Fanboys went crazy a few months back when the news came out that Lucasfilm had been acquired by Disney.  Needless to say, this was a big deal as now Disney had acquired the rights to both Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  Even crazier, it was announced that a new trilogy of Star Wars movies were set to be released in the coming years.  For Star Wars fans, such as myself, this was big news.

But, once the news of this acquisition became public knowledge there were some questions that fans wanted answered.  One of these questions was, ‘who will get the publishing rights to the Star Wars comics?’  Dark Horse Comics has maintained the Star Wars licence since 1991 when Dark Empire was first published.  But, before Dark Horse acquired the rights to Star Wars, Marvel had published the Star Wars titles.

Why all this backstory you might be asking?  Well, if you didn’t know it turns out that Marvel Comics is also owned by Disney.  Prior to Disney acquiring Marvel Comics a variety of Disney specific titles, such as Darkwing Duck, were published by Boom Studios.  Once Disney purchased Marvel, Disney chose to not renew their contract with Boom Studios once it expired.  The Disney properties were then moved under the Marvel banner.  To this day nothing has been done with the Disney characters at Marvel though.

With all this history, many fans speculated that once the Star Wars contract expired with Dark Horse Comics they would not be renewed.  After all, if you were in Disney’s shoes would you continue licensing out one your extremely popular properties when you own one of the major comic publishers?  Blue Sky Disney is reporting that the current plan is in fact to not renew the Star Wars contract with Dark Horse Comics.  Bear in mind that this story is not being reported by any other site, but it seems as though Disney will continue with their trend of bringing all of their properties under one roof.

According to the report on Blue Sky Disney it is unknown if the Star Wars comics will be placed under the main Marvel Comics banner or if instead Marvel will create a special branch of the company that exclusively publishes the Star Wars books.  It seems as though all of the stories currently being published via Dark Horse will have to wrap up by the end of 2013.  With a hard stopping point ahead I hope that these tales can meet their logical end.

It will also be very interesting to see what happens once the Star Wars property comes under the Marvel banner.  Will there be crossovers between the Marvel universe and the Star Wars universe?  Before you jump all over me, its not an unreasonable question to ask.  Remember that when Tron Legacy came out in theaters there was a series of Marvel variant covers featuring characters in Tron inspired costumes.

Personally, I don’t think there will be any grand Star Wars and Marvel crossovers in the future.  Keeping both brands separate is probably a smart move for the future.  However, at the very least I would expect to see some kind of variant cover tie-in in 2015 coinciding with the newest Star Wars movie hitting the big screen.  Whatever your take on the Star Wars comics, its going to be very interesting to see how everything shakes out in the coming year.