A long time ago, in a galaxy not-so-far-away, in 1977, the first Star Wars movie was released…into a world that already had a Star Wars comic. Marvel published Star Wars #1 a month before the movie’s release. Licensed comics have been a part of the franchise since its inception, and while formats, styles and publishers have changed, I don’t see that changing. With the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, new films pending and the comics industry undergoing a financial recovery, we’re left with a lot of interesting questions about their future…

The History

Marvel originally acquired the rights to publish a limited six-issue adaptation of A New Hope, but it sold so extraordinarily well that they pushed for the opportunity to continue publishing it as an ongoing series. The limitations placed on them meant that they were not able to advance the plot or characters in any significant way, but this pushed them towards expanding outwards, introducing new characters and locations. Tonally, the Marvel comics vary wildly from later installations of the Expanded Universe, and it’s true that as a body of work they sit further down the canonical hierarchy, associated with giant green space bunnies and cheesy predictions of doom. But they also introduced characters such as Lumiya, who returned as a serious villain in Del Rey’s recent Legacy of the Force novel series. They introduced a complicated and well-received backstory for the Mandalorians, one that has proven remarkably resilient to retcons as authors keep finding ways to work it back in. John Jackson Miller states that Archie Goodwin’s work on the original Marvel Star Wars series directly inspired plotlines in his much more recent series, Knights of the Old Republic.
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Man oh man, the Bantam era. Not having discovered Star Wars until the Special Editions in 1997, I spent the next couple years racing through dozens of already-published novels before catching up to the “present” right around when the New Jedi Order started. As such, those first fifteen years after Return of the Jedi are kind of a blur for me; though I at least had the advantage of reading them mostly in chronological order. I don’t really remember the stories of that era, for the most part, as much as certain distinct moments—Han crashing the Falcon on Kessel. Bib Fortuna’s brain in a jar. Leia hiding from Thrawn on Honoghr. Anakin on Centerpoint Station. Jaina in her cell.

Cell? What cell? Why, on Hethrir’s worldcraft, of course, in The Crystal Star.

Having abducted all three Solo brats just prior to the opening of the novel (which was admirably in media res of him if nothing else), Hethrir, leader of the Empire Reborn cult, steals away to his worldcraft, which is a spaceship that’s also kind of a planet and…eh, it’s not important. Jacen and Jaina, all of five years old at this point, are locked in separate cells with a bunch of other kids at something of a reeducation camp designed to teach toddlers—the only people who could possibly buy Hethrir’s argument—how great Emperor Palpatine was and how thrilled they should all be that Hethrir is bringing evil back. The twins aren’t buying it, of course, and soon enough they lead an exodus with the help of a friendly dragon (no, really).

It’s fairly standard young-reader pablum, really; told well enough, but nothing especially clever or original. Except for one thing.

Hethrir is using the Force to dampen, and monitor, Jacen and Jaina’s still-burgeoning powers; Jaina describes it in her internal monologue as a heavy, wet blanket covering them and preventing them from exerting themselves to escape. So one night in her cell, Jaina starts to experiment—she reaches out to a single air molecule floating in the room. Wiggles it around. Hethrir doesn’t notice. She adds a few more, tries rubbing them together—a light appears! Hethrir still doesn’t notice.
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