As introduced yesterday in Part I, Star Wars novels in Japan have a very different look to them than American books. The Japanese reader prefers a different size of pocketbook than the American reader, and this change in format has created a need for different cover art.

The art for The New Jedi Order series is truly breathtaking for two main reasons. One, the size of the novels has required that each book be split into at least two parts -- so that means we get double the amount of regular cover art. For each two-part book, the covers join in the middle, creating a series of "widescreen" diptychs showing much more art than a single cover could convey. And secondly, Tsuyoshi Nagano's amazing paintings build upon the concepts produced for the domestic covers and add so much more. Nagano benefits from the lag time between American and Japanese publication dates. Remember, for American covers, they're often produced before the book is even finished, so they usually must be more abstract than literal. The Japanese covers are not only produced well after the contents of the novels are known, but also benefit from other artists having established what original characters and creations look like. For example, Vergere never made it to a domestic cover, because her character wasn't designed until New Essential Guide to Characters provided an illustration for her. Nagano could pull from a greater mix of character and reference art to populate his covers, and it definitely shows.

Get started here.