Lucasfilm announces a new direction for the Star Wars EU

Did you just have an epiphany?

 

How could there be anything in it for me? Its a whole new universe. No actual Star wars characters are returning. Sure, a few names are being used, but that's it. I want to read a universe inhabited by Jaina Solo, Jagged Fel, Ben Skywalker, Rogue Squadron, Mara Jade (I know she's dead in the Eu, which was stupid, I'd still like to read stuff set in the past with her) and many others.

I'm not going to get involved with a universe that steals SW character/place names, but isn't the one I've been following for 10+ years. Like I've said, its characters like Mara Jade, Corran Horn, and probably dozens of others that made me go from someone who just enjoys the original SW movies to a fullblown Star Wars fan. They made it a Universe to get invested in, and not just a series of three good movies and three bad movies. If I wanted a new universe, I'd read another Sci Fi series.

Its not like this is easy. I just watched Episode IV again yesterday (my first time seeing the pre-special edition VHS version), and it reminded me how much I want to be excited, how much I want to theorize about the movies and talk about how there is awesome new Star Wars stuff. For a second after it was over, and the credit song was playing, I was hyped and thinking about how cool it would be to see the cast back and get a new movie. But, for me, there just isn't much left to be hopeful about. The whole reason I read the books is gone, and the movies have been handed to a guy whose work I've only hated. I have nothing left to be excited about, I can't see anything positive coming from the Star Wars franchise anymore. I wish I did, but the franchise now has everything possible working against it. I can't be excited for the movies, and now the books are no longer the books I want to read. I'll always love the old EU and the three good movies, but learning that I'll never get anything new that I have any chance of enjoying from the franchise is a hard thing to deal with as a fan.

You can think something is bad, but being objectively bad is hard to quantify. Does a majority have to hate something to make it objectively bad? Every thing I've said when it comes to things I think are bad apply to me, its my opinion. When I've admitted to hating something, I'm not the one to ask if the thing in question is bad in an objective way. I think you'd have to be neutral to the subject to give any kind of definitive answer. In my opinion, JJ Trek is horrible, and JJ Wars is the same thing with a new coat of paint. So, to me, its all completely bad. Nothing I hate is, from my perspective, good, but I can admit that my opinion isn't the only one. That said, in the end, its all opinion. If we had to just go around never giving our opinion and had to talk about everything like we had no strong feelings, then no one would talk about anything.


I'm not saying you have to like the EU, but EU haters act like no one likes the SW EU. The difference between a lot of EU haters in this thread, and my hatred for JJ Abrams, is that I'll freely admit that many people like JJ Trek, and will like JJ Wars. I acknowledge that I'm not the majority. I'll also admit that you can find a good amount of examples of horrible stories in the EU, its very far from perfect. But I don't pretend like JJ's stuff is universally hated, and talking like every SW fan hates or dismisses the EU, which there is a lot of in this thread,is ridiculous. The EU has lasted for decades, there are many, many fans. Pretending otherwise is just weird. That doesn't mean you can't dislike it, or even argue about it, but implying that its not important to many people is not right.

 

I posted this link upthread - http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0326/Star-Wars-novels-still-on-bestseller-lists

Star Wars novels sell a lot, I think probably more than Star Trek novels.

 

Soooo.... who are Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker playing?

Thank you for that. I missed your link earlier. Nonetheless, I'm curious to know numbers, not placement on a chart. Does first place equal a million readers? More? Less? That's more what I'm interested in: How many people are reading these books?

 

Stormtroopers, obviously. Duh!

 

I would pay good money to see a movie about two Stormtroopers played by Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker.

"Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?" indeed.

 

Nah.

Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker...

 

The way I see it, the main problem with the way the EU developed over time was that there was no central creative vision behind it and it seems dubious quality control. It's no wonder it's all over the place.

Put another way; the EU is now like a first draft of an expanded Star Wars Universe. The next one will (hopefully) be more coherent, more focused and with stronger continuity ties.

Indeed, one of my main bugbears (of which there are legion) was that authors would routinely mishandle EU characters that they themselves didn't originate; Mara Jade being a prime example.

Out of the books I've read, only Stackpole in his X-Wing novels seemed both willing and able to fully utilise characters created by another EU author. Both Talon Karde and Winter were well used and felt like fully integrated characters and not just extended cameos and name drops as they and others felt like in other books.

