Comics between Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Episode 8? (spoilers)

[ChrisIII]

While we've gotten a few "Journey to" books, I wonder if there's plans for any bridge comics between Force Awakens and Episode 8?


Back in the day Marvel did publish Star Wars comics set after the movie, although for the first year or so, they stayed away from the Empire/Vader until the Wheel storyline-and even then, there still was a lot of 'new' villains such as Baron Tagge, Crimson Jack and Valance. The post-ESB comics feature the Empire a bit more, but largely focused on Luke and Leia looking for new bases, or teaming up with Lando and Chewie for new leads on Han.But after ROTJ the comic focused mainly on the Nagai/Toffs and Lumiya as new bad guys. So they did their best to not really advance the main story of the films that much. Although not quite by Marvel, Archie Goodwin's newspaper strips (Archie wrote a large amount of the first years of the comic), which were largely made around the time of ROTJ, were able to better integrate continuity from the films as they were set mainly between ANH and ESB, and dealt with the story between the films such as Luke's growing knowledge of the force, Vader's hunt for him, Han and Leia's growing attraction and elements such as the rebels abandoing their Jungle moon base and escaping to Hoth while pursued by Vader's new Super star destroyer and it's fleet.


When Episodes I-III came out there seemed to be more continuity with Dark Horse and Lucasfilm, since the Expanded Universe had become more prominent at that time-even to the point of some comics characters appearing in the films and cartoons. Plus Lucasfilm in general was better able to coordinate the tie-ins (at least at first) than in the past, thanks in part to the internet.
However it can be argued that we already knew the end of the story anyway, so there was less of a chance of screwing up an important plot point or being contradicted later on. (Which happened anyway but that's another can of worms).

So should the comics cross into this territory? I'm guessing we might get some sort of limited series lead-in close to the film's release (Perhaps like ROTS's "Obsession" which mostly dealt with the fates of Durge and Ventress, although "Dark Disciple" offered a new canon version). Plus there's really not a lot of time for an ongoing to get rolling, since unlike Lucas's Star Wars films, Episode 8 is coming out rather quickly in May 2017. I guess the most 'safe' character to use at this point would be Poe, as Finn's coma,Rey's training with Luke, and the fate of the villains will no doubt be resolved more in the actual film.


I'm also guessing we'll probably be getting a "solo" Han series in 2016, although probably set during the OT or in the thirty year gap between ROTJ and TFA, as an earlier story could contradict the upcoming spin-off film. Although it could be done in a style similar to Dark Horse's Chewbacca, which was framed with a story set during the New Jedi Order, after Chewbacca had 'died' in the initial book Vector Prime (Chewie of course is alive in the film canon though) and the characters were sharing their memories.

[Holt]

I think they might be wary of it until we get a bit closer to the movie. You sort of alluded to the continuity problems with the first Marvel series (remember the Jabba debacle?) and there was even a bit of that to a much smaller degree with the comics between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Marvel might just want to wait until they have a more concrete idea of where Lucasfilm is going with Episode VIII before releasing anything that might accidentally get rendered non-canon.

[Panfoot]

I would hope at the least they move the ongoings into the post ROTJ period.

[Reality]

I think they might be wary of it until we get a bit closer to the movie. You sort of alluded to the continuity problems with the first Marvel series (remember the Jabba debacle?) and there was even a bit of that to a much smaller degree with the comics between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Marvel might just want to wait until they have a more concrete idea of where Lucasfilm is going with Episode VIII before releasing anything that might accidentally get rendered non-canon.

That's not a problem really now because the Star Wars story group oversees every piece of continuity in every game, movie, book, comic and TV show. They direct the writers on what they can do, and it seems quite cohesive so far.

But, for various reasons, I think we'll be getting mostly prequels to TFA. One revealing in more detail the origins of Kylo Ren would be awesome, one about Poe would be cool, a Phasma book with Finn cameos would be cool... lots of stuff could be done.