The Fate of the Force in Comics - What Will Happen To Star Wars in 2015?

Today’s big comic book news undoubtedly gravitates around the Force, Jedi, and Marvel Comics. Yes, Dark Horse has finally lost the license to Star Wars like many predicted and some even feared, ending their 22 year run later this year. But Marvel is picking up the reigns come 2015 with some undoubtedly interesting plans that they’ve yet to announce. Will Marvel pick up where they left off with their 1980′s Star Wars on-going? Will they continue the stories Dark Horse has been brilliantly presenting in the original trilogy era, the Legacy era, etc? Or will they go an entirely new route? Marvel certainly has a stable of talented writers and artists working for them and have the opportunity to present many amazing new stories set in the Star Wars universe, but what about those stories currently still unfolding at Dark Horse?

Many of the current Dark Horse creators have worked with Marvel in the past, so it is not unbelievable to think they might work with Marvel on Star Wars in the future. In fact, the current Star Wars on-going series at Dark Horse is written by the same man who is currently writing the X-men at Marvel, Brian Wood. When we learned from Carlos D’anda that Dark Horse’s on-going Star Wars series would end with issue #20 (written by Wood and drawn by the returning D’anda), he did not seem against following the book to Marvel if the option presented itself. Other creators, like the talented Fillbach brothers, seemed less interested in working with the Star Wars property again as they moved on to other great creator owned projects. However, there is one creator we now know is actively looking to stay with Star Wars as he pursues options at Marvel, and that is John Ostrander. John Ostrander is an incredibly talented comic writer who has worked on the Star Wars comics at Dark Horse for over 10 years. Ostrander is responsible for writing characters like Quinlan Vos and Cade Skywalker in titles like Dark Horse’s original Star Wars on-going (that later became Star Wars: Republic), Star Wars: Legacy, Star Wars: Agent of the Empire, and Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, amongst other mini-series and one-shots. On his Facebook today, John Ostrander posted:

“I’ll certainly contact [Marvel] and see if my working for them will fit in with their plans. We’ll see and hope. In the meantime, I just want to say I’m enormously proud of the work I’ve done on SW, along with Jan Duursema and some other very talented artists.”

Perhaps there is hope to see Ostrander writing Star Wars in 2015 and beyond, despite a lack of Dark Horse publishing the comics. The idea that Duursema and Parsons might also continue to work with him would excite me and many other fans even more. But what if Marvel chooses another route? I certainly think it would be interesting to have someone like Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, or Dan Abnett pen a Star Wars series, as all are regular Marvel contributors who have done wonders in the cosmos of the Marvel Universe. Or perhaps more of a Marvel legacy writer like Roy Thomas or Jim Starlin? Though most enticing and certainly an option is the idea that we could still see Joss Whedon vision of Star Wars in comic format at Marvel. Joss has written several great Marvel comics before and expressed and extreme interest in doing something with Star Wars, but his work on Marvel movies for Disney has kept him away from being able to direct the new films coming out from Lucasfilms under Disney. Perhaps Marvel is our answer to all those Joss Whedon Is My Master Now T-shirts from a few years back…

It’s hard to say what the future of Star Wars comics will be like at Marvel come 2015, and Marvel is certainly in no rush to show their hand just yet. Will they roll out 2015 with a series of new Star Wars titles? Or will we just get a new adaption of the upcoming Star Wars 7? Will Dark Horse’s additions to the EU be carried over or even acknowledged? And who can we expect to write and draw whatever new Star Wars comics come our way? For now we’ll just have to wait and see, while hoping the force is with the fans.