A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The dust jacket resembles the Series One packaging, right down to the faux wax paper wrapper! (C) 2015 Abrams ComicArts and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) A long time ago in an apartment building far, far away, I started collecting Topps Star Wars trading cards. It was the autumn of 1977 and George Lucas's space-fantasy film was still in its long, record-setting first run in theaters. Kenner Toys was frantically attempting to make the first batch of action figures and other toys in time for that year's Christmas shopping season - but wouldn't quite make it. Marvel Comics' six-issue series was still only in Issue # 3, and there was no Internet or social media like there is today for fans across the globe to exchange opinions or discuss plot points of the year's most popular movie.  And because the home video revolution was still a few years away, fans could only "bring the movie home" in a bare handful of ways: The novelization by George Lucas (

This will always be the "core canon" of Star Wars, even under the House of the Mouse. (C) 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Does Disney-owned Lucasfilm ignore the old Star Wars 'Expanded Universe' when determining canon? Pretty much, yes. I understand that a vocal group of  Star Wars  fans (which don’t represent the vast majority of  Star Wars  fandom but nevertheless make lots of noise, especially online) feels that the old Expanded Universe, aka  Star Wars  Legends, is not the primary source for the Sequel Trilogy and languishes, according to them, in The Walt Disney Company’s equivalent of purgatory. Apparently, for many fans, especially those who were teens and/or young adults in the Dark Times between the Classic Trilogy and the Prequels, the Expanded Universe  was  the  Star Wars  universe, only instead of movies, its main fare was a series of novels, comic books, graphic novels, and a plethora of video games, spac

(C) 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. & Penguin Random House. Cover art and design: Will Staehle 2017 is the 40th Anniversary year that commemorates the premiere of writer-director George Lucas's original 1977  Star Wars film. In honor of the occasion, the past 10 months have seen the release of the home media editions of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Season Three of Disney's animated series. Star Wars: Rebels, as well as a YT-1300's cargo hold's worth of 40th Anniversary action figures, posters, limited edition sculptures, and other collectible items.   And in advance of the upcoming theatrical debut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, many publishing companies licensed by Disney-owned Lucasfilm Ltd. are stocking bookstore shelves with novels, comic books, a seventh William Shakespeare's Star Wars book - this one based on The Force Awakens - and illustrated reference books such as DK Books' Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia. On Tuesday. October 3, Penguin Random H

(C) 1995 Bantam Books/Lucasfilm Ltd. Star Wars:Tales From Jabba's Palace is one of several anthologies of short stories set in George Lucas' "galaxy far, far away" that delve into the cast of supporting characters that were seen in specific scenes of Classic Trilogy Episodes IV, V, and VI. Edited by prolific Star Wars author Kevin J. Anderson ( Darksaber, The Jedi Academy Trilogy, and various Dark Horse comic book series), this volume contains 19 entertaining stories set within the walled palace of Tatooine crime boss Jabba the Hutt. In the dusty heat of twin-sunned Tatooine lives the wealthiest gangster in a hundred worlds, master of a vast crime empire and keeper of a vicious, flesh-eating monster for entertainment (and disposal of his enemies). Bloated and sinister, Jabba the Hutt might have made a good joke -- if he weren't so dangerous. A cast of soldiers, spies, assassins, scoundrels, bounty hunters, and pleasure seekers have come to his palace,

(C) 1993 Bantam Skylark Books Although most of the Star Wars novels and other literary spin-offs (graphic novels, reference works, and screenplays) are primarily written for general audiences that include adult fans, the sextet of Bantam Skylark books written by Paul and Hollace Davis is targeted squarely at a specific audience, namely, young readers between the ages of 10 and 13. The first three novels in the series ( The Glove of Darth Vader, The Lost City of the Jedi, and Zorba the Hutt's Revenge ) purport to be a continuation of the Star Wars saga set in a nebulous time period between the events in Return of the Jedi and Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire . With the second Death Star's destruction and the deaths of both Emperor Palpatine and Lord Darth Vader at the Battle of Endor, rival factions vie for control of the crumbling Galactic Empire. One faction, led by the surviving Grand Moffs, has temporarily installed the former Slave Lord of Kessel, Trioculous

(C) 2017 Dorling Kindersley/Penguin Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd. May 25, 2017 marks the 40th Anniversary of the theatrical premiere of Star Wars, a space-fantasy film written and directed by a young filmmaker named George Lucas. It was financed and released by 20th Century Fox, a studio led by a board of directors that was skeptical of the movie set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" that theater owners who wanted to screen The Other Side of Midnight (Fox's expected hit movie for 1977) could only do so if they booked Star Wars during the summer. (Only 40 theaters in the entire U.S. had agreed to show Star Wars when Fox tried to market the film before May 1977, so the studio decided to play hardball and made the theater owners an offer they couldn't refuse.) The 33-year-old Lucas's "space movie" would only be a modest hit, and Fox would be lucky to get back its $11 million investment.  The "suits" were wrong. Star Wars was not

(C) 2016 Marvel Comics & Lucasfilm Ltd. Cover art by Phil Noto On December 6, 2016, Marvel Comics published Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a 136-page hardcover compilation of the six-issue comics adaptation of director J.J. Abrams' eponymous blockbuster space-fantasy film. Written by novelist, screenwriter, and game designer Chuck Wendig ( Star Wars: Aftermath ) and illustrated by Luke Ross and Frank Martin, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is based on the screenplay by J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt, as well as the characters and situations created by George Lucas. IT'S TRUE - ALL OF IT!  THE BIGGEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR JUMPS FROM THE BIG SCREEN TO THE COMIC-BOOK PAGE! It's been three decades since the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star and toppled the Galactic Empire...but now, on the remote planet of Jakku...there is a stirring in The Force. A young scavenger named Rey...a deserting Stormtrooper named Finn...an ace pilot named Poe...and a d