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Star Wars Expanded Universe Comics (2015 – present) – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Updated June 11, 2025! The guide to collecting Star Wars Expanded Universe comic books, the current in-canon comic books released by Marvel. Find omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback in reading order. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Guide to Collecting Star Wars Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

Marvel regained the license to print Star Wars comics in 2015 and launched the new Extended Universe with a big bang in the first weeks of 2015 – twin Star Wars and Darth Vader series set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Both series were critical and commercial hits.

Marvel’s focus remained mostly on comics set just before and after A New Hope expanding on the adventures of the familiar cast of the original trilogies, to which they added Kanan – The Last Padawan, a prequels-era series that stretched in The Clone Wars. Then, in the weeks leading up to The Force Awakens, Marvel breached a new period of continuity with Shattered Empire – the first comic in the new canon set after the original trilogy!

After The Force Awakens, Marvel began to spread out into other periods, with Poe Dameron further extending the decades after Return of the Jedi and series set earlier in Darth Vader’s time as a Sith Lord – still, all set within the time bounds of the film series.
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Star Wars Legends Comics – The Old Expanded Universe by Marvel Comics and Dark Horse Comics

Updated Mar 22, 2025! The guide to collecting Star Wars Legends – the old Expanded Universe – comic books by Marvel and Dark Horse. Find every omnibus, Epic collection, hardcover, and trade paperback in reading order. Part of Crushing Comic’s Guide to Star Wars. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through October 2025.

These 30 years of comics were removed from canon (along with nearly everything else that wasn’t a film or TV show) in 2014 when LucasFilms announced the impending Episode VII and the move of their comics license to Disney sibling Marvel Comics.

That means these stories have all been rendered out-of-continuity to the current Star Wars universe. Compared to current canon, these stories range from alternate retellings to complete fiction, much as we regard children’s stories and fairy tales.

However, just because these Star Wars Legends stories are no longer in continuity it doesn’t mean they are not worth reading. They include a massive 25-year effort to maintain an interconnect, cross-media canon that began nearly a decade before The Phantom Menance and stretched all the way through the announcement of the sequel trilogy!

Along the way, these comics – combined with other Expanded Universe works like novels, video games, and magazines – defined centuries of Star Wars canon (including the original Old Republic!), introduced memorable characters (like Thrawn and Mara Jade), and filled in deeper layers of tragedy and drama of the rise and fall of the Empire that the films alone could not construct.

These stories were once collected comprehensively and in impressively-detailed reading order by Dark Horse Comics in a set of paperback Omnibuses. When Disney moved the Star Wars license back to Marvel Comics in 2015, Marvel began to repeat that methodology (with some tweaks) into their own Epic Collection format.

Marvel’s Epic Collections are broken across the broad, identifiable eras of Expanded Universe continuity. While they largely maintain the Dark Horse Omnibus reading orders, they have made some tweaks to placement both for continuity and to maintain the relative parity in the length of their books.

With a dwindling amount of Epic Collections left to release, in 2022 Marvel pivoted into recollecting the Expanded Universe a second time – now into hefty oversize hardcover omnibus editions.

Many thanks to Kurtis from The Epic Marvel Podcast for his aid in some of the continuity and contents of books covered by this page!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E05 – “Reality Stars: The Musical”

April 22, 2017 by krisis

This week on Drag Race, the queens were faced with an all-syncing, all-dancing tribute to The Kardashians and a faux fur runway.

These pre-choreographed lip sync challenges rarely give any queens a chance to shine, but this week’s was a bit different since almost all of the girls got to impersonate a current celebrity.

Or, at least, I hear they are celebrities. Other than being vaguely aware that one of them is married to Kanye West and that another was a Drag Race judge, I really don’t have the slightest idea of who any of the Kardashians are.

Meanwhile, faux fur was a fail, with most queens looking rather slapdash in their attempt to mix and match fabric and fake animal skins.

Did anyone come out of this week looking good? Three queens rose from last week’s standings, although one was really more about sinking less than her competitors than rising. [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E05 – “Reality Stars: The Musical”

My Best Pesto

April 21, 2017 by krisis

I don’t remember the first time I had pesto, but it is one of my favorite things to add to any food.

pesto-in-jar-crushingkrisis Pasta. Salmon. Shrimp. Toast. Eggs. Chips dipped directly into it. Pesto makes everything better. It’s also pretty much an entire spinach salad in every few spoons, which is how I help justify how quickly I can consume it compared to the amount of cheese and oil it contains.

I clearly recall having it at the appropriately-named Ristorante Pesto on Broad Street as a teenager, but that seems like such a late point in life to have tasted pesto for the first time.

Thus, while I wish I could say this is an old family recipe, it’s not – it’s just adapted from The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook over the course of dozens of trials over the course of the past decade. It used to be that E made it and then I just greedily consumed it. Finally, I became impatient about waiting for her to decide she felt like making pesto and so I made it myself and realized it is so easy to do (as long as you have a decent food processor).

Now I make double and triple batches every time so I can enjoy as much pesto as I want on my pasta and everything else.

Here is the ingredient list for an 8oz batch of pesto, which is probably enough to toss with for pasta for four. I use the alterations in parenthesis every time, but they make things more complex – you’ll do just fine ignoring them your first time. [Read more…] about My Best Pesto

The 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot Results (and, what’s been printed?)

April 21, 2017 by krisis

With voting open for the 5th Annual Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the 2016 secret ballot results, but that was the fourth year of the survey!

Last year I devoted just one summary post to what got printed and what disappeared, but to this point the only place to read the full results of prior ballots was to dig through dozens of message board posts.

Today and over the weekend, I’m going to work backwards through the results of the first three years of the ballot. There were 52 books on the 2015 ballot results due to a pair of ties. How many of those books have we seen printed since then?

Of 52 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibuses of 2015…

7 of 52 (13.5%) omnibuses were printed in 2016

Doctor Strange, Vol. 1, Master of Kung-Fu, Vol. 1, War of Kings, Avengers West Coast, Vol. 3 AKA by John Byrne, Spider-Man (1990) by Todd McFarlane, Captain America, Vol. 2, and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Vol. 1

10 of 52 (19.2%) additional omnibuses have been solicited to date

The 7 above, plus in 2017 Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3, Alpha Flight by John Byrne, Amazing Spider-Man by David Michelinie, Thor, Vol. 3, Daredevil, Vol. 1, Avengers by Jonathan Hickman, Vol. 1, Daredevil by Mark Waid (Vol. 1), X-Force, Vol. 2 (as Deadpool & X-Force), 27. Realm of Kings, Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen

That means 17 (32.6%) of all 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibuses have been printed as Omnibuses! But, what about the proposed material hitting other formats? [Read more…] about The 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot Results (and, what’s been printed?)