Comics Rereading Legacy Volume 2 in light of TFA

I'm guessing since according to Pablo the reboot was in talks long before it actually happened, they were aware of what was coming. I mean even if it wasn't, rumors do spread. But yeah, we didn't even get to figure out what the Galactic Triumvirate was or where the Jedi went, or why the Imperial Knights all decided to no longer serve the Empress and go be all kumbaya despite what was established of them before. Was the Triumvirate an alliance, a united federation as the old GA, simply three leaders of different factions representing them on a council trying to rebuild the Galaxy? What about Ania Solo? Where did she come from? Was she a direct descendent of Allana, if so did she never end up getting to be Hapan Queen, or maybe Ania's family were forced into hiding? It was never clear what it really was and I'm not sure we'll ever find out, since if they do continue Legends it's unlikely Legacy would be high on the to-do list.

 

Okey, lets here your defence of Dawn of the Jedi

 

It's quite simple and as I've said before - it wasn't given a fair chance to develop and conclude its story.

The first arc I enjoyed the most, and imo it's the best from DOTJ. The first issue was released in February 2012 and the arc concluded in June. In October 2012, LFL got sold to Disney. Now, we don't know if Dark Horse was aware about the license loss prior to October 2012, but, if they didn't, then at best the rumours (as Havoc123 said) or assumptions within DH that they'll lose it started no sooner than October.

The second DOTJ arc started in November 2012, very soon after Disney bought LFL, so that's an indication that work on the first couple of issues of the arc were finished before that. The second arc concluded in May 2013. Again, I wouldn't know when DH was informed that they'll lose the license, but it's safe to assume that they didn't learn when we did, and they likely learned about that early-mid 2013 at the latest. After that they had to plan how to wrap up their comics, because they'd have about a year or a year and a half at most?

Also note that there were 4-6 month breaks between the arcs because Duursema couldn't produce enough art for the series to be ongoing for 2 years straight. Or, she most likely could, but it's a question of quality vs quantity. Otherwise, if we got 20-24 issues instead of 15, the story would've been better (most likely).

The third and final arc started in November 2013 and concluded in March 2014. Given how much time it took for an arc to be prepared, there was no time for a fourth arc. DH was aware of that, and therefore had to conclude DOTJ in the third arc one way or the other. IIRC, Jan made a comment on Facebook when the art for the final issue was completed, and it was a month or two before it got released. I agree that the third arc feels very rushed and even compressed for a lack of a better term, but I forgive it because of the reasons I mentioned above.

You can make pretty much the same case for Legacy v2 as well. As for Dark Times, the comments by Randy at the end of the final issue indicated that another arc after A Spark Remains was possible (although I'm sure he knew it wasn't meant to be; he just had to say so in order not to hint at the license loss some 6 months before the announcement). Another indication that more Dark Times was planned is the comment by Randy (on Facebook this time) that they planned to connect the story with Empire: Betrayal. But, they had to conclude it as best they could in A Spark Remains. Yes, there are several plot points regarding certain characters that are left somewhat unresolved, and I don't think it's so because Randy forgot about them and that only we, the readers are way smarter to have realized that.

Havac I disagree, but understand and respect your dislike of the way Legacy v2, DOTJ and Dark Times progressed. Obviously I'm not fully satisfied with how they wrapped up either. I never said they were equal or better than KOTOR, Legacy or any other series (although to be fair, such comparisons can be subjective to a degree), but I am certain they would have been better if they had more time, at least for one more arc each. My point is I can't, and don't think anyone should judge them too harshly, as the authors and artists did the best they could under those circumstances.

 

I decided to get Legacy Volume 2 off of amazon just to see what it is like. See what the hub bub of this EU's version of Rey is all about.

Anyways after hearing all this talk about lines being put on hold and half year breaks inbetween arcs by Darkhorse it makes me really glad the rights were taken away from them and given to a company that had more resources to get things out on a more consistent basis. If I was trying to read that stuff as it was coming out that type of release schedule would drive me up the wall and very easily make me lose interest in the story.

 

Dark Times wasn't exactly representative of the line as a whole in that respect Jammin.

 

Non of that really explain my main problems with DotJ since they appeared in the first story arc.

 

There are some small similarities between Rey and Ania Solo, but I wouldn't say they're big enough to call Ania the EU's version of Rey. They are very different characters.

I think you got the wrong impression. Delays between issue releases were not common when DH had the license; only one series, Dark Times had them on a more or less regular basis. The delays were because of the artist, which required more time to finish his art. On the plus side, the art for that series more than made up for the delays imo, as Dark Times has some of the best artwork in any SW comic. Yes, the waits were frustrating, but for the art we got in the end they were worth it. I'd rather have 10 issues in 2 years with fantastic art than 25 in less than 2 years with sub-par to so-so art at best.

Well, I believe they address the issues with the rushed story overall and the crammed second and third arcs. I get the impression that you didn't like the characters and story from the beginning, correct? If that's the case that is fine, not everything can or should be up to everyone's taste

 

If anyone thinks there are never delays with Marvel or DC... haha.

I'll say that I agree there were issues with Dark Times, Dawn of the Jedi, and Legacy Volume 2 but of the three, especially after the initial arcs of the first two and particularly by the time LV2 began, Legacy 2 was my favorite of the three. It does dawdle and in some way you can argue that that dawdling is even less forgivable for LV2 given how it began with a countdown for losing the license already underway, but compared to the messes that DT and DOTJ had become by that point?

