Last month during Force Friday, LucasFilm unleashed novels and comic books that represent the first wave in an ongoing series dubbed Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While we continue the countdown towards this highly-anticipated Star Wars adventure, LucasFilm revealed the second wave of books during their New York Comic Con panel. IGN announced these new titles that will debut over the next few months, introducing new characters that will appear in Star Wars 7. As it turns out, we've seen some of these characters before, although we didn't know they'd be getting their own stories through the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens book series.

Back in May, Vanity Fair revealed the the identities of several characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, confirming that Adam Driver is playing the villainous Kylo Ren. Another photo gave us a first-look at a number of aliens, who were expected to be just minor characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But it seems that we'll learn much more about some of these guys in one of the new books. The Perfect Weapon, written by Delilah Dawson, will explore the character of Bazine, the young woman wearing the black hood in the middle of this photo. She is the one who looks like a court Jester, sitting on an as-yet unidentified species who looks rather imposing. The Perfect Weapon will be released on November 24

Another character from that same photo, the alien wearing red armor at the far right, will be featured in an "intergalactic swashbuckling pirate story" entitled The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku from expanded universe writer Alan Dean Foster. Unfortunately, no specific plot details were given, but it seems we'll learn a lot more about Count Dooku, who was played by Christopher Lee in 2002's Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. Other upcoming short stories include the Western story High Noon on Jakku, the fable All Creatures Great and Small, horror story Face of Evil and a collection of short stories by Landry Walker.

As for the new novels, Claudia Gray is writing Star Wars: New Republic: Bloodlines, which will be released in spring 2016 and is set six years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Chuck Wendig is writing the new books in the Aftermath trilogy as well. The second book is called Aftermath: Life Debt, and the third and final book is called Aftermath: Empire's End. We'll have to wait and see when the first plot details will be released.

What do you think about all of these new details? Are you looking forward to all of these books arriving in the next few months? Of course, it isn't known how exactly they will tie in to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, since we know very little about the story at this point, but hopefully we'll find out more when the new trailer debuts sometime this fall.