This week, the internet broke YET AGAIN – seriously, you would think they would have found a way to stabilize the darn thing by now – when Marvel Comics announced the upcoming crossover event Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles. This five-issue miniseries, beginning in January, will not only be the first crossover between two of the biggest franchises in the world, but one of less than a handful of Star Wars crossovers EVER.

Marvel, of course, is no stranger to the crossover game. Over the years their characters have met the superheroes of the DC, Image, and Valiant universes, battled Godzilla, boarded the starship Enterprise, crossed swords with Conan and Red Sonja, turned Phineas and Ferb’s pal Baljeet into a Hulk, absorbed the Ultraverse, encountered Archie Andrews, fought the Predator and the Alien Xenomorphs, teamed up with the Autobots, time-traveled to the Planet of the Apes, partnered with Disney’s Gargoyles, attacked on Titan, recently encountered Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob, and next month are scheduled to raise the curtain with the Muppets. And that’s just off the top of my head. Star Wars, on the other hand, has always been far, far more selective in terms of who they were going to meet up with. In the entire history of the franchise, I am only aware of a handful crossovers of any kind. One was a short story in the non-canonical Star Wars Tales comic anthology in which the Millennium Falcon crashes on a primitive Earth, with the wreckage found a century later by a very familiar “Professor Jones.” The second is the Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars special from 2014, which was as delightful as everything else Phineas and Ferb but also went out of its way to remind the viewers with a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that the story wasn’t canon to either franchise, so they should really just relax. In the 70s, an episode of The Muppet Show was hosted by Mark Hamill and featured his “cousin” Luke Skywalker. Finally, there was a line of Star Wars Transformers that allowed vehicles like the Falcon and Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter to turn into robot versions of the characters, but there was never a movie, cartoon, or comic book attached to the toy line.

So this is a big deal, is what I’m saying. Of course, there are skeptics asking why they’re publishing this comic, the answer to which should be obvious: because it will make several dump trucks full of money. The REAL question, in my mind, is why they’re only getting around to it NOW. Marvel and Star Wars have been corporate siblings ever since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. At the time, Dark Horse Comics had the rights to publish Star Wars, but as soon as that contract expired in 2015, Disney yoinked it away and gave it to Marvel. (Dark Horse, oddly, has recently regained the rights to publish certain Star Wars comics, but the bulk of the line remains with Marvel.)

The point I’m getting at is that, honestly, I’m surprised we didn’t get a Marvel/Star Wars crossover a decade ago. They’ve had lots of fun playing with other Disney properties: there have been lots of variant covers with Marvel heroes in Tron or Pirates of the Carribean-inspired designs, for example. Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox didn’t happen until 2019, but we’ve been inundated since then with comics like Alien Vs. Captain America, Predator Vs. Wolverine, and Planet of the Apes Vs. Fantastic Four.  And although the classic Disney characters have never interacted with the Marvel Universe directly, they’ve appeared on countless variant covers for different Marvel comics and starred in a series of What If? specials in which the Disney characters BECOME the Marvel heroes (Donald Duck as Wolverine, Goofy as Spider-Man, Minnie Mouse as Captain Marvel, etc.) 

So why are we just getting around to Star Wars/Marvel NOW?

The skeptic in me wants to say it’s because both franchises need a little bit of polish. Recent movie and television projects for both Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios – justified or not – have largely fallen flat with audiences (with the obvious exception of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which in the two weeks since its release has made roughly enough money to buy the moon if only they could figure out who to make the check out to). Finally mashing the two universes together is going to draw some much-needed attention to both of them. There’s no doubt that people who haven’t read comics in years – and perhaps never read them at all – will line up to see what happens when Darth Vader teams up with Dr. Doom or Chewbacca pals around with the Thing. 

But again, that’s the skeptical way to look at it. Perhaps it’s just taken them that long to find the right idea. The series is written by the aforementioned Kevin Smith, which is an interesting choice to say the least. I’m going to assume that Marvel has already got all five scripts for the series in hand to avoid Smith’s infamous tardiness, because anything else would be insanity. If that’s the case, then you have to wonder why Kevin Smith. Sure, he’s written lots of Marvel characters over the years, but to the best of my knowledge the closest he’s ever gotten to dabbling in the Star Wars universe is the scene in Clerks when Dante and Randall have a debate about the culpability of the independent contractors who got killed when Lando Calrissian blew up the second Death Star. 

