Today's big news is of course the announcement of Star Wars: Invasion, a New Jedi Order-era ongoing comic from Dark Horse, debuting online in May, and with issue #1 in July.
However, there's a lot more Star Wars news today. Most of it is coming out of ComicCon in New York, but there's also some major information about old-fashioned text-and-paper Star Wars books further down the page.
First up, as we reported earlier, there's going to be a story about Fixer, one of Luke's Tatooine friends from the extended "lost opening" of A New Hope, and it's going to be written by the actor who portrayed the character. I'm guessing that this might be a special one-shot for Free Comic Book Day in May: you can see the cover here, or you can discuss the announcemnet on TF.N's own message-boards in this thread here. (10th Feb - the status of this comic has now been clarified: see below for details.)
Then, there's the announcement of an online comic series to accompany the new Star Wars computer game, The Old Republic. Entitled Threat of Peace, this is a collaboration between Dark Horse and the game designers, and it's due to appear online on the game website, with story by Rob Chestney from BioWare, and art by Alex Sanchez. The action takes place around 3,500 years before the movies, and the story will appear in twice-monthly installments, starting later this month. You can, once again, discuss it on our message-boards: here.
Next (and we're nowhere near done yet!) there's the news that Star Wars: Rebellion is coming to an end. This ongoing series, set between the films of the original trilogy, never really caught the same heights as its precursor Empire or its far-future stable-mate Star Wars: Legacy, but it still had a lot of potential, and I'm left wondering what'll happen to the ongoing storylines from here. You can head over to our message-board here to see what other fans are suggesting, and to add your own comments, of course.
Of course, the ongoing Star Wars: Legacy and Knights of the Old Republic series are continuing (follow this link for some teasers on up-coming plotlines), and there are two MORE new Star Wars comic series coming from Dark Horse, both of which might offer a home for the orphaned original-trilogy-era plotlines of Rebellion. Perhaps the revived Dark Times ongoing series will venture up and down the timeline from its current setting just after Revenge of the Sith, and pick up these stories on the way: I'm wondering if this will be moving to a regular monthly slot at last, since there's no indication that any of the other titles are disappearing temporarily to make way for its next April-August story arc.
Another possibility is that these plots will be carried over into Star Wars Adventures, a new series of "digest-sized" (pocket-format) graphic novels, similar to Clone Wars Adventures, but featuring the stars of the original trilogy rather than the Prequel crew. This is described as "parent-friendly", but it's being written by Jeremy Barlow, so perhaps he'll find room alongside Luke, Han and Leia for his planned Rebellion story about BoShek and Darth Vader's personal TIE Fighter squadron....
And then, of course, there's Star Wars: Invasion, set twenty-five years after the Battle of Endor: we're promised major roles for an older Luke Skywalker, and for Han and Leia's Jedi children. The basic events of this timeframe were already covered in the "New Jedi Order" novels, but this seems to be the really big winner in terms of fan response in today's news, being greeted on our message boards with lots of loud cheering, with dancing Ewoks, stormtrooper-helmet bongos and fireworks... and a remarkable enthusiasm for returning to the New Jedi Order setting. There's a pessimistic voice or two, but the majority of fans seem to want to acclaim Randy Stradley as Emperor of the Galaxy, and even a reliable source mentioning that he had full spoilers for the next DelRey novel, Outcast, barely got any attention whatsoever.
But that at least provides a neat segue to the second half of this story: there are also big spoilers for the novels today, too. StarWars.com has released a spoiler-heavy blurb for the second book of the "Fate of the Jedi" seires, which reveals a lot of the plot-points for Outcast, the opening novel of the arc: read it here if you're prepared to learn about some really major plot-points. The same link also contains the title of the next novel in Drew Karpyshyn's Darth Bane series, Dynasty of Evil.
And then there are the other Outcast spoilers that are surfacing in the wild. I don't want to say too much about these yet, but one source tells me that there'll be an unexpected cameo by... well, let's just call him the star of Beige and Iron, okay?
That's all for now, but we'll bring you more news on all these stories as soon as we get it!
UPDATE: Randy Stradley, the Star Wars editor and all-round senior honcho from Dark Horse, has posted a comment in the relevant thread on our message-boards, clarifying that Fixer: From The Shadow of Twin Suns is "NOT a Dark Horse title", but simply a story that has been "proposed to" them.