hidalgo: I thought what worked really well with Propaganda was treating the book as an artifact from the universe written by someone who lives in it. In that case, it was a long-lived artist looking back at decades of propaganda art. And that author doesn’t need to be free of bias or baggage. He’s definitely coloring the facts with his experience.

We wanted to do something similar with this one, but the multi-generational angle allows for different points of view and different comments on what law enforcement is to different societies. In this case, a Republic official, an Imperial official, and a New Republic official. And since generations disagree with each other on history, it makes or some nice drama lurking beneath the text.





StarWars.com: You throw in phrases like “My mother wore the badge during the Galactic Civil War,” which I really enjoyed — it’s like ’70s cop-show terminology thrown into Star Wars.

Pablo Hidalgo: I am a huge fan of old detective shows — Columbo, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco — so there is definitely influence in there. In the same way the core of Star Wars synthesizes samurai, war, and western movies of yesteryear, its criminal tales sometimes pull from cops and gangster pics of old, when Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney put their mark on the genre.

StarWars.com: The art is quite beautiful. Did you collaborate with the artists at all in terms of direction, or was it just a pleasant surprise when pieces would come in?

Pablo Hidalgo: My main point of collaboration was with my editor, Delia Greve, and the art director for the project, Sam Dawson. I didn’t work with the artists directly, but Delia and Sam shared works in progress as they came in, and that was exciting. When we started the project, we knew it was to have a real “artifact” feel in terms of the visuals, with mugshots, evidence reports, and surveillance imagery aplenty. I put together a number of mood-boards for the spreads as we plotted the book, some of which contained real life mugshots that I found on the internet. For instance, the starting point of the Dex’s Diner images was photos of mobsters from the Donnie Brasco case.





StarWars.com: The case files are punctuated with some little surprises, like a found letter from Hondo Ohnaka — left to someone he was robbing about what an honor it is to be robbed by Hondo Ohnaka. Would these just kind of come to you as you were writing, or was there a set plan to include these supplements, which really add depth and levity to the book?

Pablo Hidalgo: It was a mix of surprises and revelations as the pieces came together, and other elements that were deliberately panned from the start. The Hondo example is a case where what makes Hondo so unique is his boisterous voice, so how do you capture that in evidence? Have his words speak for him. And it ties into some old lore about pirate letters of marque that ran in an article in the old Star Wars Adventure Journal about pirates and privateers.

StarWars.com: The breadth of events, artifacts, and characters featured is really impressive, including some content that hasn’t really been fleshed out before, like the Mandalorian armor in Dryden Vos’s study. Did you want to use the book as an opportunity to further explore and establish more details in continuity?

Pablo Hidalgo: There are a couple of threads that this book continues from other storylines and ideas. An example I can think of is in Solo: The Official Guide that came out earlier this year, there’s a very fleeting mention made of Dryden Vos’s personal physician. Scum and Villainy picks up that idea and identifies him. Given that Vos has a Decraniated server in his staff, you can kind of guess where this is going. That’s the kind of connectivity that’s there lurking in the text, but isn’t called out with any sort of attention, since I hope it’s more rewarding for people to speculate about it.

StarWars.com: Finally, pick one bad guy or gal in Scum and Villainy that you personally think gets a bad rap.

Pablo Hidalgo: The Imperial era makes it really hard to peg players as good or bad, given how awful the government is. A lot of crooks from that time are more admirable than the Law! We see folks like Liana Hallick with a mugshot and wanted poster, and know her to have more integrity than the forces looking to apprehend her.

Scum and Villainy arrives October 23 and is available for pre-order now.

 

Spoiler

Glad to see Ithano's crew gets an entry. Interesting also that I think this is the first time that "Rutian" is used in new canon in terms of Twi'lek skin color. Although at the same time, that's actually wrong from the Legends use, where Rutians were blue and Lethans were red.

 

Actual art! Not just boring stills from the films. Awesome. Can't wait.

 

Sounds like it will be yet another excellent piece by Pablo.

@Charlemagne19 you might find his mention of the letters of marque from Star Wars Adventure Journal interesting

 

Character speculation:

Spoiler

From this description of the book --

-- and these lines from the third preview page --

-- I'm wondering if the first-generation/Republic-era police officer is Tan Divo from TCW and the second-generation/Imperial-era police officer is the daughter named above, Andressa.

 

Aw man they should have gotten one of those interior artists to do the cover!

Spoiler

...we seem to be communicating in Disney gifs lately, Dr. Brule...

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/pablo-hidalgo-scum-and-villainy

Let me just say I'm pretty excited about this and considering to buy the physical book, which is something I seldom do.

Well, once I get absolute confirmation that the book has a section on Embo.

 

Wonder if we'll find out more about that encounter Beckett had with Aurra Sing. Very curious about how that came about.

Also Divo got a mention. Assuming this is the same guy from TCW that's a nice reference.

 

This is excellent.

 

Indeed! I freaking love reference books, and Pablo makes some excellent ones! I'm excited to see exactly who gets the spotlight and what references can be found in the text.

Love your sig by the way!

 

bonjour, pouvons-nous considérer "Scum Star Wars et Villainy: Dossiers sur les criminels les plus célèbres de la Galaxie" comme une sorte de réhabilitation de canon au "code des chasseurs de primes"?

 

I did make a thread on this quite a while ago : https://boards.theforce.net/threads...he-galaxys-most-notorious-criminals.50048541/

 

Is it canon or will elements be ignored for story convenience in one the more visually oriented mediums?

 

I wanted to write in English, but I copied the text in French, anyway, thank you for your answer, I look forward to this and "The Smuggler's Guide".