Lit Coop's MARVELous Voyage

Yeah, he gets Luke's full name from a tortured Rebel in a later issue of Marvel. I don't know where VQ falls between that story and the last Valance one, though.

 

Vader gets the name in #35. We're not there yet.

 

Talk about cramped stories - Vader's Quest supposedly takes place within one month of ANH.
Coop, the reason why there's been no problem with depicting Yavin as a gas giant is because we saw it in the movies. Both Endor and Bespin have had weird interpretations apparently because the TESB and ROTJ didn't put them onscreen with a big label that said THIS IS A GAS GIANT.

 

I dunno what the context of "one month after ANH" is, but if the conceit is that he gets "Skywalker" from that guy, and the full name in Marvel #35 (), I don't think there's any reason Vader's Quest can't go before the bulk of the Marvel series up to this point; plus, the further away they get from each other, the less ridiculous it is that Vader would be on Centares twice. If I had to guess, based on just my own sense of time passing through the series, and a rough memory of the other things that should've happened by now (strips, Allegiance, etc), I would guess that Dark Encounter is at least a full year after ANH. My understanding is that the first time he meets Luke in person - and thus, knows who he is - is SotME in 2 ABY. Am I right?

 

It's an admittedly weak reference - Luke basically says "Wow, I can't believe I've met two princesses in a single month!", which obviously meant to refer to Leia - but it's easily retconned.

 

Vader also learns Luke's (first and last) name from an Imperial naval officer he assigns to find this out in "Perfect Evil" (from Tokyopop's Star Wars Manga Black and Star Wars Manga Silver). When the officer shows him the hologram of Luke, Vader even recognizes a mix of his and Padme's features in Luke's face.

 

Maybe we can just claim Vader was one of those people who suck at remembering names....

 

I'm sure some of you would hang me for this, but - to hell with SW Manga. Didn't happen.

 

I don't know where it sits canonicity wise but I hope they are S-canon.

 

Tasty has said their canon status is "fuzzy." They appear to have been treated as S-canon so far.

 

Looking forward to what you think of 33 and 34. Those are my other favorites. Pretty downhill after that, though, IMHO.

Filling in Valance's backstory was fun, but I kinda struggled with the Minis rules -- I hope those played OK for anyone who actually tried them.

Oh, and I saddled Valance with a lame first name. (Beilert, a rearrangement of Liberty.) Not my finest creative hour....

 

I like Beilert, actually. Something "old British naval officer" about it.

I'm not terribly fond of Tagge so far, so if you're saying it's mostly downhill after this story...

 

"Fuzzy" is an interesting description, seeing as how they're labeled as Infinities.

 

Actually, I think that the Shira storyline is probably the height. The whole scene where Luke returns from his successful mission to find everyone acting distant - and then finds out what happened - is Marvel's storytelling at its best (IMO)

 

Yeah, that was a great cliffhanger -- but I thought that period was pretty uneven. The Shira saga turns goofy pretty quickly, for instance, with the pilots and the cook and the goofy spider thing. I thought Goodwin was more consistent. Though it's impossible for me to separate out youthful nostalgia looking back at these....

Ah well, we'll see what Coop thinks.

 

It's not there. Try The New Essential Chronology.

Yup. The Annual features Katya M'buele, a smuggler who is also referenced in Rebel Dawn as having participated in the Ylesia raid. Since Han recruited those smugglers personally, it stands to reason he had contact with her during that time. The Ylesia raid takes place within a few months of ANH. When Han greets her in the Annual, he states that it had been years since he had seen her. Since the Annual has no connection to the other Marvel storylines, I felt free to place it at 2 ABY on the timeline. This also frees up some time in that six month period in which all of the other pre-TESB stories take place. (See below.)

Vader makes a return trip to Centares in Vader's Quest. In that comic, a Rebel returns to his homeworld (Centares) to spread the news of the Death Star's destruction, only to be captured by Vader's agents. One can assume that this Rebel hadn't yet returned as of #29, which is why Vader ended up making two trips.

