'Alphabet Squadron' Trilogy Of Novels And 'TIE Fighter' Comic Book Series Announced

By: Dominic Jones

Lucasfilm made another exciting set of publishing announcement today on StarWars.com. First, it was announced that the upcoming novel Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron by Alexander Freed will be the first in a trilogy of novels.  This would be the third  trilogy of novels that will have been released as part of the "new" canon (the others being the Aftermath trilogy by Chuck Wendig and the new Thrawn trilogy by Tim Zahn). The cover for the first novel, which will be released on June 11th, was also revealed.  You can see that for yourself below,

Del Rey, the publisher of Alphabet Squadron, tweeted out some fun facts about the cover and the plot of the novel (with a fun Star Wars Rebels tie-in),

FYI #AlphabetSquadron:

Cover pilot: Yrica Quell, Imperial defector. She flies an X-wing.

What's Alphabet Squadron doing? Tracking down a mysterious lethal force of TIE fighters.

Who told them they could do that? New Republic General Hera Syndulla. She's kind of a big deal.

— Star Wars Books (@DelReyStarWars) January 18, 2019

StarWars.com also revealed some details about the first Alphabet Squadron novel.  It had previously been announced that the story will be set after the events of Return of the Jedi and will follow a squadron of New Republic pilots hunting down a surviving squadron of Imperial pilots.  Today, we learned the name of that Imperial squadron: Shadow Wing.

That name may be new to us now, but we will be familiar with those characters by the time of the books release thanks to a new comic book miniseries from Marvel.  The series, which will debut in April, is titled Star Wars: TIE Fighter.  The comic book series will be set in the same time period as the novel.  TIE Fighter will be written by Jody Houser (Age of Republic) with art by Rogê Antônio. The cover for TIE Fighter #1 was also revealed, check it out below,

This crossover between Del Rey publishing and Marvel comics is an exciting proposition.  Towards the end of the Dark Horse comics days, there were previous crossover efforts (specifically with the Knight Errant and Dawn of the Jedi) series, however this is the first such crossover of the new canon.  Hopefully, this will yield exciting new opportunities for storytelling in both novel and comic format.

Source: StarWars.com

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