Perhaps, just this once, this deal is getting better all the time — everyone's favourite Space Gas magnate Lando Calrissian will headline his own comic book from Marvel this summer. Let's hope it's full of adventure and fabulous half-capes.
The news was actually announced yesterday to coincide with the start of Star Wars Celebration, but it went (perhaps understandably) under the radar after a certain trailer came out. The series will be penned by Charles Soule, with art by Alex Maleev — and like Marvel's Princess Leia series, Lando will run for five issues, beginning this July.
Set before his time as a Rebel Alliance hero in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the series will follow Lando and his trusty cyborg pal Lobot as lone scoundrels chasing down a valuable ship. Here's how Soule sets the story up, as well as a variant cover for the first issue by Lenil Francis Yu:
Before Cloud City, before his glorious Death Star run, Lando Calrissian was just a man trying to make his way through an uncaring universe determined not to recognize that he was undeniably the coolest man in the galaxy. But Lando’s got a plan to change all that… and it starts with the deal of a lifetime.
It's cool to see Marvel and Lucasfilm using comics to tell stories focusing on individual Star Wars characters that you might not get to see in a traditional ongoing series. Maybe at some hopeful point in the future, we'll get a 5-part comic starring Admiral Ackbar. I'd totally read that.