Star Wars Again.

Let me rephrase that.  STAR WARS AGAIN!

That's more like it.

I can still get excited by this.  I saw Star Wars the opening weekend in Oregon, at a big theater in Portland, front row. Within the first 30 seconds I knew that someone had finally done S.F. right.

The next Star Wars movie is still a year away, which gives us a year of anticipatory selling at my store, Pegasus Books, which is the best kind.  Things always sell better in advance if it's a well-known license.  (Things sell better after the movie if it catches people by surprise...but usually if it catches people by surprise, there isn't any ancillary product to be had.)

The first Star Wars trailer comes out tomorrow.  Oh, boy.

Anyway, Cameron and I are doing the orders for January, and up pops the #1 Marvel comics version of Star Wars.

January 14, 2015.  

Wind back a bit.  Marvel had the license to the original Star Wars movies, but let them go after they figured the excitement had faded.  Hard to remember now, but that's the way it worked then.  A  movie came, it was a big hit, and then it faded.  There was a small nostalgia market maybe, but it wasn't a world where Star Trek or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, or Doctor Who existed independently whether or not there were any current versions of them in the marketplace.

It turns out that comics are a great place to keep the excitement simmering, even if the movies aren't being made.

When Dark Horse picked up the license, I had a feeling that the excitement hadn't faded, it was just sleeping.  I ordered what, for Pegasus Books, a huge number of #1's, and they sold well...and they continued to sell for years, at higher prices.

The whole thing got diluted down a little by the myriad titles and storylines, but added together they are significant enough to have their own little corner in my store devoted to nothing but Star Wars.

So there is no shortage of Star Wars material.  Not only that, but Dark Horse did a pretty good job of it.

So a new Star Wars comics shouldn't be a big deal.

And yet I think it will be.  Because it will be done by Marvel, who is owned by Disney, who owns Star Wars (frightening when you put it that way...)  This will be officially sanctioned, connected to the movie stuff.

Marvel is also having one of their "Party Packs," which I have always ignored.  These are packages that you get if you host a "party" on the day of the release. (We would do it after store hours.)

But I'm actually going to do it this time, because I have Cameron and Matt who seem excited to be able to host the event.  The Party Pack gives us material to give away, and we'll be getting a bunch of variants that we can use as prizes.  I'm thinking we should have a Cosplay contest, and maybe a trivia contest, and maybe a drawing.

My biggest concern is the lack of space we have in the store.  So I expect it will get ridiculously crowded and will spill out onto the sidewalk.  But, even if I personally avoid the whole thing which I probably will, (introvert!) I can still kind of thrill to the idea.

I'm going to order a ton of these #1's.  Which cost 4.99!  And as many variants as I can qualify for.  My reasoning is, I can sell these for years, because my assumption right now is that the first Star Wars movie will be the biggest movie ever.