Monday, December 17, 2012

A Marvelous, Dark Horse...

It was great while it lasted...


Star Wars has a large, expansive universe beyond the films...

 From television, games, toys, clothing, books to comics, the galaxy George Lucas created is vast and filled with boundless opportunities. If you love Star Wars and you collect comics, then you know that Dark Horse Comics has had the licensing rights to the Galaxy Far, Far Away for a long, long time. And they've done some very interesting, and quite high quality tales over the years.

 One of the things that many people wondered after Disney bought Lucasfilm was how long will this relationship continue? Especially since the Mouse owns Marvel, the largest comics publisher in the world. Well, it appears we now have the answer. The Suits in the know have determined that no new contracts will be given to Dark Horse after the current ones expire. So all new projects after 2013 will be handled internally by Marvel.

 It's not known yet if titles will be worked into the regular line up, or will Marvel create a special branch of the company that deals with Star Wars. It'll take a couple of years for the old deals to work there course, but the stories that Dark Horse have coming down the pipeline will be the last. And you can expect anything new from Marvel dealing with Star Wars to arrive around 2015.

 Interesting year for that to happen...

16 comments:

Steve B said...

By the way, when Star Wars first came out in the mid-70's, the first publisher to put out Star Wars comics was none other than Marvel. If I dig deep enough into old boxes in my basement, I may be able to find those very first Star Wars comics.

Darth Bastard said...

Dark Horse was far supperior to Marvel when it came to handling the comics. The artwork and stories exceptional. I fear Marvel will be a return to the sloppy, rushed, and hastily drawn commercial comics they put out in the 70's and 80's.

Steve B said...

I wonder who owns the rights to the comics based on properties owned by others, as with the Dark Horse Star Wars. Maybe Disney/Marvel can incorporate Dark Horse storylines into it own Star Wars series.

Yes, the Marvel Star Wars comics were pretty forgettable. Ironically, they produced comics based on toys around that same time, like the Micronauts and Rom Spaceknight, that were quite good. I remember the Micronauts, even though it was somewhat of a Star Wars rip-off, won some sort of award at the time.

Anonymous said...

This will be very cool. Let's hope they keep bad designs away from the movies, too, by not hiring middling to bland talent like ian mccaig and harv blunt.

Darth Bastard said...

Well Steve, it could be argued that Star Wars ripped of the Micronauts. The toys existed several years before Star Wars came out in Japan in 1974 as Micromen and then Mego Toy Corp. imported them to the U.S. in 1976. There is more than a striking resemblance between Baron Karza and Darth Vader, in fact it is more than just a coincidence. Pretty sure Lucas saw this and got his inspiration for Darth Vader as well as selling toys in the 3 3/4" action figure scale.

Anonymous said...

Honor hunter: Do you have a link to this announcement that Marvel is going to be doing the SW comics and not Dark Horse? I haven't seen any news release on it, and you didn't link to anything specific.

Anonymous said...

Darth (or should I call you Mr. Bastard)-

Thanks for the bit of Micronauts history. Yes, I always thought Micronauts ripped off Star Wars. I had no idea Micronauts came first.

Steve B.

Jonnie Sarlak said...

The reason that Honor didn't post the link, is because it's not been unofficially acknowledged yet.

Remember this site post rumors as well as news. That's one of the reasons we come here. BSD tends to publish things that are not out yet, and it's pretty accurate about it sources.

I hope that marble hires some of the people that have worked on the Star Wars comics at Dark Horse. That would be a smart move. But we'll just have to wait and see in the coming years.

Unknown said...

Oh great.

Luke Skywalker meets Spiderman. An all-new adventure!

Doug said...

I really hope that your sources are wrong about this Honor. Marvel got Boom! Comic's contracts for the Disney, Muppet and Pixar characters cancelled and has done almost nothing with them except reprint the Boom! stuff in different formats and release one Muppet series that was finished, but not published before Boom! got the shaft.Marvel also hasn't done anything with the Alice in Wonderland and Haunted Mansion concepts that Slave Labor developed, or a Tron Uprising book, or a Pirates book,botched the Crossgen relaunch, etc. Now Marvel wants Star Wars, Indy and Willow to mismanage and/or ignore? Disney needs a division separate from Marvel and its management to publish any Disney comic or comic friendly property that isn't from Marvel Comics. That way the only non-superhero properties Marvel could neglect would be from Marvel's Golden, Silver and Bronze ages; most of which are not valuable IPs.

Aut said...

What amazes me is how THIS article has become the source for the info :)
http://www.digitalspy.com/comics/news/a446593/star-wars-comic-rights-to-return-to-marvel-says-report.html

But Chris- I would suggest keeping an eye on the House of Mouse's Company News site. That is where they tend to drop things first. So when it becomes official that's probably the first place it will show up. http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-news

David Robertson said...

http://www.fredeggcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/marvel-star-wars-108-or-come-and-mug-me.html

Anonymous said...

Disney does it again... all but destroying a much smaller company costing jobs, livelihoods and dreams just so they can line their pockets with a few more dollars.

Dark Mall said...

Yes, I'm sure that's their goal. To destroy jobs, dreams and people's livelihoods.

It's their property now, they can do with it what they want. It won't destroy any jobs. Dark Horse has survived before Star Wars and it'll survive after it.

As for lining pockets with money? Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure Dark Horse didn't get into business with Lucasfilm for charity.

Phillip Lozano said...

Darth Vader ripped off from Baron Karza? No. Baron Karza was introduced in the U.S. Mego Micronauts line in 1977, whereas "Star Wars" had been in production since 1975.

There was no equivalent to Baron Karza in the Japanese toy line. The body (also used for Mego's Force Commander) was original from a Go Nagai robot character called Steel Jeeg, but his head and face were nothing like Karza or Vader. The Baron Karza and Force Commander heads were newly developed for Mego while "Star Wars" was in production. The resemblance is coincidental.

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