The ending of a “Star Wars” era, with the hope that history will repeat itself.

Now, I was planning on writing about something completely different today, but then I saw this.  I can’t say that I’m surprised by the fact that Marvel will be publishing “Star Wars” comics again in 2015 after the license reverts back to Disney from Dark Horse.  Yet it’s still depressing news to read all the same.

It’s worth noting that Marvel originally published over 100 issues of their ongoing “Star Wars” title from the time “Episode IV” came out in 1977 through 1985 when the franchise’s popularity started dropping off for a while.  The license remained dormant until Dark Horse acquired it in 1991 and published the immensely popular “Dark Empire” miniseries which reignited fan interest for the comics.  There’s also the fact that this miniseries sparked my interest in comics.  Period.  “Dark Empire” not only brought back Emperor Palpatine, but also showed Luke’s fall to the Dark Side for a time and the New Republic’s exodus from Coruscant with the whole galactic balance of power thrown into flux for a time.  Oh yeah, and it also brought back Boba Fett from his ignominious “death” in “Return of the Jedi” with the line, “The Sarlacc found me somewhat indigestible.”  If only all deaths in comics could be retconned away with such elegant simplicity.

I have gone back and re-read “Dark Empire” in recent years and I’ll concede that it hasn’t held up as well as I’d like.  Yet it was only the beginning in a long, long line of “Star Wars” comics from the company that not only got a lot better as time went on, but have proved to be a fairly inexhaustible source of material for this blog and my podcasts.  As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go too wrong with any of the stories written by John Ostrander (and co-plotted by his frequent artistic collaborator Jan Duursema as well).  However, it’s his arc regarding amnesiac Jedi Quinlan Vos turned undercover Sith infiltrator that represents the man’s strongest work.  Up until the very end, you were never quite sure which side Quinlan was on and it remains the writer’s most successful effort in bringing shades of gray into the normally black and white morality of the “Star Wars” universe.

Yeah, I could go on and on about the other great “Star Wars” comics that I’ve read from Dark Horse, but I think you get the point.  That said, I don’t think that the license’s reversion to Marvel will be as fruitful in the long run.  One only has to look at the other licensed titles they’ve published over the years to see that.

“What licensed titles?” I hear you say, and that’s my point.  Marvel has published a bunch of these over the past few years from European comics to ones about “The Muppets” and other Disney characters that they got from Boom! Studios.  However, the ones that made the biggest splash in the direct market were their “Anita Blake:  Vampire Hunter” and “Halo” titles.  Both were announced with a lot of fanfare, particularly “Halo” which debuted as an original graphic novel.  Having Marvel publish an OGN was unheard of at the time, but the overall quality of the stories was quite good and it featured some fantastic art.  Even the least of the stories, by Tsutomu Nihei, gave us some incredible full-color work from an artist who normally works primarily in black-and-white.

As for “Anita Blake,” well, I’ve never read any of those comics.  If you want to know why, just Google “Annotated Anita Blake” for Chris Sims’ brutally funny takedown of the title.

However, both “Halo” and “Anita Blake” couldn’t keep up their initial sales.  For “Halo,” I imagine that the two years it took to publish the four-issue Bendis/Maleev series which kicked off the serialized side of things killed a lot of its momentum.  That each subsequent miniseries was handled by creative teams of increasingly lower profiles couldn’t have helped either.  I hate to sound so dismissive of “Anita Blake,” but it would appear that its substandard quality eventually caught up with it.

What does this have to do with Dark Horse and “Star Wars?”  Well, “Halo” comics are still being published.  By Dark Horse.  I haven’t read any of them, but I’m sure they’re doing fine.  That’s because the company has done a great job over the years of putting real effort into their licensed titles to make sure they don’t come off as simple cash grabs.  Publisher Mike Richardson stated today in response to this announcement that his company revolutionized the treatment of comics based on films.  It may sound like ego-driven self-aggrandizement, but he’s actually right.  Dark Horse did elevate the treatment of comics licensed from film and TV and there’s a reason a lot of their work on these properties still sells well today.

As for how Marvel is going to handle “Star Wars” when the reversion comes?  I have no doubt that we’ll get some A-list creators on the first round of titles as this is a new, shiny thing the company gets to play with.  Frankly, I’d be extremely surprised if Bendis wasn’t involved and if the title he writes doesn’t involve Han Solo.  That said, all things lose their shine eventually and I’d be even more surprised if the titles that Marvel publishes didn’t find their way down to the same sales level that some of the lower-profile “Star Wars” titles from Dark Horse occupy today.  I don’t want to say that I have the weight of history on my side for this prediction here, but… You only need to look at the sales figures for Marvel’s other licensed titles over the years to see that these things eventually become a secondary concern for the company.

When that happens, I can only hope that Disney sees fit to let Dark Horse pick up the license again.  Of course, who am I kidding?  They’ll NEVER let the license go so long as they’ve got a comics publishing subsidiary of their own.  Better to keep all of this in-house so that things can be managed to their specifications.  It’s not that I’ll stop buying “Star Wars” comics once they’re being published by Marvel, I just don’t think they’ll be as good as they were.  As is the case when I make these kinds of assumptions, I’d love to be proven wrong there.  That said, a twenty-year head start in the quality department does seem pretty impossible to overcome at this point.