In a move that was fairly inevitable, Disney and Lucasfilm today announced that Marvel Entertainment will be publishing Star Wars comics for the foreseeable future. Marvel is a subsidiary of Disney, as it Lucasfilm, which was purchased in 2012 from George Lucas for over $4 billion.
Starting in 2015 Marvel will have exclusive rights to both create and publish Star Wars comics and graphic novels.
Marvel will be taking the publishing rights to Star Wars back from Dark Horse Comics, which has created and published Star Wars comics since 1991. Before that, Marvel had published Star Wars comics, including the original Star Wars #1.
“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 franchise publishing Lucasfilm. “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.”
Just this past fall Dark Horse was responsible for adapting one of George Lucas’ original Star Wars screenplay drafts into a short 8-issue comic series. Titled The Star Wars, the comics featured an older Luke Skywalker, a green alien Han solo, and a mask-less Darth Vader.