Vader's Obsession
New Recruit
The term Expanded Universe is thrown about quite a bit, and is generally attributed to sources from comics, books and even video games. The topic here is how much of these actually fit into the overall continuity of the Star Wars universe? For now, we'll confine the discussion to comics.
Star Wars comics go back to the beginning of the whole Star Wars phenomenon, in 1977, with Star Wars #1 put out by Marvel Comics. This first comic began a direct adaptation of the movie. However, once the adaptation ended, there were no firm guidelines as to what direction the comics went in. The characters remained, more or less, consistent with that which was established in the movies, but the stories were what can be called 'stand-alone', in that they are not referenced outside of this comic series. This pattern remained throughout the 107 comic run. The Empire Strikes Back was also adapted within this run, and a seperate 4 issue mini-series was done for the Return of the Jedi.
Although the majority of the Marvel Comics Star Wars series is outside of the Expanded Universe, they are still fun to read. Dark Horse comics will be reprinting the entire run in 4 volumes, in black and white, in the near future.
There was also a comic strip put out in the same time period, which was quite good, but also outside of the overall continuity. These were already re-printed by Dark Horse in the 21 comic run of Classic Star Wars, which I believe is available in trade paperback format.
In later posts, I'll discuss the modern comics, put out by Dark Horse, the majority of which fit into the Expanded Universe.
Star Wars comics go back to the beginning of the whole Star Wars phenomenon, in 1977, with Star Wars #1 put out by Marvel Comics. This first comic began a direct adaptation of the movie. However, once the adaptation ended, there were no firm guidelines as to what direction the comics went in. The characters remained, more or less, consistent with that which was established in the movies, but the stories were what can be called 'stand-alone', in that they are not referenced outside of this comic series. This pattern remained throughout the 107 comic run. The Empire Strikes Back was also adapted within this run, and a seperate 4 issue mini-series was done for the Return of the Jedi.
Although the majority of the Marvel Comics Star Wars series is outside of the Expanded Universe, they are still fun to read. Dark Horse comics will be reprinting the entire run in 4 volumes, in black and white, in the near future.
There was also a comic strip put out in the same time period, which was quite good, but also outside of the overall continuity. These were already re-printed by Dark Horse in the 21 comic run of Classic Star Wars, which I believe is available in trade paperback format.
In later posts, I'll discuss the modern comics, put out by Dark Horse, the majority of which fit into the Expanded Universe.