Star Wars Omnibus Reading Order!
May the 4th Be With You! Since the movie’s release in 1977, Star Wars Comics have been produced with few interruptions. It all started at Marvel Comics with a six-issue comic book adaptation of the film. It was such a success that it helped Marvel survive the financial difficulties of the time. The series continued with original stories starting from issue #7 and became one of the top-selling titles. Marvel published the series until 1986, totaling 107 issues and three Annuals.
During this period, a newspaper strip was also distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and the Watertown Daily Times, while Pendulum Press released in 1978 a 31-page loose adaptation designed for classroom use. For several years after Marvel’s comic series ended, there was few Star Wars material. This changed in 1991 when Dark Horse acquired the license and revived the franchise with the release of the novel Heir to the Empire—the first book of a trilogy by Timothy Zahn—which was also adapted into a comic book. After that, the publisher launched dozens of series set in the Star Wars universe over the next 20 years.
A well-established fact now, Dark Horse lost the license in 2014 to Marvel Comics, which became the primary publisher of Star Wars Comics. It marked the end of the Star Wars Expanded Universe and the beginning of a new continuity known as Star Wars Canon. In 2017, IDW Publishing launched the anthology series Star Wars Adventures, and in 2022, Dark Horse started publishing new Star Wars comics and graphic novels.
For Star Wars Day, we look closer at the many Star Wars omnibus editions—from Dark Horse’s older collections to Marvel’s ongoing omnibus line to help you navigate this vast galaxy!