Dark Horse Losing Star Wars

Well, we knew this had to happen and there's been a great deal of speculation. More on when rather than if Star Wars would move back to Marvel which was bought by Disney several years ago.

The announcement came out on StarWars.com last Friday. Marvel would be picking up the Star Wars story lines in 2015. For those keeping track, that's also the same year Episode VII is scheduled to be released.

The news that Dark Horse is losing Star Wars is bitter sweet.

For more than two decades, Dark Horse Comics were integral in the expanded universe of the movie franchise.

Dark Horse Comics was the first to take the expanded universe 5,000 years into the past with the Tales of the Jedi series. The stories moved through the history of the Star Wars universe including the movies and ending 150 years into the future with the Legacy series.

Recent accomplishments of Dark Horse include going even further in the past with Dawn of the Jedi which dates about 25,000 to 36,000 years before the birth of Luke Skywalker and a new ongoing series of Star Wars from the original trilogy shortly after the Battle of Yavin (the first Death Star destroyed).

It looks like all of the ongoing pieces will be phasing out this year from Dark Horse, and whether they will be taken up again by Marvel remains to be seen.

The joy I found in reading the Dark Horse Comics was because authors stayed true to continuity which is so important to the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I think our first view of how Disney will handle the issue of continuity in the new films will likely be answered by the first books produced by Marvel next year. I certainly hope Disney and Marvel don't throw out 40 years of stories just to try and reboot the franchise.

On the plus side, I think its important for the Star Wars title to be under one umbrella as a lot of changes are about to happen very quickly.

As Dark Horse comics editor Randy Stradley put it:

"With a new film scheduled every year, and a new television series, it is likely that there will be a lot of comics pages devoted to adaptations and direct spin-off stories in support of the films and TV shows. That's not where my interests lie, and it has never been Dark Horse's strong suit"

It  has been a great run with Dark Horse, and I will certainly miss it. But I do look forward to a new future with the Star Wars franchise.