Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo sees characters taking on the Empire again and set to make ‘biggest noise of the year in comics

It all began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but as excitement builds ahead of the release of the seventh Star Wars film, a comic featuring Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo is set to become the biggest selling single issue of the last two decades.

With more than one million copies already pre-ordered by retailers, Star Wars #1 marks the return of the franchise to Marvel from Dark Horse Comics. Out on 14 January, the first comic in the new series is set between episodes IV and V of the films – Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back – and follows the Rebel struggle with the Empire after the destruction of the Death Star. “But the Empire’s not toppled yet,” says Marvel.

Early pages from the issue, released by Entertainment Weekly, show Han Solo posing as the emissary for Jabba the Hutt. The magazine said that if the pages were “any indication of what’s in store, [the comic] might just live up to the hype”. The series is written by Jason Aaron, and illustrated by John Cassaday.

“It’s being called the biggest release of 2015 – and is expected to sell a million copies,” said Danie Ware from retailer Forbidden Planet. “It’s a ‘coming home’ for Star Wars – back to Marvel for the first time in 20 years. It’s also the first look at the new storyline and the centre of a Venn diagram of many different ages and kinds of fans. Star Wars fans from the 70s and 80s, younger fans of the newer films, and comics fans, all coming together to make this the biggest noise this year.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marketing Force ... Adi Granov’s variant cover for the new Marvel Star Wars comic Photograph: PR

Ware said that Marvel has produced a “huge number” of variant covers for the release, by artists including Alex Ross, Alex Maleev, Mike Deodato, Stephanie Hans, Frank Cho and Simone Bianchi, with Forbidden Planet’s variant by Adi Granov.

“Star Wars is without doubt going to be the biggest comic of 2015 based on pre-orders alone, and while that’s partly down to the insane number of variant covers and an intuitive market approach, it’s also down to it just being the first new Star Wars comic at Marvel in the year a brand new film is coming out,” agreed comics expert Laura Sneddon.

“Not even the prequel trilogy can dampen the enthusiasm of the true Star Wars fan, and Dark Horse were pretty successful with their Extended Universe comics too. Now that the Extended Universe has been wiped, new comics have the benefit of being canon and movie fans will be scrutinising them closely.”

“Star Wars fandom has never gone away– it’s never as much as taken a low profile – and this gives it a long-awaited opportunity to explode back to the fore,” added Ware.