Comics roundup: Star Wars comic introduces Galaxy's Edge; Ahoy announces new slate; and more

Action! Adventure! Thrills!

Dig into our over-sized comic book roundup! Three stories for the price of one!

To prep Disney World and Disneyland patrons for the upcoming Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge theme park, Lucasfilm is releasing a five-issue limited series revolving around Batuu. This planet serves as the home of the Mos Eisley-esque spaceport known as the "Black Spire Outpost," according to the official Star Wars website.

Going on sale in April, the short comic book run is helmed by writer Ethan Sacks and artist Will Sliney. Within the pages of each book, readers will meet characters like the Dok-Ondar, an Ithorian with a penchant for collecting rare artifacts. You can take a look at his/her/its design in the variant cover image below from Karl Lindberg and Iain McCaig.

Credit: Lucasfilm

"Our series will give fans the chance to visit Black Spire Outpost months ahead of voyaging to Batuu in person," Sacks told StarWars.com "Armed with top-secret sketches and information from Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm, we are keeping this authentic to the spirit of this rich new setting. I’d tell you more, but I already have the death sentence on 12 systems…."

Galaxy's Edge will open in Disneyland in June, while the Disney World version won't arrive until the fall.

AHOY Comics, a new indie publisher that launched in September, just announced a brand-new slate of titles for the new year, writes i09.

Between April and June, the company will release three new comic "magazines"—Bronze Age Boogie, Planet of the Nerds, Hashtag: Danger—and a single one-shot, Steel Cage. Extra material within each book like crosswords and poetry will bolster them into the aforementioned "magazines."

Ok, so here's what we know about each upcoming title so far:

• Bronze Age Boogie follows a young female warrior/princess, Brita Constantina, fighting threats from Mars in 1975 B.C. and 1975 A.D.
• Planet of the Nerds centers around a bunch of high school jocks who wake up in a in a future dominated by the kids they once kicked around in school.
• Hashtag: Danger features a group of three explorers (inspired by Marvel's Fantastic Four minus one) that goes on all kinds of supernatural adventures all over the world.
• Steel Cage will feature three anthology stories that will eventually be voted on by readers. The most popular of the bunch is to receive its own ongoing series.

And finally, IDW is going where no one has gone before with a series about the USS Enterprise's fifth and final year of its mission "to explore strange new worlds" and "seek out new life and new civilizations. The news was originally reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Interestingly, Star Trek: Year Five is being written not by one person, but by an entire team of creative talent made up of Brandon Easton, Jodi Houser, Jim McCann, Collin Kelly, and Jackson Lanzing. Kelly and Jackson are penning "the opening arc of the series," which will be illustrated by Stephen Thompson.

Famed illustrator and longtime Star Trek fan, Greg Hildebrandt (of the Brothers Hildebrandt), painted a front cover for the series.

"With Year Five, we don’t just want to thrill — we want to channel the power of [franchise creator Gene] Roddenberry’s original vision, to tell a story about the future that illuminates our present," Kelly told THR.

Lanzing added that Kirk's choices “will have huge ripple effects, from the outbreak of war in the Alpha Quadrant to an unprecedented strain of trust with Spock. We’ll turn a mirror on modern society, just as [the original television series] did in the 1960s, and go boldly towards meaningful, heartfelt stories.”

The series is all set to go on sale in April.