I think people give Kevin Smith a bad rap these days. They assume all he’s capable of is blue humor and nerd references, and that’s simply not fair. Even his early movies – which, to be fair, contain an abundance of blue humor and nerd references – have a lot of heart to them, with strong character moments and plenty of memorable dialogue. He would later go on to give us  truly phenomenal runs on comics like Daredevil and Green Arrow, mainstream comics to which he brought some wildly inventive new stories that helped redefine the characters. Now all of those examples are relatively old, I know, but allow me to point you towards his 2024 film The 4:30 Movie, which is as heartfelt a devotion to the moviegoing experience and the tightrope walking act involved in young love as anybody has ever done. What I’m saying is that, yes, he DOES do sex jokes and geek comedy, but he doesn’t JUST do sex jokes and geek comedy. If you’d asked me to write a top ten list of writers who should handle this crossover I don’t know if he would have made the cut, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense.

That said, it almost doesn’t matter WHO’S going to write this comic book. The golden goose that is a Star Wars/Marvel mashup is such a guaranteed moneymaker that they could have recruited the worst writer on FanFiction.biz and still sold enough copies to fill the hole left in my heart ever since they discontinued the Coca-Cola with coffee I used to drink every morning. Literally anybody could get a bestseller with this premise. I’m glad it’s going to be someone who has a genuine love for both properties, but Marvel is looking for dollar signs here.

When the news was released, the comic book group I’m in started to debate various aspects of it – for example, how many variant covers are there going to be? The general consensus is that, in addition to the main cover, Marvel should release 65 variants, thereby allowing the completists to go to their local comic shop and declare, “Order 66!” Yes, it’s a terrible joke, and that’s why I love it.

But I think 66 is kind of lowballing it, to be honest. I’m not the biggest fan of variant covers, in general, but I also recognize the fact that the number of variants on an average comic seems to be INCREASING, not DECREASING. Most comics from Marvel have at least four or five covers. First issues and “key” appearances can reach the double-digits. And sometimes it’s TRULY absurd – there were almost 150 covers for Absolute Batman #20, the first appearance of that universe’s iteration of Robin. No, my finger didn’t slip when I was typing that – there are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX covers currently listed at the League of Comic Geeks database. 

And let’s face it, Star Wars/Marvel is not gonna be an average comic by any available metric. With a January release I’m not comfortable declaring that it’s going to be the best-selling comic of 2027, because there’s no way of predicting what might come later (I’m holding out hope for Absolute Captain Carrot shattering all records), but if it ain’t in the top five I’ll eat my lightsaber. There’s no way Marvel is going to let a book like that come out without milking it for all it’s worth. There will be a dozen different “standard” covers, at bare minimum. Many of those will probably have “virgin” covers (no logo or trade dress, just the artwork), “sketch” covers (black-and-white artwork before the coloring is added), hologram or foil covers, virgin sketch hologram foil covers, and so on. I also fully anticipate a slew of “homage” covers, featuring the Star Wars characters re-creating classic Marvel covers like Fantastic Four #1, Avengers #4, or Amazing Spider-Man #300, and possibly covers with the Marvel characters re-creating the Star Wars movie posters. Skottie Young will do a “baby” variant. J. Scott Campbell will do a cheesecake variant. There will be at least three different blank versions (of different colors) for artists to draw their own covers. Then there’s the “Punisher Kills Jar-Jar” variant. I could do this all day.

And let’s not forget the action figure variants! When Marvel got the license for Star Wars back in 2015, they started a specific genre of variant cover: covers that imitate an action figure blister pack. The trend expanded beyond Star Wars to the Marvel universe covers, to some of the Disney comics Marvel published, and on to other publishers doing their own “action figure” covers for toys both real and imagined. (My favorites of these have been DC’s “Super Powers” variants, by the way.) I fully expect each issue of this miniseries to have at LEAST one action figure cover each with a two-pack of characters from the respective universes: Dr. Doom and Darth Vader, Han Solo and Wolverine, Baby Yoda and the Kingpin – you know, the obvious pairings.

And lest we forget, this is going to be a FIVE ISSUE series. They’re not just going to blow the wad with a one-shot. They’re going to have a monthly grab at that brass ring from January until May.

In fact, the potential leads me to my next little bit of mindless speculation: what if it’s not just the miniseries that we know about? Marvel has a tendency to accompany any “event” with spinoffs. Kevin Smith is writing the five issues of Hope Assembles, but I honestly would not be surprised if, a month from now, Marvel announces an additional line of one-shot comics by different writers and artists focusing on a single pair from each of the two worlds. Boba Fett gets hired to collect the bounty on Venom. C-3PO and R2-D2 compare notes with H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot. Deadpool meets – actually, I don’t even care who Deadpool meets as long as he’s allowed to cut loose and break down every fourth wall in the entire Star Wars universe at the hands of a skilled comedic writer. I nominate Gail Simone.

Anyway, the point is, if you’re the kind of collector who needs every cover of any respective comic book to feel like they’ve made themselves whole, I feel very, very bad for you.

But don’t feel bad for Marvel. This is the closest thing to a license to print money they’ve had in quite some time. This book will sell very, very well.

I just hope that it reads really well too. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok.