Six years after it lost the Star Wars license, Dark Horse Comics is returning to the franchise, this time to produce all ages comics and graphic novels, in collaboration with Lucasfilm and Disney Worldwide Publishing.

The new program will start in Spring 2022 and will include stories set in every Star Wars era, including the High Republic.  No specific titles were included in today’s announcement.

Dark Horse had the license to publish Star Wars comics from 1991 through 2014, when Marvel Comics took over the program (see “Marvel Gets ‘Star Wars’”), several years after its parent company Disney acquired Lucasfilm.  Marvel has been publishing adult Star Wars comics since 2015.

Dark Horse began publishing Disney comics and graphic novels in 2018 with a three-issue miniseries based on the movie Frozen (see “Dark Horse Will Let It Go with Frozen Miniseries”) and subsequently launched a line of hardcover graphic novels based on Disney properties (see “Dark Horse to Publish Line of Graphic Novels Based on Disney and Pixar Films”).

While the announcements did not state this explicitly, this presumably means that IDW’s license for all-ages Star Wars comics has come to an end.  That line was inaugurated in 2017 with the Star Wars Adventures series, which was part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi publishing program (see “IDW to Produce ‘Star Wars’ Kids Comics”).

Earlier this year, IDW Publishing told ICv2 that their license to publish all-ages comics featuring Marvel characters would end at the end of this year (see “IDW’s Marvel License for Middle-Grade Ending”).