Er, not exactly. Most of the Marvel issues take place within six months after the Battle of Yavin, and I don't think that you're even past the second month yet. Allegiance is six months after Yavin, and the bulk of the newspaper strips haven't taken place yet. I can always post my full timeline for this era, if you'd like. (I've spent an inordinate amount of time cross-referencing all this. )

TC

 

...hm. I was going by Zan Arbor's appearances in a bunch of the Jedi Quests. Her being responsible for the stone mites is just something the NEC tacked on?

So that would put Vader's Quest between #29 and #35?

Yeesh...but is that crucial? Is it an NEC thing, or is there some major IU reason I'm missing? The yavin evacuation stuff in the strips is what - 2.5-ish?

Ask me again when I'm through the series and I feel like I can actually process it.

 

The first time Luke and Vader meet (briefly) is in Vader's Quest. They also have extended interactions in Marvels #35 and 37. The EU also tends to ignore the fact that Vader would have first spotted Luke on the Death Star during ANH.

Yes. Thanks to retcons, Jenna Zan Arbor has had a hand in all kinds of nasty Star Wars stuff that pre-dates Jedi Apprentice: the stone mites, the gas from TPM, the Force aura sensors from JAT...

Exactly! Now you're getting it!

Originally, the HoloNet articles in the Adventure Journals dated the Yavin evacuation at more than a year after the Battle of Yavin. In a retcon not dissimilar to what we've been seeing with The Clone Wars, the Essential Chronology placed the evacuation of Yavin at six months ABY, effectively condensing all the material taking place before the evacuation into a six month timespan. This retcon opened up a lot of storytelling space, and has since been backed up by other sources, including subsequent reference books and the Rebellion and Empire comics.

TC

 

Then when did they arrive on Hoth, and where were they in the interim? The Wook says something about a base on Thila, but they weren't there for two years, were they? The more questions I ask about this, the less I understand.

 

That's okay, we don't get it either. ;-)

The problem is, this is one area that the EU was very uncoordinated about. The newspaper strips and the Marvels both show (different!) evacuations that go directly from Yavin to Hoth after hanging out on Yavin for a long while, and apparently the move leads very quickly into ESB. WEG, on the other hand, assumed an immediate evacuation of Yavin after the Death Star, first to a base on Thila and later to several other worlds before finally settling on Hoth.

Later works sort of split the difference, letting the Rebels hang out on Yavin for six months or so to accommodate both sets of comics, then letting them evacuate in a merged version of the evacuation stories. They then kinda-sorta moved to Hoth, but they also operated out of several smaller bases like Thila Command while Echo Base was being fully constructed. They finally moved in to their icy new digs shortly before the Battle of Hoth.

I *think* that's the story as it now stands, but there may have been some new wrinkles since then.

Wait, what? All I ever recall reading from WEG was a near-immediate evacuation from Yavin, not a year-long wait. Do you remember which Galaxywide NewsNets this was in?

 

In fact, the ESB novelization claims Echo Base wasn't completed until a month before the film opens. So, yeah, it took awhile to get moved in. I think one of the Technical Guides gives an actual figure (like 18 months or something) for how long drilling took. Anyway, the split in the Goodwin strips happens when Luke says "Hoth, here we come!" and then the story jumps ahead 2.5 years.

As for Vader's Quest, the recent Omnibus: Early Victories book gives it a date of 2 months ABY.
Very much enjoying this thread.

 

There's also the evacuation shown in the Star Wars Kids mag, and I think I heard that the Renegade Squadron game goes with that rather than the original comics.

 

2 mths ABY for Vader's Quest? Glad that they quantified it.

 

I can confirm that the Rebel Technical Journal says that Echo base took 18 months to build. So, there's plenty of time in between the several "discoveries" of Hoth and ESB. The Rebels had a couple of large bases during that period, though they also spent a lot of time in space (as seen in Rebellion.)

The base on Thila, for example, was first mentioned in WEG, and also seen in the Chewbacca comic.