If you’ve ever read George Lucas’ original script for Star Wars, you notice that it veers significantly from what we ended up seeing. Among other things, Darth Vader is a separate character from Annakin Starkiller, and Han Solo is a lizard dude. I skimmed it online amid the hullabaloo surrounding Phantom Menace and lost interest pretty quickly.

Amid the hullabaloo surrounding the new films, Dark Horse Comics, which has had some decent Star Wars books in recent years, has turned the original script into an eight-book series.

Might be cool, might not be. But this couldn’t happen without Lucasfilm’s (and therefore Disney’s) okay, so I have to wonder how this is intended to prepare battlespace, as it were, for the sequel trilogy. Is it just a one-off thing to whet the public appetite? Is it intended to build credibility with the fan base, or to ready us to see big changes in what we think of as Star Wars?

Am I reading too much into it? Probably.