A new era of Star Wars storytelling begins in September with the release of Star Wars: A New Dawn, a prequel to the Star Wars Rebels animated series. Written by New York Times bestselling author John Jackson Miller, the story follows Kanan Jarrus, Hera Syndulla, and a small band of unlikely allies in their attempt to challenge the Empire. Those who joined him at the “Star Wars: A New Dawn” panel included Shelly Shapiro (editor, Del Rey), Frank Parisi (editor, Del Rey), Jennifer Heddle (senior editor, Lucasfilm), Pablo Hidalgo (Lucasfilm Story Group), Vanessa Marshall (Hera Syndulla, Star Wars Rebels), and Dave Filoni (executive producer, Star Wars Rebels). The panel discussed the novel in greater detail as well as presented a list of upcoming Star Wars novels from Del Rey, including the newly announced novel with Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos. To read through the live blog, click here.
Artwork by Aaron McBride.
The immediate worry following the cancellation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was seeing the stories and concept art of unaired episodes permanently shelved away. Knowing that the series had enough content to make up at least two more seasons made the cancellation all the more bitter. Since then, fans have been fortunate to see one unaired story arc come to life in the form of a 4-part comic book series. Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir has been a spectacular representation of what could have been a 4-episode arc. With the fourth and final issue set for August 20, 2014, the question of whether we would continue to see more content from the Emmy award winning series resurfaced and reared its curious head.
At the “Star Wars: A New Dawn” panel, the final book presented answered that very question. Coming summer 2015, fans will have the first Star Wars book based on never-before-seen scripts originally written by the Star Wars: The Clone Wars writing team and George Lucas. Christie Golden, the author of the now-canceled Sword of the Jedi series, will pen the novel with Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos as the protagonists.
Thank you all so much! Been very hard staying quiet about this one, LOL!
—
Christie Golden (@ChristieGolden) July 25, 2014
According to Jennifer Heddle, the novel is geared more towards adults. Pablo Hidalgo added that the novel “will be able to go deeper in ways that the show could not.” Writer Katie Lucas helped design the future of Ventress. She had written 12 episodes in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, including the Nightsisters arc in season three and the Order 66/Fives arc in season six, and is rumored to be working on Star Wars Rebels.
The news brought about a mixture of emotions for this particular fan. On one hand, I’m more than thrilled that the stories I desperately want to know more about will see the light of day. Whether it’s a comic book or novel, I have no qualms with the choice of medium. If we’re able to get our hands on Darth Maul, Asajj Ventress, and Quinlan Vos’ stories, then it’s also possible that we could see more tales of young Boba Fett from the unaired Bounty Hunter arc as well as discover the fates of Captain Rex and Ahsoka Tano. On the other hand, I’m nervous about Asajj Ventress’ fate. She had a remarkable transformation throughout the series, even finding it within herself to help Ahsoka in the final episodes of season five. Ventress is one of the few female canon characters and I’d hate to lose her.
All that said, I don’t see things going well for her. After the premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Netflix, Dave Filoni took to the Star Wars blog and published a set of sketches that he drew during the TCW writing conferences. Two of these sketches featured Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos.
The sketch on the left is from the season six writing conference, and all of the characters pictured have appeared in the Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic, except for Quinlan Vos. Will his grand appearance take place in the final issue of the mini-series? We’ll have to wait and see. The sketch on the right depicts Count Dooku suffering from the effects of Force lightning at the hands of Quinlan Vos. In the second panel, we see Vos carrying Asajj Ventress with a bright red sun/planet in the background–symbolizing death, perhaps?
Despite my growing fear of possibly losing this amazing character, I am quite excited to see a novel back in the prequel era.
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