While earlier panels, like the publishing one and The High Republic‘s gave us glimpses at some of the various upcoming comics from both Dark Horse and Marvel, the latter’s output got its own time to shine. It explored some of what’s to come on series we already know and love and revealed two exciting upcoming projects: a Yoda miniseries spanning different eras of the little green guy’s life and Star Wars: Visions related comics as well!
Let’s start with Yoda, a 10 (or 9, sources have varied on both) issue miniseries with three trilogies within it, as helmed by three different writer/artist teams: Cavan Scott (who gave a separate interview on the project) and Nico Leon, who kick things off with The High Republic set story, taking place sometime between Phase 1 and Phase 2, with Phase 2 starting 150 years prior to Phase 1 in case you were unawares, so my hope this is where we’d see what happened with Yoda during his forced vacation and epic return to the Jedi isn’t happening; Jody Houser and Luke Ross will be somewhere in the prequel era, which means Count Dooku will make an appearance; and lastly Marc Guggenheim and Alessandro Miracolo with an undisclosed era set story, so I’ll be curious where they’re going, considering the framing story for Yoda is basically like the Obi-Wan comic, where Yoda’s on Dagobah ruminating on his life prior to Luke’s initial arrival. If there’s a way to do Yoda in comics, it’s something more like this, giving creators a chance to explore the Jedi’s very long and very full life.
UPDATE: Clarification has been made and the Visions comics will actually be new stories, not continuations, which sort of makes sense considering how complicated it might be to work on stories from so many different teams. Original follows: The next reveal was Star Wars: Visions comics which will be continuations for the episodes we’ve already enjoyed! Is it more of F’s story from “The Village Bride“? “Lop & Ochō” focused where the sisterly feud is finally resolved? More lovely and inventive “The Ninth Jedi” tales to come? Back story on the creepy old Sith from “The Elder“? Regardless, this is a fun way to expand and explore the doorways these various Visions opened, much like the absolutely riveting and unique Ronin novel, which took “The Duel” and blew it up in some of the most imaginative ways possible.
The rest of the panel dove a little into what’s to come on Doctor Aphra, Bounty Hunters, Darth Vader (Vol. 3), Star Wars (Vol. 2), Han Solo & Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan, but they remained quiet on anything The Hidden Empire, the third part of Qi’ra’s comic trilogy, which I was a little surprised by. It’s set to come out in 2022, but with all the delays lately, it might’ve potentially been pushed back to far later 2022, early 2023, but hopefully we’ll find out sooner rather than later. For Aphra, writer Alyssa Wong teased the return of some familiar faces (Magna? Triple-Zero & BT-1?) and it would only get weirder from here, if Aphra DYING AND BEING RESURRECTED wasn’t weird enough (here’s a glimpse of issue #22!)! Ethan Sacks said the upcoming Bounty Hunters issues would be the big culmination of its overall story, thankfully, while issues 27/28 will be a two-parter with connecting covers. Obi-Wan‘s second issue will be a haunted house like story, which you can see some interiors previewed at the convention! And a whole host of variants for Charles Soule’s big issue #25 were shown off:
#StarWars #25 will be @CharlesSoule’s 100th entry in the franchise— an anthology collecting new short stories from the world and characters of every title he previously wrote. pic.twitter.com/NmbZoAtuLh
— LaughingPlace.com (@laughing_place) May 28, 2022
Star Wars comics have a lot of delightful stories to tell and I was happy to see Jody Houser returning to add another non-male creative to Marvel’s upcoming output, but unfortunately they didn’t do enough to bring about any perceivable change to a male dominated creative slate. At this rate, I don’t ever expect them to try but I won’t stop hoping.
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.