Cover for STAR WARS: DARTH PLAGUEIS is dark, evil and BEAUTIFUL!

It was all the way back in 2005, when Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was hitting theaters, that James Luceno first mentioned he was interested in writing a novel about Darth Plagueis. Plagueis, as we know, was the Sith Master of Darth Sidious: AKA Palpatine. And that's darn nearly all that we've ever come to know about the mentor of one of fiction's most infamous villains.

Well the novel has been on-again and off-again, but Star Wars: Darth Plagueis is hitting shelves this coming December 27th. And today we finally get to see what the cover looks like!

Behold the Dark Side in its glory...

That cover is... stunning. Just as much as I have been dying to read this book I have wondered how the cover art would be handled and it wildly exceeded anything that I was expecting. Just look at that: young Palpatine, and he is kneeling before his master Darth Plagueis just as decades later Darth Vader would kneel before Palpatine.

I am soooo lusting to have a print of that art to hang on my wall. Or at least to have a much more high-res version to use as my desktop wallpaper. Hey LucasFilm: I bet a bunch of fans would plunk down some reasonable coin to have this as a poster for their collection. Get to it! :-)