The Expanded Universe is actually older than the films themselves, as the novelization of the original film was published six months before the film was released.įor the most part when any discrepancies arose retcons were created to fix these contradictions.

In in-universe chronology, the earliest works are the Dawn of the Jedi comics, which are set millennia before the films, while the latest are the Legacy comics, which are set about one hundred and thirty years after Return of the Jedi. ' The premise of all the comic books, novels, games, and other spin-off works is that they all work chronologically, that the continuity forms one unbroken story. Since our movies have their own internal continuity, we maintain that in the spin-off works. But it wasn't until 1991, when Timothy Zahn wrote the novel Heir to the Empire, the first Star Wars best-seller, which was the beginning of what we call the Star Wars renaissance, that continuity became an issue.' ―Lucasfilm continuity editor Allan Kausch, 1996 Early years Technically, George Lucas has been doing continuity all along by mapping out the nine films. The early development of the Expanded Universe was sporadic and unrefined, in large part because, at this time, there was so little canon material for the creators to use as reference. The Expanded Universe is generally considered to have begun with Alan Dean Foster's February 1978 Star Wars spin-off novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, although technically it began in October 1977 with the story The Keeper's World, in Marvel Comics' Pizzazz magazine. Splinter drew inspiration primarily from an early draft of the Star Wars script. Although George Lucas's name is on the cover of the original Star Wars novelization, Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote it.

Star wars revisited watch online