10 Highlights and Reveals from the Star Wars: The High Republic Panel at Comic-Con@Home
The next wave of books and comics in Star Wars: The High Republic is coming in January of 2022, and today during Lucasfilm’s Publishing Panel, broadcast virtually as part of Comic-Con@Home, we learned the enticing new titles.
In a half-hour conversation hosted by the Star Wars: The High Republic Show’s Krystina Arielle, authors Cavan Scott, Daniel José Older, Justina Ireland, Charles Soule, and Claudia Gray shared insights into the creative process crafting the intertwined stories so far and hints at tales yet to come. Read on for some of our favorite details and reveals.
1. When Cavan Scott wrote The Rising Storm, his wall looked something like a detective’s office.
“I started how I start all these kind of projects,” he said during the panel. “I have my maps on the wall as if I’m about to find a serial killer where I list every one of the major characters, where they were at the end of Light of the Jedi or the other books or comics, where they need to be at the beginning of the Republic Fair, and then also where they need to be at the end.”
2. The Jedi and Lourna Dee are in trouble.
Asked to tease the future of his ongoing storytelling in the Marvel Star Wars: The High Republic comic run, Scott hinted: “A Jedi joins the Storm.” As for his audio original drama Tempest Runner: “Lourna Dee behind bars.”
3. We haven’t seen the last of Ram Jomaram.
“How do we not spoil this?” Daniel José Older said with a laugh. The Padawan and mechanic will be part of the story Older wrote for the August Free Comic Book Day issue of IDW’s Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures. “In fact, it’s directly tied into the book Race to Crashpoint Tower,” Older added. “And we see more of him and Lula and Zeen and their adventures — And the Bonbraks! Please don’t forget the Bonbraks. — their adventures during the Republic Fair. And then there’s lots more Ram to come.”
4. And next year, Older will pen a YA novel in the era, Midnight Horizon.
“I can’t wait for people to read it!” he gushed. “Whew…it is a chaotic mess in the best possible way.”
5. Justina Ireland’s next book, Out of the Shadows, arrives next week, then in September, her manga Edge of Balance will take us to a Jedi Temple outpost.
Ireland says the story focuses on Jedi Knight Lily Tora-Asi in the time after the Great Disaster as she helps to resettle refugees, “and it might just be that some problems come with people when they go to new places.”
6. And next year, her next middle grade reader will debut, titled Mission to Disaster.
Although she was mum on details, Ireland voiced exactly what we’re all thinking reading those three words. “Not ominous at all.”
7. For Charles Soule, Light of the Jedi was the right book at the right time for the right audience.
Although he wrote it before the pandemic of 2020, when it arrived and landed at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, it launched the new era of storytelling at a moment in our own history when the pandemic was still dominating headlines. “It really was exactly the story that I wanted to put into the world at that particular time, the message and the tone and the fact that it was introducing this new era, I felt like it was everything I wanted to do creatively,” Soule said. And he still gets messages from fans every day echoing the books rallying cry of hope: We are all the Republic. “I think it was the right kind of book to land at that time. I’m super proud of it. And I’m just really glad that so many people seem to be finding it and are finding their way into The High Republic through it.”
8. The man who connected the rise of Kylo Ren will take on another villainous origin story in a new Marvel comic, The Eye of the Storm.
In two 30-page issues landing in January, Soule promised to expand on the “very complicated backstory” of the Eye of the Nihil, Marchion Ro. “He’s absolutely terrifying. He’s charming in a way…you’ll meet him and he’ll talk to you and you’ll have a good time. Maybe he’ll buy you a beer. A space beer, I guess. But then, you know, the minute you leave the room, his face goes blank. It’s all just a mask.”
9. Of all the new characters, Geode is the most fun and surprisingly expressive for Claudia Gray to write.
“I mean, the whole fun of that character is looking at all the ways in prose that we talk about character reactions or interactions that aren’t either body language or verbal. And there are actually a ton of ways that we do that. I hadn’t even realized how many until I started playing with it.”
10. Next up, Gray will pen the third adult novel in the initiative.
So far all we know is that it’s called The Fallen Star. January can’t get here soon enough.
Watch the full panel for yourself now at the link below and don’t forget to catch the next episode of Star Wars: The High Republic Show next week for more news and new reveals!
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Visit Lucasfilm’s official hub for all things Star Wars: The High Republic at StarWars.com/TheHighRepublic.
Associate Editor Kristin Baver is the author of the book Skywalker: A Family At War, host of This Week! In Star Wars, and an all-around sci-fi nerd who always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s not. Follow her on Twitter @KristinBaver.
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