One of the questions surrounding the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm and today’s rumor mill of the day has concerned the future of Star Wars comic books with Dark Horse. Many people have predicted that Star Wars will return back to Marvel (Disney’s in house comic company) and rumors today put that return date to be sometime in 2014. However, Randy Stradley, VP of Publishing for Dark Horse, commented on the Dark Horse messenger boards recently and said “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” indicating that the previous rumors are likely false.
There does, however, remain a decently strong chance that Marvel could reacquire the rights to publish Star Wars comics at some point within the next several years. I’m going to make it clear that this is all speculation on my part based upon rumors and the current state of comics. So what would that mean for the books themselves? First and foremost, the fate of the current or forthcoming books that Dark Horse is putting out could possibly be in limbo. Judging by the interview with CBR, both Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman seem to have at least a year’s worth of issues and story lines planned out if not more for the brand new Legacy comic. If Marvel does reacquire the Star Wars IP, will comics like Legacy or Agent of the Empire or the new Original Trilogy era comic continue under Marvel editors or would they be halted completely or halted and relaunched with completely new creative teams?
It would also bring the fate of the various creators into question. It is possible that some of these writers and artists could have exclusive contracts with Dark Horse therefore stopping them from making the change along with the Star Wars IP. If they don’t have exclusive contracts, it’s possible that some of these titles could simply seamless continue and just change editorial staffs. More likely than not though, you would probably see at least some creative team shifts but predicting those would be nigh impossible especially since it’s almost equally as impossible to predict what books sales might look like in 2014.
On the other side of things, some people have looked at Marvel’s current line up of writers and artists and become excited about the prospect of something like Bendis, Fraction, DeConnick, Remender, or Hickman writing a story set in the Star Wars universe. As far as artist goes, I know that I would personally love to see Skottie Young give some of the Star Wars comics and characters his baby treatment or Phil Noto or Jerome Opeña drawing a Star Wars book. Unfortunately, I honestly do not see that happening especially given the current book assignments and Marvel’s current tendency to double ship many of their more popular books. For those who don’t know what double ship means, it refers to a comic having two issues published each month instead of one. Obviously double shipping requires a very strict creative schedule and usually a fair bit of planning so each contributor can meet his or her deadline. Looking at the current and upcoming Marvel NOW schedule, it is very unlikely that most of the big name writers would have time to add another Marvel book to their schedules in addition to their own creator owned projects. That’s not saying it’s impossible (because let’s be honest: after the Episode VII announcement, nothing is impossible anymore) but it’s unlikely. This could potentially give some of the lesser known creators for Marvel a chance to shine or even some new talent to emerge.
On the other hand, there is also the chance that Marvel might not have any immediate interest in working on Star Wars comics in the immediate future especially given their current projects. Star Wars could possibly have a longer future with Dark Horse than most people anticipated. At the very least, given Stradley’s comment, it does not look likely that Dark Horse will lose their contract within the next few years.
At the end of the day, we really still don’t know anything for sure about whether or not Dark Horse will be losing the rights to Star Wars once their current contract is up. Once again though, we’d like to remind you that nothing is officially confirmed as being true until it is announced by StarWars.com.
While getting someone like DeConnick, Fraction, or Bendis might not be feasible at the moment, I think something that might also be of consideration is that Marvel may be able to attract names that Dark Horse may not be able to. Marvel seems to have a lot more financial firepower/resources at their disposal (Thanks Disney!) and may be able to use that to their advantage with a Star Wars IP.
Of course, if Marvel does land this IP – which I do think is the likely outcome – who knows who they might bring on to write and illustrate for it a five or six years down the road.
I guess as far as the future of Star Wars comics go, I believe the ceiling is much higher with Marvel than it is Dark Horse.
And I definitely don’t think we’re going to hear anything until Dark Horse’s contract is up in (I think) 2014. That does allow Stradley’s comment to hold true, nothing will be changing with Star Wars and Dark Horse any time soon. After that, though, I would be surprised if the contract was renewed.
I think it’s a given that the comics will be going to Marvel. That saddens me because to be honest even if they do keep the present EU going I don’t see anyone that Marvel brings on board topping the pairing of Ostrander/Duursema. At the same time my main concern is with all the content Dark Horse has already produced. I stopped being a single issue collector many years ago and mainly rely on the Omnibus collections. I’m not sure how the legalities of the switch from Dark Horse to Marvel will work, but I’m hopeful that it won’t impact Dark Horse continuing to produce Omnibuses of all their Star Wars content.