Marvel has announced via MTV a new Chewbacca five-issue limited series for its successful Star Wars line. The new title, set to launch in October, is written by Gerry Duggan (Deadpool) and illustrated by Phil Noto (Black Widow).
Chewbacca will reportedly be set just after the events of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, with the famed Wookie crash-landing on a mysterious Imperial-controlled planet and fidning both new allies and some old friends.
“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,” Duggan revealed. ” 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.”
Duggan said he’s keeping that English translation of Chewbacca’s dialogue from readers, keeping true to the Star Wars movies.
“It’s one of the first things we talked about, “Duggan said of conversions with editor Jordan White. “That we were going to let Chewy be Chewy and not try and change anything that’s on the internal [dialogue], the caption boxes or anything like that. But you know, a little bit of good news here is that Phil Noto is my collaborator on this book, and he’s gonna be able to tell the story whether or not there are any balloons or boxes at all.”
As seen in the cover image by Phil Noto (above) Chewbacca will introduce a new female character that the wookie meets after being marooned. Duggan didn’t reveal the name or more details on the new character, but did describe the world.
“This planet is at a crossroads. There are forces there that want — like the Empire — to strip it of its resources,” Duggan said. “And obviously [there] would be some people that would be very opposed to that, and Chewy throws in with, with the good guys. He’s gonna set aside his mission for the greater good of this planet, and this new friend.”
Duggan, who remembers seeing the original Star Wars as a child in a drive-in theatre, calls working on a Star Wars comic book series “the biggest” event in his career.
“I got this note with the first page of art a while back [from Phil], ‘I feel like my entire life has been leading up to this moment,’ and I wrote back, and I said, ‘I know,’ triple exclamation point,” the writer said.
