Weekend Roundup: New Rogue Space Rules and Big Changes in Store for Star Wars

First off is the new edition of the excellent indie Sci-Fi game, Rogue Space is out now! Go pick up a copy here. I picked up the pdf edition myself and hope tear into it tonight and tomorrow and get my thoughts posted on it in a few days.

The second bit of news is actually a few days old. Disney has appointed a committee to go through the Star Wars timeline and determine what is and is not official canon for the Star Wars universe. (Read the article here.) Seeing as how they are going to be making movies that take place after Return of the Jedi, I'd say it's a safe bet that most, if not all, of the post-RotJ novels and comics will be declared as non-official. I'm not certain how I feel about this. It's no secret that the quality of many of the novels isn't spectacular, but I've never considered SW novels to be any worse (or better) than most other shared universe genre fiction from Star Trek to Forgotten Realms. If most of the Expanded Universe is declared invalid, I hope they don't totally scrap many of the characters. I'd hate to never see Mara Jade, Ben Skywalker, Anakin Solo, Jacen and Jaina Solo again. Plus there's the scenes of Anakin appearing to Leia, and her eventual forgiveness of her father. Still, at the same time, I do trust Disney to treat Star Wars right. They've done a fantastic job with the Marvel franchise (X-Men Origins: Wolverine notwithstanding), and I hope to see that same level of creativity and care taken with my beloved Star Wars.

Speaking of Star Wars and Marvel, Dark Horse comics, who has been publishing Star Wars comics since 1991, is losing the license to do so after this year to Marvel. (Read about it here.) Seeing as how Disney owns both Marvel and Star Wars, this move has likely been in the works not long after the ink dried on the sale bill for Star Wars. I have no doubt that Dark Horse will do fine without Star Wars, but I will miss their take on the SW universe, which has been fantastic, especially the last few years. Really, some of my favorite EU stories have come out of the various Dark Horse SW lines. Still, some of my all time favorite Star Wars stories came from the campy and oftentimes downright silly, Marvel series from the early 80's. Marvel is slated to start publishing Star Wars comics in 2015.