Lit Comics Marvel Star Wars: General News & Trades Discussion Thread

Two new Star Wars epic collections have shown up on the Hachette site. No descriptions yet unfortunately.
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Newspaper Strips Vol. 2 releases July 16
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Empire Vol. 5 releases May 7
I'm quite curious what will be the Empire collection. I'm hoping it will include the adaptions of The Force Unleashed games.

 

At the risk of de-railing the thread, I will just say that I understand your viewpoint, but I don’t agree in context of the show.

I saw Asajj succeed at tasks multiple times through the show, and didn’t see her failing any more often than Grievous or Dooku. Savage was a tool that she used in conjunction with Talzin. And I thought she became infinitely more interesting as a character when she turned her back on the Sith and became a bounty hunter. I want that part of her life expanded upon because I think it is fertile ground for stories.

The only hero that Maul was able to damage was Kenobi - and that was by killing someone he loved. He still wasn’t able to best Kenobi in battle.

The show has a major case of plot armor that has to be accounted for when determining who can actually “hurt” the heroes. Dark Disciple also enriched Asajj’s backstory, but I don’t think it did any favors to the character in the present. I really wish that book had a different conclusion.

 

Droids comics? Fits the timeline doesn’t it?

 

Darth Vader: Lord of the Sith OHC1

A more accurate title would be Darth Vader: Bastard.

For across the twelve issues of this collection that is what Vader is to almost everyone - and yes, he does try it on with the Emperor too, before getting slapped down. Man, woman, alien, droid - Vader is an equal opportunities bastard, who will indeed screw over anyone. You're attending a class taught by Vader? You're aware of the actual and quite literal fail rate? No? You will be, if you survive.

What makes it work is that Soule does not go for it being a walk in the park for Vader. He has some skilled adversaries in the case of Infil'a and Jocasta Nu, though the Inquisitorus is only skirted over - perhaps because of their role in Rebels.

Camuncoli is an artist who's been around a while, knows the game with the big two but I can't recall his art looking quite as good as it does here.

Sidious' comment about not wishing to rule over an empire of the dead is telling, especially after the bleeding lightsaber revelation. If the Sith simply kill everyone, who will be left to suffer? Who will be left for them to dominate and torture? So configured, much of what Sidious does takes on a clear, albeit vile, logic. Anyone who imagines the Death Star would not have been used again after Yavin is a fool, of course it would have been used again, can't have planetary populations getting relaxed now, can we?

If you're expecting a tale where there is some hope, you're out of luck. There is, maybe, a Diet Hope content to this collection, but it's probably less than one per cent. No, this is a story of what happens when the Sith are on top and it's not pretty. That less than one percent bit of hope is Luke, albeit an unrecognisable one - it's one time where the art fails, finding the archives Nu hid. Though, at the same time, the way the Jedi are talked of in these stories also shows up what a bad move TFA made in killing the revived order off.

Overall? A fun read - so long as you come knowing what you're going to get.

 

Oh man. If you enjoyed the first 12, I can’t wait to see your thoughts on the rest of the series.


Sent from my Ornithopter using The Force

 

Well, that might be some time away as I'll be getting OHC2.

 

RIP to The Man, Stan, who took a shot at this whole thing called "Star Wars comics" in 77

 

Well, damn. Somehow it always felt to me like he'd keep going forever.

 

Well more like "took a shot after being hounded by Roy Thomas after having already said no". I love Stan and will miss him dearly, but the story of the SW comic getting green-lit was more a matter of Roy Thomas begging to get to work of space opera, and Stan begrudgingly going along with that as long as Lucasfilm took no royalties on the comic until sales reached 100,000. Makes sense given Marvel was struggling at the time so getting to essentially use this untested property as a way to get to either get first dibs if it did well, and still make the entirety of the profit themselves if it did not take off.

 

Hey, it's show business y'know? At least Stan came up with a better deal for the company than Kenner who got the Star Wars toy royalties "for all time in every single galaxy" for about 50 grand or something crazy like that.

 

Good news / bad news:

The good: Checchetto is going to be on Daredevil.
The bad: No SW stories for a while!

 

That's too bad about Checchetto not being on Star Wars, though I'm a big Daredevil fan so I'm not disappointed. In other news, Larroca is going to be the main artist for the new Uncanny X-Men series, so we probably won't see him on a Star Wars series any time in the near future.

 

The Doctor Aphra artist, Kev Walker is great, would love to see them on the main title. But need them on Aphra, still!

Anyway one more for The Man

 

Doctor Aphra is actually back to Emilio Laiso with the "Worst Among Equals" arc, which just started this week with #26! Laiso also pencilled the "Remastered" arc (#14-19), the Rogue One adaptation, and Star Wars Annual 2.

(Speaking of Star Wars Annual 2 -- when are we getting more Pash Davane?)

(And speaking of the "Remastered" arc -- when are we getting more Rabael Dir Glorio?! I'd love to see Pash and Rabael get mentions or entries in some official RPG material. Or appear literally anywhere again.)

 

I have to admit that I don't track who's drawing Aphra; I notice occasional changes in style but it always looks good and is dynamic and thoughtfully drawn by whomever's on it (it helps that it's scripted very "visually" I'm sure). I mention that in the face of a pretty dire disappointment of a preview from the next issue of the flagship title... help is still needed over there.

Senpezeco, I can always count on you to be with me on the "bring back Dir Glorio" train!

 

So it seems like we'll not even get the first 3 issues.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/11/15/marvel-cancels-star-wars-shadow-of-vader-chuck-wendig/

 

I just can’t seem to get too disappointed by that news.

When it was first announced, I thought it sounded cool. One shots of Vader spread over the saga.

But then I read more about the individual issues, and how absurd some of the story lines were going to be (not in a good way absurd), and I can’t say that I am going to miss this mini.

It sounded like a couple of hipsters sitting in a coffee shop saying things like, “I didn’t know how much I needed a Willow Hood/Vader story in my life, but now that I have heard about it, [insert shut up and take my money .gif]”

Also, people that say, “I didn’t know how much I needed (x) in my life...”, and people who use the Shut Up and take my money .gif, are the worst. THE WORST.

 

I think it was even lower, 10 grand.

That Toys That Made Us episode about Star Wars was actually really eye-opening, given that it pretty clearly pops the pervasive belief that Lucas was some kind of genius in getting the toy rights from Star Wars, when really he was lucky to get even the very raw deal he did get.

 

I'm disappointed to hear about Shadow of Vader being canceled because that means we won't get to see more of the Acolytes of the Beyond anytime soon.

 

Not necessarily - anyone could develop that further.

 

Anyone could write it better too.

 

Wait, it was seriously going to include a Willrow Hood story?

 

Yup -- StarWars.com posted these issue summaries:

Spoiler: Shadow of Vader issue summaries

Issue #1 is a Friday the 13th homage, with Vader hunting down kids at summer camp;
issue #2 stars the one-and-only Willrow Hood;
issue #3 centers on a morgue attendant on the Death Star;
issue #4 diverges to focus on the Acolytes of the Beyond;
issue #5 follows a New Republic pilot — whose parents were killed by Vader — who joins the Resistance only to learn that Leia’s father is the Sith Lord.

 

The only one that sounds remotely interesting to me was Issue #5.