Star Wars Comics Find Firm Footing in Prequel-Trilogy Era With Obi-Wan & Anakin Mini-Series Set Between "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones"

Flush from the critical and commercial success of the Lando mini-series, Marvel is again turning to Charles Soule to build on the legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker.

Soule will write the five-issue Star Wars: Obi-Wan & Anakin series that Marco Checchetto — the artist on Shattered Empire — will illustrate. The first issue is due January 2016.

Set between the events of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the story is akin to the classic Lone Wolf and Cub tales (though Anakin, while infantile and 13-years-old in this story, is hardly a baby!)

Announced during Marvel’s “Cup of Joe” panel by the publisher’s chief creative officer Joe Quesada at New York Comic Con on Oct. 10, readers will Obi-Wan and Anakin in a new phase of their relationship as Jedi master and padawan, having grown closer as friends through the training in the previous few years. It’s not been easy, either.

Now, with the pair asked to assist on a remote planet, that relationship faces new challenges, challenges that are likely to go far in providing a deeper context to their relationship.