20 New Books Will Connect Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens

Hey, forget all those other books you’ve read about Star Wars events after Return of the Jedi! Disney’s got some new ones coming out to explain what really happened. And by “really happened,” I mean, ” was added almost 30 years after-the-fact when the new movie was written.”

Journey to The Force Awakens series will, according to Entertainment weekly, be a mix of comics, novels, and children’s books by people from Disney, Del Rey, Dorling Kindersley, and Marvel Comics. But the nebulous nature of “canon” be damned—Disney is certain that these books are the official account of what actually fictionally transpired a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and their story group has been working closely with all the authors involved to make sure everything is official canon fodder.

Here are the titles we know about so far (via /Film):

• Star Wars: Aftermath – a novel
• Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens, a Marvel Comics prequel
• A Marvel Comics prequel told from C-3PO’s perspective
• Star Wars: Ships of the Galaxy, printed by Studio Fun International
• Moving Target, a Princess Leia story by Cecil Castellucci
• The Weapon of a Jedi, a Luke Skywalker story by Jason Fry
• Lost Stars by Claudia Gray
• Smuggler’s Run, a Han Solo story by Greg Rucka

Andrew Sugerman, executive vice president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, told EW,

The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily heavily guarded storyline. To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program.

The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces. Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: What could a location mean, or what could a character mean?

I’ve understood the decision to not follow the Expanded Universe books with the new movies to allow for more creative freedom, but the direct movie tie-in nature of the new books sounds like they might now be burdened with sticking too closely to established plot points. I’m still optimistic that the movies may eventually use some fan-favorite characters from the EU even if the story changes a bit, but this certainly seems like a blow to the narrative freedom that the Star Wars prose world used to enjoy.

So what do you think? Are you excited for new Star Wars stories, or were you happy enough with the ones you had to Order 66 these new ones?

(via /Film)

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