Lit It's all starting to come together

I've been reading the recent EU and watching Rebels, and I really like how they are connecting all their media right now.

One small example is how in the Marvel Vader comic they mention their expansion into the outer rim and in Rebels, they are doing the very same thing.

We're seeing a level of connectivity that we've never seen before. You can tell they are very much weaving a very intricate and connected story through multiple timelines and platforms. As this goes on, I'm very much looking forward to keeping up with it. As well, this has to be difficult. (which is why Legends is what it is)---but still good.

 

They do seem to be coordinating better. Just earlier this week Gillen, Aaron and their editor where flown to SF to have face-to-face planning meetings with the Story Group at Lucasfilm, something they didn't do before with their comics authors. We'll see how it goes.

They do seem to be planting little seeds hinting at future plot points everywhere, like the Crymorah stuff.

 

I'm looking forward to the kanan comic series and how well it ties to A New Dawn

 

Yeah, I love the Five Year Plan getting indirectly referenced with the Emperor referring to their continued need to expand into the Outer Rim, implying the plan's been derailed in the mean-time. Crymorah referenced in Tarkin and the DV comic. I wonder if they'll become prime antagonists in some setting or if they'll appear in TFA?

An earlier coordination reference is TCW, Rebels and Tarkin with the giant Kyber crystals.

 

Are Crymorah from Legends or completely new?

 

New as of Tarkin. It also introduces the Droid Gotra, which could be related to Darth Vader #4.

 

There's no way to know for sure, but I'm pretty certain the new crime syndicate stuff like the Crymorah and the Droid Gotra come from the Underworld TV series scripts.

 

Rebels plays 5 years before it though

*cough, cough*

 

A level of connectivity at the time instead of after the fact might perhaps be a better way of saying it. Though there were a few cases of that in the old EU.

 

Can't say this feels any different to how it's always been to me...

 

Eh, as much as I hail the EC--and fourteen-year-old me checked it out from the library so many times I'm surprised I didn't wear their copy to shreds--it's after-the-fact spackle. That's not a knock at all, because that's what it set out to do, and succeeded spectacularly, but it was a reaction to 23 years of relatively uncoordinated publication.

EDIT: Ugh, why do I never learn to refresh before posting. See Vthuil above.

 

granted, but that is easier when your starting from scratch. When the eu began there was connectivity then too, but it was not always in exact order.

 

Wasn't the Clone Wars Multimedia Project heavy on the connectivity - with novels, video games, comic serieses, and the cartoon all linking at various points?

 

Indeed, and it was the tightest inter-media connectivity we got, ever, but it was limited in scope. Three years of story and about two-and-a-half years of publishing time.

 

And somehow even that didn't hold...

 

More recently there was also stuff like Millennium Falcon, FOTJ, the Lost Tribe novellas, and Crosscurrent all being connected. And people tend to forget how connected things were back in the Bantam era, too. Xizor was originally referenced in Darksaber a year before SOTE, the first X-wing book incorporates their history from Thrawn Trilogy, SOTE, and Truce at Bakura; Dawn of the Jedi and The Old Republic established stuff about ancient Tython in concert, etc.

 

Another example might be TOR, (game, comics, novels, and lots of references back to older works).

 

We had great interconnectedness during the Bantam era; Shadows of the Empire, the X-Wing books, comics and games - but then Lucasarts started falling apart, and Del Rey went off to the Denningverse, leaving Dark Horse to focus on their own eras.
There have been a few steps in the right direction, but quite a few in the wrong as well. With the same editorial team at Del Rey and the games license off to EA, I'm not holding my breath for a return to the "golden age" (at least as I see it). Marvel should be good for tying things together, but I'm still waiting for artwork and creativity that approaches what I expected from Dark Horse.
My hope lies in the excuse of these years being hamstrung by waiting for the ST, keeping the world small until the broader direction is established. If the post-RotJ timeline is done well, if they manage to reign in authors like Denning, if they can coordinate well with EA and start doing some good worldbuilding at Marvel I might be lured back, but I'm not convinced it's worth getting my hopes up yet. There are a lot of "ifs".

 

Well, Dark Empire reads as a sequel to Jedi, but Zahn said "kriff that noise." The modern EU started off with one author ignoring the works of another writer leaving a couple of awkward references in DE to make it fit.

 

Regardless of how I like the Thrawn Trilogy, I think Dark Empire is best placed four years after ROTJ than immediately after. Don't ask me why, I'm just like that.

 

There was the occasional creative spat, to be sure, by I think that's outweighed by the kinds of collaboration we got between Zahn and Stackpole or Allston, and between other creators and mediums besides. In any case, it's hardly fair to define the entire era by the most notable dissonance, especially when it's one of concepts and characterization more than hard facts. I don't think anyone can expect that to never happen in so large a shared universe.

 

Of course some time should pass, like it did between the movies, but I feel everything with the Hutts, Nar Shaada and Boba Fett in DE1 makes more sense if RotJ is more recent and if The Princess hadn't been one of the top dogs in the galactic government like she was in TTT.

And Abadacus I wasn't looking for the most notable dissonance, I just found that the first two things (besides WEG) to kick off the EU-era didn't even work without squinting a little. The EU was born of dissonance and continuity spackle.

 

Another thing of note:

Spoiler

In Tarkin, the Jedi Temple make up parts of the Imperial palace and we get to see that in DV1.

 

I'm glad they are making the attempt, but not really.

The EU exists because of the interplay initially between the novels and the RPG - the novels providing the stories, and the RPG providing the deep background for the Star Wars universe. The video games and comics soon followed, and the pre-WEG/3T material eventually was retroactively joined as well.
The old EU - "Legacy" - is the deep background for the NEU. And that's a purely one-sided process, mining 'dead' strata of canonical material. I would've preferred that they truly did a break, a 'new' universe, but cynically it's obvious that they're having their cake and eating it too.

But like I said, I'm glad that they're making the attempt to coordinate the upper-level canonical material with the lower-level, which was missing from the EU in the CWAS era - and that they continue with that in the future. It makes for good storytelling.

 

I don't remember Palpatine saying anything about expansions into the outer rim in Vader #1 other than saying "eventually we will claim the outer rim". Sounds like something the Empire would be getting around to much later after the Rebellion is gone.