Lit Do you wish Dawn of the Jedi was published earlier?

I recall reading that Ostrander and Duursema first pitched DOTJ in 2003, but were denied. Would things be better off if they were given the go-ahead then instead of beint forced to wait a decade?

 

It's debatable, a lot of the lore was not yet entirely established. By its time everyone had a good idea of the worldbuilding in the pre republic era.

 

2012 was definitely a much safer time for it to come out --- a lot of lore like the Rakata had been established, as Invictus says, and in a post-Episode III world with no future movies in sight, Lucasfilm was a lot more relaxed about the kinds of stories that could be told (Palpatine's childhood, a dystopian galaxy 100 years in the future, a secret apprentice for Vader, etc).

However... if it had kicked off in the mid-2000s in lieu of Legacy, it wouldn't have disappointingly revealed to us that John & Jan, as fantastic as they are at storytelling, tend to tell the same story every time. It wouldn't have been a Legacy clone visually, character-wise and plot-wise. It would have been the trailblazing epic that Legacy ended up being instead of a stale rehash. And it would have had fifty issues to play with instead of having the rug pulled out from under it after just a couple of story arcs.

But it also might weirdly have had a Skywalker in it. Just a hunch.

 

While I wish certain series had gotten more time, such as Legacy (or at least the non-Cade parts) and probably Agent of the Empire as well, Dawn of the Jedi isn't one of those. Its probably their weakest work. I might even say the DotJ novel was a better DotJ work than the comics.

Though honestly I was never as big a fan of their work as many other people (I didn't read about Quinlan until I got into Star Wars comics around the post-AotC era so never cared for him much) and then they reused his personality for Cade and what's his name, Xesh. They even had somewhat similar girlfriends.

I know TotJ is too... weird by later-EU standards (not to mention Jedi vs. Sith) but DotJ was also too conventional in many ways. Did they really have to include lightsabers? Well, Forcesabers, but still.

Actually I still miss Knight Errant. Lord Daiman requires more screen time.

 

Dawn of the Jedi was released at the right time. In fact, most if all the jedi/sith stuff pre-TPM was pretty good. The lore, back story, action, all of it.

 

I agree with the posters above that said DOTJ was released at more or less the right time, as the lore around the Old Republic was well established by then, something that would help guide stories to be told even before that Era. It also had nice connections to the then newly released TOR MMO. The biggest issue was the premature ending of the series and the forced rushing of the second and third arcs. In an ideal (or at least somewhat better) world, I wish Dark Horse would've started with DOTJ some 3 years earlier than they did. That way the story would have unfolded more organically than it did due to the circumstances starting in late 2012. That way we may have gotten at least a couple of more arcs, or at least the ones that we did get would've been better fleshed out.

In the end, this is all wishfull thinking.

 

FWIW, I think there's a distinction to be drawn between Dawn of the Jedi the comic series, and DotJ the broader era. I really liked the Into the Void novel, and I can't imagine even those who didn't would see it as at all reminiscent of a Legacy clone. Now yes, it did wind up being the ONLY other thing to that era, but in this hypothetical situation that wouldn't necessarily have been the case.

 

I wish DOTJ had stuck closer to the Tython lore that came before it. There's a number of great Force Wars paintings in many of the reference books and essential guides that John and Jam dropped to just give us the same old scoundrel Jedi costuming of Quinlan and Cade. The ships all pretty much looked like Legacy ships(which were frequently underwhelming), and the made rush to the lightsaber and making its true origins as a weapon of the dark side. I didnt like any of that, and Canon kyber crystal lore is far superior imo.

Everything about the Je'daii was also essentially everything about the Jedi. Ranks were in place, they had holocrons from an earlier species of Force-users, they get lightsabers from dark siders. About the only thing not locked down was a philosophical position.

I think the best thing to come out of DOTJ is issue 0.

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I'm surprised nobody has said that they dislike the lore that was established in between 2003 and 2012 and wish that DOTJ was published earlier to prevent the establishment of that lore (such as the changes to which Schism birthed the Sith, changes to when lightsabers were invented, etc.)

 

We all disliked the post-NJO lore that was established between 2003 and 2012... does that count?

 

I thought Into the Void was the worst SW novel I've ever read or listened to. I listened to it on cd and the Jedi (Lanoree Brock) came across as being a total snob. Maybe the voice acting killed it for me, but I thought the story was just poor. If someone asks me where to start in diving into the SW novels, I tell them NOT to read in timeline order, as Into the Void is first on the timeline. Better to start with a strong novel like Kenobi or the Bane Trilogy or they may never read another SW novel after this one. I haven't read the DOTJ comics, so hopefully those were a lot better than Into the Void, the novel.

 

I will say that a rare critique of the Essential Atlas I have is that it established that pretty much every planet ever depicted with ancient ruins on it were part of the Rakatan Empire, even when those ruins were clearly from humanoid beings. But I did like that we got Rakatans stationed on Byss in DOTJ. It still irks me that we got a story called Force Wars that didn't actually depict the Force Wars.