I think this is one of the main reasons things got so stagnant. Because there was little to no coordination character growth was positively glacial, if it existed at all.

 

Best. Fan Film. Idea. EVER.

 

During the Bantam era, that was true, but after Del Rey got the license the EU became far more coordinated and had more character growth.

 

Bantam and Dark Horse were coordinated and had a working relationship using same talent. That working relationship also lead to the development of what would become the NJO series. The relationship between comics and novels after Del Rey got the contract eventually broke down over the direction of NJO. The current relationship seem to be them not treading on each other's toes and minimal collaboration.

 

^The only collaboration between the comics and the novels back then that I'm aware of (besides the X-Wing comics and the Shadows of the Empire project) were the links between Dark Empire, Tales of the Jedi and the Academy trilogy, all of which were under he auspices of Kevin J. Anderson. That said, the degree of integration felt almost superfluous. All they really had in common was the existence of the same holocron in all three and Exar Kun in 'Dark Lords of the Sith/Sith War' with his spirit showing up in the 'Academy' books..

'Dark Empire' largly felt like an entity unto itself, seeming to all but ignore the Thrawn trilogy and by the time of the Academy trilogy, the new characters DE introduced appeared to vanish into thin air, never to even be mentioned AFAIK.
I mean where were Mara and Talon while all that was going on? You'd think since Palpatine basically had her brain on speed dial that she would have been in the mix somewhere. Either returned to his side or fighting his call.

As I've said before, I stopped reading after Crystal Star and Vector Prime so my awareness beyond that point is mostly from reading synopses. However, the impression I'm left with is that while the new books became more coordinated and almost serialised, they became less and less focused. Opting to tell one big multi-book story 'Game of Thrones' style instead of telling smaller character based stories that take place against the backdrop of a cohesive whole, with them only directly intersecting for special events.

 

Nom Anor, a major character in The New Jedi Order, made an appearance in Crimson Empire series as a prelude to the original galactic invasion storyline being planned by Dark Horse and Bantam. Then Del Rey took over the novels, and they were given control over the majority of the NJO storyline, which they then took in a different direction than Bantam and Dark Horse had been planning.

 

Anderson wasn't involved in Dark Empire.

 

I had read back in the day that Dark Empire and Heir to the Empire were being written at the same time so one was not aware of the other (this was in the days before solid continuity and oversight), leading to the DE to add a hasty screen crawl to explain why the Imperials were still on Coruscant.

I'd also read that Dark Horse was planning their own massive invasion story and had introduced Nom Anor as the set up for that. I believe they were supposed to be Sith from the other side of the galaxy or something. But then Bantam stole the Nom Anor character and did their own extragalactic alien invasion instead, leading to some bad blood.

 

Dark Empire was a project that begun under Marvel prior to Dark Horse obtaining the license. There is an ad circa January 1990 that promised Dark Empire in fall 1990. While there certainly was some overlap between the development of both Dark Empire and Heir to the Empire, the change of license sometime between early 1990 and December 1991 (when issue 1 of DE was published), I am curious to know if Lucasfilm had decided to cancel Dark Empire initially altogether in lieu of Heir to the Empire. If that is the case, I wonder when it started back up again and what made them not try to make the two storylines more compatible. I imagine it probably comes down to them not really caring about a combined Expanded Universe at that time.

 

I was never the biggest fan of the Yuuzhan Vong as a species or enemy in the EU, but a couple of very cool and creepy-looking action figures of Yuuzhan Vong villains got made by Hasbro, including Nom Anor. He was released in the premium Vintage Collection line in 2012 and was a pretty popular and fast seller. There was another Vong character made for the line of Comic Book two-packs.

 

No that invasion story was the NJO until Del Rey took it in a direction that conflicted with what Dark Horse wanted and basically resulted in them leaving the project and leaving Nom Anor to Del Rey. The original idea with Bantam was also supposedly to have involvement by Stackpole and Zahn

 

Yes, I believe his only involvement was having to re-work "Jedi Search" to account for a torn-up Coruscant coming out of the events of Dark Empire. The World Devastators are mentioned too.

 

Kam Solusar made his debut in the JAT but he was created by Tom Veitch for the aborted graphic novel Lightsider which would have fit in between Dark Empire 1 and 2.