'Star Wars: Rebel Heist' Mini Series Announced

By: Dominic Jones

It's two days after Christmas and Star Wars is still giving us new presents.  Dark Horse Comics announced today a new mini series called Star Wars: Rebel Heist written by Matt Kindt.  The series is set in the original trilogy era and will feature Han Solo.  The announcement came from Comic Book Resources, who also had an exclusive interview with Kindt where he discussed some of the challenges of writing a Star Wars series,

Yeah, that was why it was kind of easy for me to be like, "No, I'm too busy." It's a combination of all the worst things I hate about properties that I don't own. [Laughs] A rabid fanbase, huge amounts of continuity, all this history. As much as I love it, I'm not steeped in Star Wars mythology. Since I was a kid, I was like, "If it didn't happen in the movies, it didn't happen." Other than the movies, that's what I draw from. This was definitely intimidating, and if this idea hadn't literally dropped in my lap, I wouldn't have done it.

Honestly, the idea came from my reverence for those characters. I guess I was inspired by the intimidation factor of those characters. I thought, "How great would it be to do a series where you get to see Han Solo from a regular dude's point of view?" Which is basically my point of view! What if I got to tag along with Han Solo, and we had to do some mission for the rebellion? What would that be like? I thought something like that would be awesome.

So that was the springboard. It would be cool to have four core characters, and each issue would play with that idea -- Princess Leia and a spy character who she teams up with, but it's all from the point of view of the character Princess Leia teams up with. Viewing Princess Leia, viewing Han Solo, viewing Chewbacca, viewing Luke through the guise of a normal dude. Han Solo is like the coolest character ever, so it was fun to write that, where this guy's sort of starstruck by him -- just like I would be. Then they've got this mission to do, and doing a real mission where everything's on the line, and your life is in danger -- by the end of that issue, Han Solo's not so cool anymore. This guy's scared out of his mind. Han Solo's kind of reckless.

That was my way in, almost viewing those characters in a childlike way, like I did when I was a kid, and you look up to Han Solo as the coolest. It was easy to write after that.
 
You can read the entire interview with Kindt here. 

They also revealed the opening splash page from the first issue:

Source: Comic Book Resources