Will these be canon or just fan fiction?
Canon.
Disney wiped everything that was not the 6 movies, Clone Wars or Rebels. Any book or comic being released from this point on will now be considered part of the one, true canon. All overseen by the Story Group.
So it will be interesting to see what the "new official" adventures between the original 3 movies will be.
This is absolutely perfect. And since it was announced back on January 3rd that Marvel was getting Star Wars back I have literally been waiting all year for this.
My first comic was one of those big Treasury editions of STAR WARS (my first monthly though comic was STAR WARS #11), now Star Wars has come back home, and me with it.
STAR WARS was basically all that I read, and shortly after Star Wars left Marvel I had pretty much stopped reading comics altogether. I checked out whatever looked interesting every now and again and kept up with comic news, but rarely bought anything because nothing looked that great to me. That said, all three of these are perfect.
The biggest fear I had was that Marvel wouldn't put top talent on the books... I guess I didn't have anything to worry about.
And let make a quick checklist so I can remember everything I want to buy: From Image: LOW, PARADIGMS, CERULEAN, TOKYO GHOST, DESCENDER, INJECTION and INVISIBLE REPUBLIC. And from Marvel: STAR WARS, STAR WARS: DARTH VADER and STAR WARS: PRINCESS LEIA.
Whew. The most comics I've ever bought in my life.
Yeah anything outside of that line like for example the Dark Horse comics and the numerous prose novels for things like Jedi Academy are now considered 'legends' which means they may or may not be utilised, so Mara Jade or the Solo clan or Admiral Thawn may or may not exist.
I'm very interested in what Marvel plans on doing with these titles, and at the very least, I'll probably pick one the "main" Star Wars book.
Dark Horse did some cool things with the license, but I mostly enjoyed the old Tales of the Jedi and Dark Empire comics -- both '90s titles, and the newer stuff never really engaged me.
Judging by the leaked synopsis of Episode VII's story (which may or may not be true), it will not be hard to differentiate between the two bodies of canon as the new one is going to be 100% different...
They are probably only going to pump out a handful of products set between RotJ and VII, as Disney will want it to be very vague, to add a sense of mystery to the new film.
Good point, but once the film is close to release it'll be in their interest to cover that period seeing as it's all new and shiny.
Also whilst I respect the originals will always be the most loved it would be nice to do a series in the Prequel era, plenty of characters to work with.
The big question of course is... Star Wars and Marvel crossover?
I am really excited about this announcement. Like others I have been waiting to see what Marvel would do but forgot I might find out at SDCC. I was on my way to buying zero marvel titles and the pull me back in. Star Wars + first official post IV cannon + top marvel talent = three titles on my pull list.
I love the creative team on Star Wars. I pray they have three issues in the can, though... or it's gonna see massive delays!
A post-Jedi series is unlikely to happen until Episode VII has been released (if not later). They obviously don't want to reveal what's supposed to have happened during that time. Back in the '90s a similar rule was in effect for the time period right before Phantom Menace.
(Crap, RobinFan4880 beat me to it.)