Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Star Wars Wednesday #38: THE UNIVERSE FORMERLY KNOWN AS EXPANDED

Prince Isolder. India ink on bristol, 6x9. 

Because I missed Star Wars Wednesday last week, I'm posting two today. This is the second one. Here's the first one.

I titled this post The Universe Formerly Known as Expanded because I drew a prince and this post is about what was know as Star Wars The Expanded Universe. Get it?

Anyway....

I've wanted to devote a post to what was formerly known as the Expanded Universe. Much has been written about it, especially in the last year. The Expanded Universe is the collection of novels, short stories, comics, games, and other media that continue the tell the stories of characters from the movies or create new characters. It expanded on the Star Wars movies for the last 20 plus years.

Well, last year it was done away with and rebooted by Disney's Lucasfilm division. A new Canon was and is being created. You can imagine how fans who invested money and time collecting and reading all of that material felt about Disney's actions. I understand the outrage on one hand, but I can also understand why Disney would do this as they move forward with new movies.

I won't say a whole lot about it because I know the general public just doesn't care. I'll have a bunch of links at the end of this for those interested in exploring the Expanded Universe, or Legends as it's now called. I do think that in some cases, Disney/Lucasfilm threw out the baby with the bath water. That's why I chose the character I drew for today's post (plus it contributed to my hilarious title....Come on! It's funny!). My drawing of Prince Isolder is based on the character painted by Drew Struzan on the original cover of The Courtship of Princess Leia (drawin in the style of Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars--one of my favorite things Star Wars that had already been discarded from Star Wars continuity before the reboot). I feel that Disney/Lucasfilm was being kind of lazy by wiping the slate completely clean. There are stories that they could have left in the new Canon. This is the story that leads up to the marriage of Han and Leia. I can't think of anything in the book that contradicts the now established Canon. Unless, *gasp* Han and Leia will not be married going forward from Return of the Jedi!

Courtship also introduces us to Dathomir and the Witches of Dathomir, which have been used in the established Canon. It's possible that I'm not remembering something that contradicts. I'm not an expert of the Expanded Universe that some fans are. That's where the links below come in. There are other books that probably could have been left in the new Canon. Maybe as things move forward, they will bring some stories back into the fold.

I've rambled too long. Here are some links for further reading:

This is a good article for those who have no idea what the Expanded Universe is and explains it better that I did in this post

Here is Wookieepedia's explanation of the Expanded Universe

An official statement from StarWars.com posted last year on things going forward in the Star Wars Universe.

The Star Wars Timeline Gold is an exhaustive chronological collection of all of the Expanded Universe/Legends and now Canon. It's pretty incredible.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe Chronology is another exhaustive timeline, but a more user friendly if you find The Star Wars Timeline Gold a little intimidating. It's the one I often reference.

I don't agree with this list completely, but it ain't bad: The 10 Best Stories in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. I'd love to see how other fans feel about this topic.

Thanks for looking,
Mike
For commissions: lynchmikew@gmail.com

2 comments:

Robert Mullin said...

I think a lot of the Legends branding has to do with the way it has been presented and the poor phrasing used by LFL. My understanding is that it is not that they wiped the slate clean so much as drew a line between what is and is not "true" canon, and wanted to make sure that we understood that forthcoming stories were not required to adhere to what had come before. But as we've seen, there are quite a few allusions to EU works even in the "new" canon, including references to the Droids cartoon in TARKIN, Shatterpoint in KANAN, Knight Errant in A NEW DAWN, etc. So it's more like they said the Legends are the palette from which they were going to paint, and they might use some elements, and not use others--basically what they've done since the outset, but never explicitly said. It was really something I think they should have done a long time ago, because the understanding of what does and doesn't "count" has been as longstanding as the films themselves, and the fact that GL kept changing the rules didn't help. I think that the notion of just declaring it all LEGENDS was a simple way of making a blanket statement rather than cherry-picking things they thought could still fit and then having to retract the statement down the road when something got contradicted. Personally, I subscribe to Timothy Zahn's view. If you can't prove it didn't happen, who's to say it didn't? My Legends books are on the same shelf as the canon books, and likely will remain that way.

Mike Lynch said...

I think you're right, Rob. Thanks for clarifying this subject a little more than I did.