Lit Thoughts on Legacy Vol. 1?

The Sith are as "overused" as the Devil.

 

This complaint comes up often but isn't really demonstrated in the story - in the marketing? Certainly, after all Villains Turn Up But Don't Much doesn't really sell in the way of more hyperbolic markerting, does it? Does Legacy back up that marketing? I think it does for the most part as we do have new takes on the Jedi and Sith, the GA and Empire and then there's Cade.

But when you look at the details in Legacy's back story, what becomes apparent is that, unlike both LOTF and FOTJ, the GA works effectively as a government. It only becomes splintered when the Sith sabotage the Vong's atonement offerings and then fans the flames of vengeance, which the Empire enthusiastically signs up to! It is only when the Jedi and the GA refuse to be vengeful towards the Vong that the a sufficient portion of the galaxy turns against them for war to break out. Even after losing the Sith-Imperial war due to masses of member treachery and defections, still neither the Ga or Jedi abandon their moral examples, despite being under great pressure to do so. They refuse to fight the enemy by becoming the enemy, while in the end Roan Fel is killed due to being willing to be damned as the man who used Omega Red and not listening to anyone!

So, if you want to see where the work of Luke, Han and Leia is in Legacy, the answer lies in the government of the GA and the Jedi, whose response to the Sith manipulations that set the galaxy afire, can be said to truly embody the example set by them. That much of the galaxy opted for the quick and easy vengeance offered by the dark side? Well, that's on them, isn't it?

 

Been saying for a long time now that smaller scale threats are the way to go. Battles taking place in far corners of the galaxy, or planetary civil wars, mssions calling back to the days of the OJO, etc. When every new threat talks about endless war or some galaxy scale conflict, they lose impact and therefore importance in the minds of the readers. Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, The Coruscant Nights Trilogy, I, Jedi, all of these did it to great effect. There are also novels like Shatterpoint and The Courtship of Princess Leia, smaller adventures with a larger overarching conflict mostly in the background.

 

In hindsight, I think I'd have preferred it if there were no big conflicts between the end of the NJO at the Sith-Imperial War that kicked off the events of Legacy. Looking at the way things stand now, we've basically got the Vong, then Caedus, then the Lost Tribe/Abeloth, then Krayt right on the heels of each other. Honestly, the EU has millennia of galactic history to work with, but this particular era gets packed with way too many galaxy-threatening crises. I blame the creative teams wanting to do another big epic, but not wanting to let the Big Three go, either.

 

I blame for DR for not having the nerve to actually work with DHC on something big, they screwed up on NJO in that respect and their late EU output post-NJO has looked like a company doing their level best to do another over.

Despite that we've had some good company collaboration on DOTJ and Knight Errant but imagine what could have been post-2003 in the same vein but much bigger!

 

I meant depressing as in the Empire is once again the galactic superpower, once again controlled by a sith (one who openly declare what he is), the jedi are hunted and in hiding and what could possibly be the hope for the future is a drug addicted, cynical bounty hunter.

DHC?

Is there a dictionary that explain all the abbreviation and if so were can I find it?

 

DHC=Dark Horse Comics

And it's not as bad as all that. By the end of the comic, the Sith-led empire has been overthrown, the Sith have been driven back into hiding and their leader is dead, there's a new government in power with representation from the GA, the Fel Empire, and the Jedi, and that drug addicted cynical bounty hunter managed to get the job done after all. It's certainly more uplifting than the ends of LOTF and FOTJ.

 

Nope, there is no dictionary of acronyms, learning them is only for the most serious and disciplined poster! 13 years have I seen posters come and go, think you ready?

More seriously, you're practically making the mistake of thinking the first hours of ANH equals the OT, when ROTJ doesn't turn out that way at all!

Also, there was a substantive amount of work done over the decades, began by Pellaeon's reforms and the peace treaty, to reform the Empire's image across the galaxy. Why else did so many follow the Empire's lead for vengeance if they lacked a popular legitimacy? That legitimacy being premised on a form of authoritarian social contract in effect. (Jello, get yer arse in here you'll probably like the sound of this! )

Indeed the Empire is far utterly evil in Legacy, the Sith Empire? Certainly, but even there things are not so clear-cut with characters such as the Yages. And is the Fel Empire so benign by comparison? Not entirely. If anything, Legacy encourages the reader to not be to quick to draw conclusions, but instead be attentive to subtleties.

 

I loved the first volume. Way back when it was the only comic I ever picked up at my comic store, the owner would always set one aside for me when I came in after college was done for the day even though I never had a file there. I came in around issue 22 in floppies so I have the first couple issues in trade.

The vector crossover was interesting but I didnt read any of the other comics so I cant comment on how it fared in the others but I thought Legacy did the best it could concerning that.

I kind of wish they had more time to wrap and world build even more but alas we were lucky we got 50 issues plus a mini series and now Volume 2.

 

How does it do that?

By having a failed Sith stand there and lecture you on everything? By having a bad you will literarily kill EVERYTHING?

By explaining/ deconstructing even basic game mechanics ( ie gain experience and level up) and making it dark?

I do not get how people can think this is the greatest game ever? What is there that make people love it so much?


I also feel Legacy Vol 1 got very safe and felt like a lot of other stories; good rebels bad empire a stright up hero (Stazi). Where as broken had the Empire trying to save the galaxy and few anti-heros, not the usual Star Wars heros.

