After months of teasing, Lucasfilm has finally revealed the secret of the mysterious Project Luminous. It’s actually an ambitious new publishing initiative called Star Wars: The High Republic. Over the course of several years and a number of new novels and comic books, Lucasfilm will shed light on an era set 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace. It’s an exciting new development in the Star Wars franchise. And even more importantly, this announcement is just what Lucasfilm needs to reinvigorate the Star Wars publishing line.
The Expanded Universe That Was
The Star Wars books and comics have been in a tricky spot over the past six years. Lucasfilm retired the classic Expanded Universe line in 2014, re-branding most of those existing comics and novels under the “Legends” banner to denote they no longer take place in Disney’s official Star Wars timeline. The Lucasfilm Story Group was established to map out the future of the franchise and ensure that every new project – be it movie, TV series, comic book, novel or video game – finds its proper place in the revamped Star Wars timeline.
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There’s a lot to be gained by having one team overseeing all these stories. It ensures a movie doesn’t come along and contradict a previously published novel, or a new comic doesn’t fly in the face of what happened in a canon video game. However, the catch is that newer novels and comics often feel constrained in a way they didn’t in the Expanded Universe era. The EU was basically a lawless, wide-open frontier, with writers and artists largely given free reign to flesh out the time before and after the movies. The multi-year New Jedi Order series killed off major characters like Chewbacca and Anakin Solo and brought the New Republic to the brink of destruction. It’s hard to imagine any comics or novels in the Disney era having such a profound effect on the saga. These smaller-scale stories are now relegated to more of a supporting role, dancing between the raindrops of the movies and TV shows and filling in details where appropriate.
As good as some of these comics and novels are individually, there’s a certain sense of wonder and discovery to being a Star Wars reader that’s been lost in the Disney era. There’s a waning enthusiasm that’s borne out in the sales figures for Marvel’s flagship Star Wars comic. According to industry analyst Comichron, 2015’s Star Wars #1 sold a little over a million copies, making it far and away the best-selling comic of the past decade. By comparison, Marvel’s recent relaunch of Star Wars has so far sold fewer than 100,000 copies. It wasn’t even the best-selling Marvel title in the month of its release. While Marvel was never going to be able to sustain that initial Star Wars hype, this steep drop suggests enthusiasm for the Star Wars comics line is waning. While there’s unfortunately no comparable source for sales figures on the Star Wars novels, the decline in comic readership and the generally sluggish sales of Hasbro’s Star Wars toys over the holiday season both paint a pretty clear picture.
Star Wars Publishing: A New Hope
That’s where The High Republic comes in. This new initiative stands out because it’s so unlike anything Marvel and Del Rey have attempted since the publishing line was relaunched in 2014. Rather than anchoring this story to one of the Star Wars movies or attempting to bridge the gap between one story and the next, Lucasfilm has carved out a vast swath of fresh territory for writers and artists to explore. The High Republic is very pointedly set in an era that has rarely ever been explored in any medium. It’s set centuries before the Skywalker Saga, yet also thousands of years after the popular Old Republic era.
At the High Republic reveal event, Lucasfilm made it clear the goal is to foster the exact sort of storytelling freedom we haven’t been seeing in the publishing line lately. These new stories “will not overlap any of the filmed features or series currently planned for production, giving creators and partners a vast amount of room to tell Star Wars stories with new adventures and original characters.”
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The Promise of the High Republic
Even at this early stage, with the first wave of books and comics still months off, the High Republic feels like a return to the exciting era of The New Jedi Order, when writers were free to tell bold stories that could have a seismic impact on Star Wars continuity. Apart from inevitable guest appearances by the likes of Yoda or Jabba the Hutt, the High Republic spotlights a brand new cast of heroes and villains and a galaxy-spanning conflict we never even knew existed. These stories are free to kill major characters, dramatically upset the status quo, and otherwise reshape the landscape of the Star Wars universe. Short of blowing up Coruscant, there’s very little the High Republic’s storytellers can do that would interfere with the events of the Skywalker Saga.
This is exactly what Lucasfilm needs to do to restore the energy and unpredictability of the Expanded Universe. It’s really a best of both worlds situation. The High Republic allows writers and artists to think big and break as many toys as they want. There’s finally room again for books as game-changing as Heir to the Empire or Vector Prime. But unlike with the EU, we know that these stories have a clear, officially sanctioned place in Star Wars canon. They won’t suddenly be wiped off the board because Lucasfilm greenlights a competing High Republic movie in five years.
The High Republic may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Maybe the lack of recognizable Star Wars characters is a deal-breaker for some. That’s fine. Marvel and Del Rey will continue to pump out new stories featuring iconic movie heroes like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. But for those who want to see the books and comics move away from the confines of the movies and do something truly new and different, the High Republic should be a gift that keeps on giving for years to come.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Star Wars – The High Republic Is Just What the Franchise Needs