Fact: The X-Wing books were the best Star Wars books. Double fact: The Rogue Squadron comics from Dark Horse were awesome. Unassailable triple fact: Poe Dameron is the best. Bearing all this in mind, we’re just a touch excited about Marvel’s upcoming Poe Dameron comic, which seems to be a spiritual successor to the Rogue Squadron tales.


The ongoing comic is coming from writer Charles Soule and artist Phil Noto, who gave us a few extra details during an interview with Comic Book Resources. Covering Poe’s career as part of the Resistance’s crack squadron of soldiers (both in the skies and on the ground) before The Force Awakens, the series will take place in a period where the conflict between the First Order, the New Republic, and the fledgling Resistance is more of a cold war than a hot one. This means Poe and his comrades will be fighting a wide array of foes beyond the First Order as they go out on missions.


Soule definitely makes it sound like there’ll be more than just spaceship dogfights in terms of action for the series:

I think of it like a bunch of different genre movies, stacked up one after the other. I’ve been doing this for a while, actually—Lando was a heist movie, and Obi-Wan & Anakin is a post-apocalyptic steampunk western. Poe will be the same, with each arc feeling a bit different. The first story is straight-up weird, ‘70s sci-fi, but there’s plenty more to come—a prison story, an espionage tale—lots of great stuff.

The name’s Dameron, Poe Dameron? Poe Dameron: Prison Break? I’m shoving my wallet against my computer screen, and yet a copy of Poe Dameron #1 is not in my hands.

The main villain in the book will be a First Order Intelligence Officer that Soule describes as “Evil Lando” (that’s him in the artwork above), which just draws even more comparisons between this new series and the adventures that Wedge Antilles and his myriad allies went on in the X-Wing books and comics. Soule continues:

The main villain is a new character, an intelligence officer in the First Order with some ties to the old Empire. He’s a scary guy, a little older, which I think gives him a cool gravitas in much the same way Peter Cushing delivered as Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope. His approach to conflicts is very interesting, and he can be a charmer. I think of him almost like an evil Lando.


This series sounds like it could be out-rogue-ing Rogue One even before we see a snippet of footage from that movie, and it sounds completely fantastic. Anyone who’s ever loved the men and women sitting in the cockpits of an X-Wing should be very excited about this Poe Dameron #1, which hits comic book store shelves April 6th.

[Comic Book Resources]

Contact the author at james.whitbrook@io9.com .