In a move surprising no one really (Since Disney now owns both), starting 2015 Marvel will resume publishing Star Wars comics as Dark Horse loses the license. Kind of a shame. Dark Horse really created the modern, high quality movie tie in comic business but, like I said, this really surprised no one once Disney bought Star Wars.
Story, along with a very classy response from Dark Horse, here.
I wonder if they will (or even can, legally) continue any of the established plots and characters from the Dark Horse comics.
Shame. I really enjoyed the KOTR series. Heck, I even enjoyed Legacy. Though I’ve never read the old Marvel SW comics, what I’ve read about them suggested they were rather… um. Wacky. I’m sure that they’ll stick to the straight and narrow…ish, but my impression of the old colors my expectations of the new, admittedly unfairly.
The most disappointing was the fact that DH just started a new series set after A New Hope that was very promising. Looks like that will end with Issue 20.
I wonder if they’ll bring back that green rabbit guy.
I did enjoy the first Crimson Empire series. I understand there were two more, but I’ve not read them.
Or the telepathic space bunnies.
Will, maybe not, but unless Dark Horse had a lot more weight to throw around than most companies who do licensed books, or Lucasfilms were particularly generous with their licensing agreements, anything that appeared in the books is most likely Lucasfilms’ property, barring tricksiness on DH’s part (probably of a ‘Circuit Breaker’ variety). And even if they were tricksy, it’s likely only a handful of characters who will not be available to Marvel - the actual plots would be perfectly acceptable (though, perhaps awkward if too populated by characters that aren’t their property).
I think things would have moved that way regardless. Dark Empire, the first Star Wars comics that DH published, and which really set the tone for serious handling of the material above nonsense like talking rabbits, was actually at one time supposed to have been published by Marvel.
cite: a few years ago I came across some old copies of Marvel Age, a magazine Marvel used to publish about their comics, and in one issue there was a preview they ran for Dark Empire.
Sucks.
Dark Horse was quality.
Marvel–very, very much less so. Most of Marvel’s movie adaptations of all types stunk.
I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a provision for royalties on characters wholly created by Dark Horse showing up in non-Dark Horse works. But I can’t imagine that being much of stumbling block for someone with Disney’s deep pockets. The bigger question is how much of the EU are they going to want to keep, and how much are they going to get rid of to make room for what they want to do in the new movies.
I loved him!
I don’t know if comics are different but when you write a tie in Novel you are paid for the service of writing and the license holder owns the story and thus can do whatever they want with it and the characters in it. For example, if you create a character in a Star Trek novel, Pocket Books now owns that character and can do whatever they want with it.