Force Friday is over, and many of the new Star Wars toys and goodies were unveiled, and since we know that all comics, books and video games from this point forward are all official canon, Disney are revealing lots of products ready for December’s new film, The Force Awakens.
Chuck Wendig’s book focuses on events after Return of the Jedi and is available now, and you can read an excerpt here.
The second Death Star has been destroyed, the Emperor killed, and Darth Vader struck down. Devastating blows against the Empire, and major victories for the Rebel Alliance. But the battle for freedom is far from over.
As the Empire reels from its critical defeats at the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance-now a fledgling New Republic-presses its advantage by hunting down the enemy’s scattered forces before they can regroup and retaliate. But above the remote planet Akiva, an ominous show of the enemy’s strength is unfolding. Out on a lone reconnaissance mission, pilot Wedge Antilles watches Imperial Star Destroyers gather like birds of prey circling for a kill, but he’s taken captive before he can report back to the New Republic leaders.
Meanwhile, on the planet’s surface, former rebel fighter Norra Wexley has returned to her native world-war weary, ready to reunite with her estranged son, and eager to build a new life in some distant place. But when Norra intercepts Wedge Antilles’s urgent distress call, she realizes her time as a freedom fighter is not yet over. What she doesn’t know is just how close the enemy is-or how decisive and dangerous her new mission will be.
Determined to preserve the Empire’s power, the surviving Imperial elite are converging on Akiva for a top-secret emergency summit-to consolidate their forces and rally for a counterstrike. But they haven’t reckoned on Norra and her newfound allies-her technical-genius son, a Zabrak bounty hunter, and a reprobate Imperial defector-who are prepared to do whatever they must to end the Empire’s oppressive reign once and for all.
His name may be familiar to some, thanks to all the Star Wars novels he has written, but he’s also written his own works, plus novels set in the world of Dune, and even a few comics. I recently finished his book, The Last Days of Krypton, which is about , well, the last days of Krypton. I was pretty impressed by it. There’s a few things that puzzled me, such as a few grammatical errors and the use of other characters names instead of Non and Ursa. You may remember those characters primarily from the first two Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. Perhaps due to copyright reasons, their names are changed, but their personalities are clearly those of the fesity woman and brute mute. No-one but hardcore Superman fans will notice however, and the replacement names Aethyr and Nam-Ek belong to a pair of characters from earlier episodes of Smallville, taken from the comics from decades ago. However, it’s not a biggie really. General Zod is a manipulating genius who uses fear tactics to get what he wants after Braniac shows up and takes the whole city of Kandor away. The budding romance between respected (for the most part) scientist Jor-El and artist Lara is handled beautifully. The age difference between the pair and the fact that they’re newlyweds before shuttling their baby Kal-El off to Earth seemed somewhat unusual, but only because I’ve never seen them portrayed that way before. 
This is a book for Superman fans, or at least those vaguely aware of the character’s origins. Anderson is a good writer, and I felt at times like I wanted to wring the necks of the stuffy Council for ignoring Jor-El’s pleas and ultimately giving rise to Zod’s megalomania. Most of the characters are fully developed, though Anderson has the uncanny need to describe everyones hairstyles. He does take this vague knowledge of Superman’s distant origins and throw in nice cameos such as the Phantom Zone, and Martian Manhunter, and even hints at the Green Lantern Corps. Comics scribe Geoff Johns has taken these concepts and run with them with his Last Son arc and the more recent New World of Krypton maxi-series that has most of these characters appear once more. Plus the cover by Fables cover artist James Jean is grand. If Warner Bros. ever wise up and give writer Mark Millar his dream job of creating a Superman film trilogy, this book would be an awesome opener. There’s no Superman in sight, yet it is a surprising and often riveting sci-fi tale.
This September, Fantagraphics Books is proud to publish This Side of Jordan, by Monte Schulz, only the second original prose novel (following 2007’s Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux) in the company’s 33-year history.
Monte Schulz is the son of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, and in This Side of Jordan one of his ambitions was to recreate the time of his mother’s and father’s Jazz Age childhood, when America was making the irresistible transition from rural to urban life.
Okay the first obligatory question – what’s Omni all about?
Can you give us a breakdown of the main heroes and what they bring to the team?
What was the motivation for setting up Rejection Press?
Was there any step in the whole process that you weren’t quite ready for?
comicbookjesus 