The High Republic Author Kristin Baver On Organization And Execution [Exclusive Interview]

What was the first taste of “The High Republic” that you got in general, because I think it seems like it’s a little bit out there, right? On the surface, it’s like, “Okay, we’re going to do something, it’s going to be way in the past, and it’s going to be new,” so what was your first introduction to “The High Republic” as a concept, and then how did you wade deeper into it?

I think because of where I work, I heard things before I really saw anything about it. I knew about Project Luminous, which was the code name, but I didn’t really know what Project Luminous was about. I knew the authors that were involved in breaking that story, and I had interviewed most of them for various other projects that they’ve worked on. I knew them and I knew their work, and so I knew I trusted whatever they were creating, but I think, if I’m remembering correctly, my first real understanding of what “The High Republic” really is and really set out to be didn’t come until the launch event in February 2020 or maybe a little bit beforehand. I might have had an early-ish preview because of covering it for StarWars.com, but I think it was just right around that time that I really saw the first concepts art and really got a sense of what that story was.

Do you have a favorite highlight of “The High Republic” so far just as a fan? Because I know you’re as big of a “Star Wars” fan as me or anybody.

It’s so hard, because I just love so many of these stories and characters. I remember when I was reading “The Rising Storm” for the first time, and it was one of those rare books for me where I [was] literally laughing out loud and crying [and] legitimately tearful over things that are happening in the story. It’s one of my all time favorite “Star Wars” books now, but it was just something that I was so glad could be part of. I love that book, but for me, also discovering on the comic side, the Marvel “Star Wars — The High Republic” comic run was really eye-opening in terms of allowing us to have a Trandoshan Jedi who is front and center and something we’ve never seen before. But also just following Keeve and her trials as she’s trying to figure out what it means to be a Jedi. You’re seeing so much of what’s happening in the books through her eyes and you’re meeting so many of the same characters in comic form, and it’s just a really elegant way to pull all those stories together and allow you to have some more of that connective tissue between a character that you might see on a book cover or imagine for yourself based on the author’s description in a novel, but you really get to spend some time in their presence in the comic run…

What “The High Republic” authors have done is allow everyone to see themselves within one of the Jedi, which is really amazing because, when you think about it … there’s a lot of species variety among the Jedi that we know from the prequel era, but they’re all very buttoned up and following the order and of a very specific ilk, and we don’t really delve into those individual personality traits as much as we get to in “The High Republic.”

I’m curious what the process is like. The way the book is laid out, you have chapters that are written very much in a journalism style where you’re explaining the background through interviews, but then you’re also individually giving some of those snippets on the art itself as you go through. Do you get to start diving into the artwork first? Do you start with the interviews? How do you approach a project like this?

From the very beginning of when we knew we were going to do this project, I got access to all the concept art and art that was being created for it, so I really just got to swim through that, Scrooge McDuck-style in his money pit, but just going through all of those different pieces and looking at the embarrassment of riches that we had created for “The High Republic” and really starting to puzzle out, “Okay, what do we have here, and how could we possibly organize this?” Because in a lot of the-art-of series books that are based on a film or live-action series production, it really moves through the pre-production, production, post-production phases in terms of organization.

I realized very early on that we couldn’t do that with this one, because you’ve had the summits bringing everyone together as one point on the timeline, but then you had all of these people scattering, all these new artists coming in all over the world and everybody is working at the same time, and it would’ve gotten really, I think, difficult from a narrative perspective to put all of that across on a chronological level for when it happened.

What we ended up doing was deciding to follow more of that character-based approach, but still give you that introductory chapter where you really get to understand more of the making of “The High Republic” and then delve into, “Who are the Jedi? Why was it important for the authors, artists, creators to make the Jedi as we find them at their peak in The High Republic? Who are The Nihil? Who are the villains? What’s really the Republic about at this time, and who are some of the characters and places that we see there?”

I think it really just gave it a good structure and a structure that just, to me, made a lot of sense and would allow someone also who comes to this book and says, “You know what, I care most about the ships,” to just flip to that chapter and dive directly into it if that’s the thing that pulls your heart the most, rather than forcing you to move through it from start to finish in order to best understand it.