StarWars.com announced today that Marvel will be reprinting Star Wars comics originally published by Dark Horse. First on the slate for April 2015 is a giant 440-page tome of a book, Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Empire Vol. 1 TPB.
This Epic Collection will contain a variety of Legends stories from the timeframe of Episode III:
- STAR WARS: REPUBLIC 78-80 (Introducing Post-Revenge of the Sith Darth Vader and Jedi fugitive Dass Jennir)
- STAR WARS: PURGE 1
- STAR WARS: PURGE — SECONDS TO DIE 1
- STAR WARS: PURGE — THE HIDDEN BLADE 1
- STAR WARS: PURGE — THE TYRANT’S FIST 1-2
- STAR WARS: DARTH VADER AND THE LOST COMMAND 1-5
- STAR WARS: DARK TIMES 1-5 (featuring Dass Jennir)
The collected edition will include work from creators including writers John Ostrander, Randy Stradley, Haden Blackman and Alexander Freed; plus artists Luke Ross, Douglas Wheatley, Jim Hall, Chris Scalf, Marco Castiello, Andrea Chella and Rick Leonardi.
Analysis Droids: What is interesting about the announcement on the official Star Wars website: No mention of Dark Horse as the original publisher, even though all the listed comics (and the listed writers and artists) are from the Dark Horse run, and all of them are from the past 10 years. Nope, this is a cut and paste of the Marvel press release, and so Dark Horse is not mentioned.
Announcing this on the day that the last new Dark Horse Star Wars issue (Legacy #18) comes out signifies that from now on, the spotlight is on Marvel for Star Wars Comics. There are a few remaining Dark Horse collections coming out, including a super-sized gallery book focusing on the pencil art of Dark Times 1-5.
But this news means that Marvel and Dark Horse have a deal, where the House of Ideas has either bought or licensed the original art to these comics so that it would be reprinted with a Marvel logo. And with a title like Empire: Volume 1, we can expect to see more Dark Horse comics reprinted under the Marvel Epic Collection banner, most likely more of Dark Times and the various Darth Vader series that both take place in the post-ROTS era.
Overall, this news comes as a bit of a surprise to me – While it makes sense for Marvel to shell out to have instant SW product that sells while they start to build up their own comic lines, I didn’t see any indications that Dark Horse would want to sell, but I suppose the price was right. I am curious as to how royalties for comics work.
In other Marvel Star Wars news, the January 2015 omnibus, The Marvel Years: Volume 1, will have a variant cover. Announced previously, this 880 page omnibus will contain the first 44 issues of the 1970s Marvel Star Wars comics along with Annual #1, connecting A New Hope to The Empire Strikes Back. Besides the regular cover by Howard Chaykin, there will be a direct market version with a Greg Hildebrant cover.