Star Wars: Chewbacca to Star in His Own Marvel Comic Series

Looks like Marvel has decided to follow C-3PO’s device and let the Wookiee win.

The walking carpet is getting his own comic book miniseries to debut in October, according to MTV News. The five-book arc will be written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Phil Noto, and will take place immediately following the destruction of the first Death Star in A New Hope.

There are two covers available for the series so far. Here’s a full look at the original print cover that’s previewed above:

And here’s a variant edition:

According to this photo of a page from Star Wars Insider #159, the story involves Chewie crash-landing on an Imperial-occupied world and meeting up with a young girl named Zarro. Gerry Duggan elaborated a bit on this plot in his interview with MTV News, saying that the Empire is trying to strip the world of its resources and Chewie may help the locals fight back.

But the most interesting thing about this comic isn’t the setting or the timeline. Duggan has seemed to confirm that Chewie’s guttural dialogue will not be translated, although this new Zarro character will reportedly be able to translate what he says.

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"“Chewy is on a very important mission when we first meet him, and you’ll be able to tell that right away without hearing him speak. But script wise, what’s been very fun for me, I’ve been writing each roar and yell twice. Once for the letterer, to be printed exactly as it is on the page and then once in parentheses for the team that basically is Chewy’s whine in English.And that’s just for internal use. That’s just so that everyone can be on the same page and know that, hey, we’re telling this story visually and anything that we do need to know… He’s got a friend on this planet, a young woman and she speaks the basic language — so we won’t be in the dark.”"

Duggan won’t give out too many plot details, but when asked if we’ll see any familiar characters, he does say, “You never know who might turn up or what might turn up.”

If you think about it, a story about Chewbacca makes the most sense in a heavily visual medium like comics, rather than a novel. The Wookiee always expresses himself with his actions and reactions to events rather than in his words, so anyone writing him should lean on images rather than dialogue.

That being said, while we’ve gotten a sense of Chewbacca’s character from the films and other properties, he’s usually always found among familiar characters, so this comic may mark the first time in the new canon that we’re treated to an unfiltered look at the Wookiee.

Next: The Rumored Director for Star Wars: Episode IX

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