 

I just wanted to say... LEGACY was the first comic/novel series to use the Sith since the PT.

This was before Caedus, the Lost Tribe, TOR, Knight Errant, etc.

Very true.

This is what I was saying.... before Episode 7 was announced.

Now, even if the EU is preserved, I'm sure that they will put a hiatus on all post-ROTJ books and comics. Just let them wrap up the unfinished projects.

There's some 85 years between FOTJ and Legacy, so it isn't so bad. But yeah, I think now we are definitely going to have a break in the EU, with Episode 7.

 

It is interesting that many of the biggest fans of Legacy are tamong the non-Cade Brigade. That might suprise some, but it doesn't suprise me. Some of the biggest fans (myself included) love to talk about Stazi, Roan Fel, Marasiah, the GA, the Fel Empire, the IK, Nat, Calixte, etc, but not Cade. Hell, to this day, Cade doesn't do much for me, and I count myself among Legacy's BIGGEST fans.

--Adm. Nick

 

According to the Wook, Legacy vol. I #1 was released in June 2006, so it would have been shortly after Betrayal came out and reintroduced Lumiya (a Sith) to the EU as a major villain. Not sure whether Legacy or LOTF was planned out first, though. Of course, either way it was still in the infancy of the EU's current Sith-fest, so it can't really be blamed for it, except maybe for opening the floodgates; I've been a pretty vocal proponent of the "Sith are overused these days" crowd, and I certainly don't hold Legacy's use of them against it, except vaguely in hindsight.

 

IIRC, Legacy comics did it first. I could be wrong, but that is my recollection based on old VIP posts.

--Adm. Nick

 

Force Smuggler already pointed this out.

I'd also like to point out when I said that I was speaking of all Sith/Sith remnants in the EU as a whole, not necessarily how long it'd been since they'd made an appearance as villains.

 

Legacy was planned first. They actually got the name "Legacy of the Force" from Ostrander's Legacy, to try and create a unified era. Also, Lumiya wasn't a Sith.

 

She called herself "Dark Lady of the Sith", used Sith knowledge and techniques, lived on an asteroid haunted by a Sith ghost, and went out of her way to push Jacen down the path towards Sithdom. Even if she was never formally initiated into the Sith Order, to all practical purposes, she was a Sith (and if she wasn't Sith, then I fail to see how her apprentice Caedus would legitimately be one either).

 

But the main point she was making in BETRAYAL and the other LOTF books was how she could never be a Sith. She never called herself a Sith then, simply said she was a guardian of Sith knowledge, and that Jacen would become the first Sith since Palpatine died. That's just what the books say.

 

I figured out my hangup with Legacy: it feels like rather than merely pastiching the films, as a lot of the EU tends to do, it is pastiching the EU.

I am now prepared to be pelted by tomatoes and other fruit and vegetables.

 

I guess I don't take anything a character like Lumiya says at face value. She was obviously manipulating Jacen the entire time, after all. In any case, I stand by what I said- she may not have formally been a Sith, but to all practical purposes (especially storytelling purposes) she counts as a "Sith character". She was certainly more of a Sith than Haazen, a weak Force-user who borrowed what he liked from Sith philosophy, artifacts, and techniques for his own agenda, despite his only real connection to any Sith Order being that he sold out Lucien's father to Exar Kun's forces, and I counted him when listing various Sith villains we've had lately earlier in this thread. But it sounds like we're pretty much just arguing "how far do you stretch the term Sith" here

 

I basically agree. I absolutely loved the series, but its main weakness was Cade. He was a great character concept, but the problem was that his development was so slow -- he gets prodded into doing something, then goes right back to slumming around, then does something, then regresses to just wanting to be left alone again. There was more of an illusion of progress than there was actual progress, and I don't think that by the end of it Cade came out of that process as well as he could have. He never really developed into a hero at all, just into a pissed-off guy who wants to be left alone and is willing to do a little more about it each time.

I also agree that Krayt's return was entertainingly executed, but I don't think it was necessary. Wyyrlok was a very interesting villain and I would have liked to have seen that play out, and let the big surprise offing of Krayt stick, rather than have it just come back around to a resurrected Krayt. It didn't really do it for me in terms of the big picture.

Most of the rest of the stuff is just a result of the series being cut short; it had a ton of elements in play that all were worth seeing and demanded to be seen, but it didn't get the time to dedicate enough room to all of them before it had to wind down, which is a big pity.

 

By virtue of being one of the very few Star Wars works that recognizes that there is much more to life than black and white, that there is no such thing as absolutes, and that the world cannot be boiled down to "good" and "evil." Overall Star Wars has a very simplistic philosophical view that is contrary to how life actually is, and it's nice when an EU entry recognizes this as Kotor 2 does.

"Raaaaawr I'm an evil Sith" gets boring. "Oorah I'm a gung-ho Jedi" equally so. Complex characters and ideas are much more entertaining than "there's a baddie over there wearing black robes and holding a red lightsaber, I must go defeat EVIL because I am GOOD."

 

In real life yes, but this is Star Wars

True, and?

 

And it's nice to see something different for a change?

I love chocolate ice cream, can't get enough of it, but sometimes strawberry REALLY hits the spot.

 

That is what Michael Moorcock, the Dune-series, Tarantino, Game of Thrones, etc. are for