You’re Far Too Trusting: Marvel Reclaiming Star Wars Comics License From Dark Horse In 2015

Remember a little more than a year ago, when The Walt Disney Company bought the license to Star Wars from George Lucas? Who had owned the rights since its creation as a concept in 1974 through 2012, and had spent years made sure that the people creating stories in that universe were of the finest possible calibre? You know, except when he forgot to vet that rotten hack who wrote and directed Episodes 1 through 3, which nearly steered the entire franchise into a ditch? Yeah, Lucas should’ve eviscerated that rotten bastard… but I digress.

Anyway. At the time, there was a lot of speculation that Disney would take the Star Wars comic book publishing license away from Dark Horse Comics (who has held the license since the very early 1990s, when they published Dark Empire and when the only people who gave a shit about Star Wars were unfuckable members of Generation X – Hi, Kevin Smith and me in college!) and return it to Marvel Comics, who had the original license back in 1977 and held it until the late 1980s, when it was no longer cool or needed to save the company when it was in danger of going down the shitter in 1976.

However, that was all speculation, and year-old speculation at that. And it would be laughable to revisit that speculation if it hadn’t turned out to be completely and utterly true: Marvel will be the sole comic book publisher of Star Wars as of 2015.

So here’s the official sunny news from Disney:

The Walt Disney Company’s Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment are joining forces to bring new Star Wars adventures to readers across the galaxy, with Marvel granted exclusive rights to create and publish Star Wars comics and graphic novels beginning in 2015.

The agreement marks a homecoming for the Star Wars comic books. Marvel Comics published the first Star Wars comic book, Star Wars #1, in March 1977, which went on to sell more than 1 million copies. Marvel Comics published its Star Wars series for nine years. In 1991, Dark Horse Comics took over the license, publishing fan favorite titles like Dark Empire and Star Wars: Legacy. Last year, Dark Horse released The Star Wars #1, an adaptation of George Lucas’ original rough-draft screenplay for the film, garnering rave reviews and national media attention and ranking among the top-selling Star Wars comics of all time.

“Dark Horse Comics published exceptional Star Wars comics for over 20 years, and we will always be grateful for their enormous contributions to the mythos, and the terrific partnership that we had,” said Carol Roeder, director of Lucasfilm franchise publishing, Disney Publishing Worldwide. “In 2015, the cosmic adventures of Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca will make the lightspeed jump back to Marvel, to begin a new age of adventures within the Star Wars universe.”

On one level, this is fine. After all, Disney now owns Star Wars, and Disney owns Marvel, so only a Goddamned idiot would allow some other company to reap a dime from the property from comics when there’s a large comics publisher in-house. And while a year ago, I made light of the fact that no major creators were working on Star Wars comics for Dark Horse, since then, Brian Wood has been writing a damn good Star Wars comic for almost a year now, so clearly at least one A-List creator can be persuaded to work on the property. So maybe Marvel can get someone like Brian Michael Bendis, who has been kicking ass on similar title Guardians of The Galaxy for almost a year, to take a whack at Han, Leia and Luke.

But I don’t want anyone to forget that Dark Horse has been publishing Star Wars comics in good faith since 1991, a year when Star Wars was so out of favor, ordering a “Force FX Lightsaber” would have ended in the ownership of some device that featured a clit bumper. Lest we forget: the pop culture resurgence of Star Wars coincided with Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which was released in 1994. So it took some real vision for Dark Horse to pick up Star Wars when it did.

So how does Dark Horse feel about the license being revoked?

All things come to pass. So too, do all licensed deals. I am sad to report that Disney, the new owner of Lucasfilm, has notified us here at Dark Horse of their intention to move the Star Wars publishing license to another of their recent acquisitions, Marvel Comics, beginning in 2015. This will end a partnership that has lasted more than two decades.

For those who are new to the industry, Dark Horse revolutionized the treatment of comics based on films. After a history of movie properties being poorly handled with little regard for execution and continuity, Dark Horse took a new approach, carefully choosing licenses and approaching them with excitement and creative energy. Our goal was to create sequels and prequels to the films we loved, paying careful attention to quality and detail, essentially treating those films as though they were our own. Star Wars has been the crown jewel of this approach. We began chasing the title as far back as 1989, and with the launch of Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy’s Dark Empire, a new era in comics was born. I’m not ashamed to admit that we were Star Wars geeks, and we have been determined to spare neither effort nor expense in the pursuit of excellence.

It is ironic that this announcement comes at a time when Dark Horse is experiencing its most successful year ever. For obvious reasons, we have prepared for this eventuality by finding new and exciting projects to place on our schedule for 2015 and beyond. Will they take the place of Star Wars? That’s a tall order, but we will do our best to make that happen. In the meantime, 2014 may be our last year at the helm of the Star Wars comics franchise, but we plan to make it a memorable one. We know that fans of the franchise will expect no less. The Force is with us still.

Now… I will say that I feel a small amount of Schadenfreude over this, because Dark Horse was more than happy to yank away the license to Angel from IDW three or four years ago, after Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8 was a success. And when I say, “success,” I mean financial, because by the time that series ended, I had no fucking idea what the hell was going on. But that’s not the point.

My point is that Dark Horse took on the Star Wars license when it wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. And they did damn good work on it… at least to start with. Sure, they spent a lot of years punting out series after series of B-List talent humping the license, but at least in 2013, they put out solid issues of Brian Wood’s Star Wars, and at least took a chance by adapting Lucas’s first draft of Star Wars.

And even if Dark Horse hadn’t done what they did last year? It’s important to remember that, for Generation X, Dark Horse produced the first decent new Star Wars visual story since Return of The Jedi (and when it comes to calling that movie “decent,” your mileage may vary). They had faith when no one else did… and helped those of us who had put aside Star Wars between our 12th and 19th birthdays remember that we loved that galaxy far, far away.

There is a generation of Star Wars fans who think that what happened after Return of The Jedi is chronicled in Timothy Zahn’s trilogy and in Dark Horse’s Dark Empire. And while J. J. Abrams’s new movie will overwrite that as canon, some of us won’t forget how it made us remember how we loved Star Wars when no one else seemed to.

So thanks, Mike Richardson and Dark Horse Comics. May The Force be with you.