Star Wars by Gillen & Pak Omnibus #[nn]

History

Kieron Gillen took over the main Star Wars series with issue #38 (November 2017), reuniting him with artist Salvador Larroca — the same creative partnership that had produced the acclaimed Darth Vader series — with a stated editorial intent to show the Rebellion's darkest hour before Hoth. Gillen designed his run as a serial of interconnected six-issue arcs, threading a long-form villain arc around Queen Trios of Shu-Torun (a character he had originally introduced in his Darth Vader run) across multiple story beats culminating in issue #50's 'Hope Dies.' Greg Pak succeeded Gillen beginning with issue #68, bringing his run through to issue #75. Marvel announced the omnibus edition in May 2023, selecting Phil Noto's cover for issue #72 and David Marquez's cover for issue #38 as the two cover variants.

Trivia · 10 facts

• Collects Star Wars (2015) #38–75, Star Wars Annual (2016) #4, Star Wars: The Last Jedi – The Storms of Crait (2017) #1, and Star Wars: Empire Ascendant (2019) #1 — over 1,000 pages in hardcover format.
• Published April 23, 2024 by Marvel Comics (ISBN 9781302955908); two cover variants exist — the regular cover by Phil Noto and a direct market variant by Pepe Larraz.
• Primary writers are Kieron Gillen (#38–67) and Greg Pak (#68–75), with additional short-story contributions from Charles Soule, Si Spurrier, Ethan Sacks, Cullen Bunn, Ben Acker, and Ben Blacker.
• Principal artist on the Gillen run is Salvador Larroca; other artists across the omnibus include Giuseppe Camuncoli, Angel Unzueta, Andrea Broccardo, Phil Noto, Luke Ross, Paolo Villanelli, and Caspar Wijngaard.
• Gillen's opening arc, 'Ashes of Jedha' (#38–43), is the first canon story to explore Jedha after the Death Star's destruction, deliberately merging the cast of A New Hope with the war-film aesthetic of Rogue One.
• 'Mutiny at Mon Cala' (#44–49) establishes the canon account of how the Mon Calamari joined the Rebel Alliance fleet, directly cross-referencing events set 20 years earlier in the Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith series.
• Issue #52, part of the 'Hope Dies' arc (#50–55), contains the in-canon founding of Rogue Squadron, named by Luke Skywalker in the heat of the Mako-Ta battle.
• The Empire Ascendant one-shot closes the omnibus as the formal conclusion to Marvel's first Star Wars publishing era (2015–2019), serving as a bridge to the 2020 line-wide relaunch.
• Queen Trios of Shu-Torun — a villain Gillen introduced in his earlier Darth Vader run — appears throughout as the chief antagonist, culminating in a revenge mission by Leia against Shu-Torun in 'The Scourging of Shu-Torun' (#62–67).
• The 'Hope Dies' arc (centered on issue #50) provides the canon explanation for how the Rebellion lost much of its newly assembled fleet and why Luke, Han, and Leia received formal military ranks prior to the events of The Empire Strikes Back.

Cast · 5 characters

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