New Marvel Omnibus Announced: ‘Star Wars’ by Kieron Gillen and Greg Pak
A new Star Wars omnibus has been announced – collecting the remaining chunk of Marvel’s mainline Star Wars (2015) series not covered in the omnibus published in 2019. The news comes courtesy of Near Mint Condition (hat tip Star Wars Splash Page); this new collection will be available in April 2024.
Near Mint Condition is reporting the new omnibus will contain the following:
- Star Wars #38-75 by Kieron Gillen and Greg Pak
- Star Wars Annual #4 (2018) by Cullen Bunn
- Empire Ascendant #1 (2019) by Charles Soule, Greg Pak, Ethan Sacks, and Simon Spurrier
From 2017-2019, Kieron Gillen wrote Star Wars #38-67 before leaving to tackle other projects. Greg Pak wrote the remaining issues that led right into The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars Annual #4 is a side adventure that doesn’t neatly fit within the continuity of these particular issues, but is included here since it wasn’t in the 2019 omnibus, focused on Jason Aaron’s run on the series. The Empire Ascendant one-shot culminated all of Marvel’s storytelling from 2015-2019 before the relaunch in 2020.
Covers for the omnibus, tentatively titled Star Wars by Kieron Gillen and Grek Pak, will be based on Phil Noto’s cover for Star Wars #72 (written by Pak) and David Marquez’s cover for issue #38 (written by Gillen). Check them out below:
If you aren’t familiar with the stories included in this particular omnibus, Gillen began his run by taking readers back to Jedha and Mon Cala as the Rebel Alliance tries to find new allies in their fight against the Empire. These two arcs set the stage for the Hope Dies storyline, which sees the Rebellion at its darkest hour (before Hoth of course). Everything culminates in a bitter grudge match between Princess Leia and Queen Trios of Shu-Torun, a planet Gillen introduced during his Darth Vader run – if you want to pick up the omnibus for that series while you wait, you can do so here.
Following that, Pak picks up the baton and neatly wraps up the series, taking the Rebellion to Hoth amid a barrage of probe droids. War is messy and difficult choices must be made, which is what these two authors tried to showcase.
While April 2024 feels like a ways off, Marvel will fill the void with a number of omnibuses before then. The second volume of Doctor Aphra is getting an omnibus in August. That will collect issues #1-25 of the 2020 edition of the series. In October, Marvel will release an omnibus for all Marvel comics from phase 1 of the High Republic publishing initiative.
Nate uses his love for Star Wars and movies in general as a way to cope with the pain of being a Minnesota sports fan. When he's not at the theater, you can usually find Nate reading a comic, listening to an audiobook, or playing a Mario video game for the 1,000th time.
