Expanded Universe

The Expanded Universe was created by Lucasfilm's Vice President of Licensing Howard Roffman in roughly 1986. The Expanded Universe was pitched to George Lucas as a parallel Universe canonically adjacent to his own universe. This was in order for more creative freedom when it came to licensing new Star Wars material after the theatrical run of the Original Trilogy.

History

Origins 1987–1991

Around 1986-87 West End Games riding high with the success off of their licensed "Ghostbuster RPG" flew out Greg Costikyan and Chris Baker out to California to meet with Lucasfilm. They made a bid on the Star Wars license for tabletop games in which they offered $100,000, Their competitor TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) offered Lucasfilm. $70,000. West End Games won the bid, which was at the time most likely the highest advance for a roleplaying property at that point. Lucasfilm thought that the RPG would be a great idea and to keep Star Wars active in the minds of geeks at the time. As Star Wars was in a decline, with the Marvel comic series, along with their two television programs, ending that year. The only ongoing content was the Ewoks and Droid comics published by Star Comics, a Marvel Comics imprint. The game was based on the d6 system used in WEG's Ghostbusters RPG. Lucasfilm was relatively hands-off but had occasional input such as not being allowed to show Stormtroopers with their helmets off, and killing off any main characters. Its main designer Greg Costikyan would leave mid-way through the production of the first wave of products for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, eventually being replaced by Bill Slavicsek and Curtis Smith who were huge Star Wars fans in their own right. The two created The Star Wars Sourcebook for the game which would flesh out characters, vehicles, technology, and organizations from the films and older material, this book would have a monumental impact on the Expanded Universe.

Around 1988 according to Lucy Autrey Wilson who was the Director of Publishing at Lucasfilm subsidiary Lucas Licensing, during a meeting with Bryron Preiss whom she pitched to him about writing books based upon LucasArts properties. Apparently, Preiss had no interest in doing any LucasArts properties, but he did want to write a Star Wars novel. This spawned a great idea which was to produce new Star Wars material other than the West End Games Roleplaying Game, was rather dead. She started looking for publishers willing to publish Star Wars novels, coming across Bantam Books during which she sent a proposal to them about publishing novels. She approached her supervisor Howard Roffman at the time Vice President of Licensing at Lucasfilm about publishing new books under the Star Wars IP. It was from there that Howard went to George Lucas and pitched the idea to him about continuing Star Wars in the written word. Lucas laid out a few conditions in that the stories these authors wanted to tell were in a different universe, and that he would not read any of them, as he could not keep up with it all. He did not want to be in charge of other's works. The last condition was that certain time periods were blocked out, the main one of which was anything before A New Hope. With these conditions met, Howard would go back to Lucy, whom in turn would get in contact with Lou Aronica at Bantam Books and sign a contract with them. Thus, he would terminate the deal for the Star Wars license for novels with Ballantine Books. Lucy then compiled a shortlist of authors, one of whom which she settled on was Timothy Zahn the winner of a Hugo Award, and had just finished completed his own space opera novel trilogy “Cobra”. In preparation for writing his trilogy for Star Wars he was sent The Star Wars Sourcebook by West End Games, allegedly according to Slavicsek “Zahn was insulted by this at first”. Zahn later came to appreciate the gesture, since it didn't mean he didn't have to create a lot of stuff from scratch.

In November of '88 Tom Veitch sent a letter to Lucasfilm addressed to George Lucas to ask about creating a new Star Wars comic. At the time, Tom Veitch was working with artist Cam Kennedy on their original six-issue limited series, “The Light and Darkness War”, published by Epic Comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics. On the 22nd of November, three days after sending the letter to them, Lucy Wilson called Veitch and told him she and Lucasfilm were quite interested, but didn't commit to anything yet. A week later, after checking with George, Lucy called Veitch again, giving him the go ahead and prepare a pitch for a story. He would call back a few days later with his first proposal, which was titled, The Jedi Chronicles. It was a story that was about the Jedi Knights of the Old Republic trying to hold their own against Darth Vader in the aftermath of the rise of the Empire. Lucy ultimately rejected that story idea since George had made that specific era “off limits” due to George wanting to tackle that period with his next trilogy, instead suggesting that it take place after Episode IV: Return of the Jedi. With Lucasfilm having an already established relationship with Marvel Comics decided by 1990 to have them publish the comic as a three-issue limited series titled "Star Wars: Dark Empire" with editor Margaret Clark and artist Cam Kennedy who was at the time working with Veitch on “The Light and Darkness War” when he started developing the story he was offered the job as artist for the project. This version of the series would never see the light of day as Cam Kennedy was having payment disputes with Marvel, and thus decided to leave the company, putting the future of the comic in jeopardy. Lucasfilm's other licensed comic publisher Blackthorne Publishing had gone defunct that year following a poor financial decision with licensing “Michael Jackson's Moonwalker” comic adaptation. Dark Horse Comics, a comic publisher focused on movie-licensed comics co-founder Randy Stradley (who's first major work in the comic's industry was on Marvel's Star Wars 86: The Alderaan Factor as the writer of the comic) approached Lucy about acquiring the comic license for Star Wars, to which she agreed and Dark Empire's story was thus expanded to be a 6-issue miniseries with more input from Lucy.

Canon Tiers of the Expanded Universe

C-canon (Continuity Canon)

C-canon or Continuity Canon

S-canon (Secondary Canon)

S-canon or Secondary Canon