I do wonder just how different it would have been if it had come out in 2003. Presumably the Rakatans wouldn't have been the villains... unless someone at Lucasfilm sent them some KOTOR stuff ahead of time. They did incorporate some cutting-edge TOR stuff into the comic we did end up getting. What other stuff that DOTJ used was actually established post-2003?

I think the series was generally a wash, but I do still like the first arc as pretty much being a UFO crash in a GFFA setting. And I think it's funny that we almost got a Jedi homeworld in TFA/TLJ that would have been more like the Tython of the comics, with floating mountains and boulders from all the Force energy.

 

The funniest thing about the way the post-KotOR sourcebooks handled the Rakata (I think it may have been the NEC that did this, first) was that it contradicted one of the few things we were told about their Empire in the game: that humans were absolutely not among their slave species.

 

Interesting question. I for one loved Dawn of the Jedi, especially the Tim Lebbon novel, but I think its best that the Prequel Trilogy wrapped up before we explored the origins of the Jedi Order or Je'daii Order.

 

Dawn of the Jedi had nothing to do with the Jedi, and was all about a Je'daii group that wasn't the Jedi. Only the Old Republic game decisively tied these guys into the Jedi with the Fount of Rajivari, Tython holocrons, etc.

This subfranchise is so disconnected from the Jedi you could literally slot 'Dawn of the Jedi'', novel and comics, into the canon Disney timeline and it would still fit since, aside from the title, nothing in the works themselves prevents the Prime Jedi from founding the Jedi Order proper on Ahch-to.

 

Dawn wasn’t, uh, what’s the word . . . good. It wasn’t good.

 

Don't worry, coming from the same people who recanonized clone bodies in the form of Dr. Cylo, I hear that Xesh/Tau is actually the Prime Jedi mentioned in TLJ reference books

 

Is no Dawn of the Jedi and more Agent of the Empire an option? Because that's what I'd take. The John and Jan one-trick pony of brooding, conflicted Force users had it's time to shine, twice, I didn't need a threepeat, I needed something fresh. I found Legacy underwhelming, Dawn even more so. Switching them up probably wouldn't have changed that to any level of positive whelming. If Dawn had come earlier Dawn just would've been the series I thought of while reading the Empire/Rebellion omnibuses. The thought at the time? "I should've been reading this series instead of Legacy."

John without Jan worked well on Agent, maybe Jan without John could've given us something cool and different (but probably Force users and monsters).

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John Ostrander wrote Suicide Squad - of course he can do spy action well.

 

Yeah, Xesh just didn't work for me - I didn't care about him, I wanted the bastard dead.

It would have been hard to do any series in the shadow of Legacy, especially with the then miniseries model DHC were using, but DotJ did walk a too well-trodden path.

 

The series was really a fairly poor telling of the founding of the Jedi. As stated already, we were featured a fully formed group with temples, Masters, apprentices, a Council, etc. It wasn't a founding of the Jedi at all, just an implication of how the Je'daii changed their name and philosophy a bit to become the Jedi.

It's like if we got a story promising the founding of the Justice League, only to be given a story about the Justice Society who eventually decided to change their name to the Justice League.

 

What lead me to start this thread is that in 2003, when Ostrander and Duursema first pitched DOTJ, the lore was that Xendor started what became the Sith in ~25,0000 BBY, and I wish DOTJ could have shown the Je'daii split into the Jedi and Sith, thanks to Xendor, "the lone dissidant in an order of harmonious followers (the Je'daii).

 

Is there any reason they couldnt have done that exact thing when they did do DOTJ?

All that aside, i'd be much morr interested in stories telling about the formation of the Je'daii after the arrival of the Tho Yor on Tython than i am the tyrant wars or anything in the comic. It's the temples and the different disciplines each one specialized in that interest me in this time period. The cultural stuff, not so much the boring action we got. All i got of that in the comic was issue #0, Into The Void delivered more on that than the comic did.

That said, i'd rather port Wuxia and samurai flicks to Tython as my proto-Jedi history. I think intrigue between temples/schools ala Jin Yong's Heaven Sword & Dragon Saber or Smiling Proud Wanderer makes for a more interesting pre-Jedi Jedi than a singular order with all the basic structures of the Jedi Order fighting psuedo-Sith Rakatan invaders.

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You want Smiling Proud Wanderer as prequels? It should have been the whole Sequel Trilogy!

Ben Skywalker is Linghu Chong, Rey is Ren Yingying and, I'm sorry to say, Luke Skywalker is Yue Buqun. The audience follows Ben's misadventures over the movies thinking he's just a rebellious punk, until they come to the awful realization that Luke is actually the true villain.

In my opinion it would have been more entertaining than what we got.

 

I'd rather the ST be HSDS though.

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