I do actually like the first arc of DOTJ a lot, though not really because of the setting so much as because it's kind of the Star Wars version of a UFO crash storyline. It is kind of funny that John and Jan had pretty much moved on to doing something that was very much like a continuation of Legacy but at the other extreme of the universe chronology, while the actual continuation of Legacy was something very different.

Chris Taylor's "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe" actually goes in depth of how Lucas began to approach Disney over the sellout and the process about it, and how certain people within Lucasfilm itself began to suspect (or outright know) about the buyout something like six months beforehand. I'm not sure how wide that would have been, though, or if it the rumors would have been there for people at places like Dark Horse or Del Rey, outside of Lucasfilm proper. I'll give it a skimming again sometime soon to see what Taylor said about it.

As for some of your other points, this issue actually addresses some of them (emphasis on some, admittedly, although I'll address other of your issues when they come up more prominently in future issues), which is mainly my way to pivot into:

Issue 5:

We begin with Ania recovering from the knock-out at the end of issue 4, with Sauk still KO’d and AG-37… I think his legs are supposed to be torn off, but I’m not quite sure. In any case, incapacitated. AG tells Ania it’s all on her now to defeat the Sith. Ania baulks at this, and drops the bombshell that she fully knows who here ancestors were, but: “I work in a junkyard. I wish I could be someone like that – look, I’m just not.” However AG drops a shocker on her – he tells her that Han Solo was originally a smuggler, not royalty, something which seems to shock Ania. Ania zips off in a fighter, while we learn that the communications station is careening towards the Floating World.

So we have Ania (I actually just realized I wrote ‘Rey’ here originally) rejecting the call to action in favor of staying in her junkyard because, essentially, “I’m nobody.” And they are both in awe of Han Solo. In a departure from Rey, though, it at least appears here that Ania knows full well her own past and family ties, even while we in the reading audience don’t. That’s kind of neat. I also think it’s a bit funny that Ania’s reaction to the revelation about Han’s origins is kind of like Rey learning that Luke Skywalker was a real person.

Next scene is on the Floating Planet itself where Wredd takes off Val’s gimp mask and uses his hacked control of the communications relay to broadcast a message to the rest of the galaxy. “Ask yourselves, do you feel safe? The Sith have been defeated and a new peace has descended on the galaxy. Or has it? You tell yourselves that this new Triumvirate Federation is stronger than the sum of its parts, but you know that’s a lie. The Empress holds no real power. The Jedi are only a shadow of what they once were. The Galactic Alliance Fleet is broken and weak. You don’t have to rely on my words. I’ll give you proof.”

During this holographic broadcast to the entire galaxy, he then reveals his new cybernetic form after his recent facial lightsaber injury (makes me wonder if this time next year we’ll be saying that this was prescient about Kylo Ren taking a new form in TLJ, too), names himself Darth Wredd, and states that he plans to kill an Imperial Knight on live holovision to show the galaxy that the promises of the Federation are a lie. This is pretty clearly the “General Hux’s speech” part of LV2, complete with a scene of assembled people on Coruscant looking up into a giant hologram of him. Of course after the recent war, an Imperial Knight being killed probably wouldn’t be that effective, but it does make me think that him being able to hack into the galaxy’s hologram projectors is pretty impressive.

Also, it makes me think that back in TFA, it would have been more effective if Hux had broadcast his speech. Even Osama bin Laden was considerate enough to release a manifesto. Would the people of the galaxy really know who was responsible for blowing up the capital, especially if the First Order was kind of unknown outside of the top government officials they had just obliterated?

In any case, Ania shows up to shoot him with her blaster just in time to interrupt him from striking Val with all of his hatred, and Val uses the Force to grab his lightsaber that Ania brought with her and use it to escape from his electro-bondage and fight Wredd, as the people on the communications station evacuate and Ania flies back to get AG and Sauk out of harm’s way also. Val and Wredd continue to fight and Wredd reveals that he’s not fighting for the One Sith, he’s fighting to become the only Sith. He gets away in his black quasi-Sith Infiltrator looking ship, while Ania shows up to rescue Val just as the communications station collides with the planet.

AG pilots the ship away while Ania tends to Sauk, and then surprise… the comm droid shows up, hauling in Jao with a breath mask over his face. I don’t think that’s how you survive in space, but Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing and people love that movie, so who cares. Val notes that the droid’s behavior is surprising, and AG responds how, “Jao did come to the Carreras system because the droid failed to patch in. Perhaps it felt that Jao had traveled all the way just to rescue it. Sometimes a debt of gratitude can weigh heavily. Even on a droid.”

Surprisingly poignant from AG, along with a hint of his backstory with Han. And of course evocative of BB-8’s joyous reunion with Poe on D’Qar.

Elsewhere on the ship, Ania and Sauk note that Val will recover. Ania apologizes for putting Sauk and the others in harm’s way, and Sauk replies incredulously that Ania saved all of them. Meanwhile on Coruscant, Antares Draco interrupts a meeting with Marasiah Fel, Gar Stazi, and K’Kruhk to inform the Empress that the governor of the Carreras system has informed them that a girl named Ania Solo was involved in the array’s destruction. Marasiah is incredulous: “Solo? Who the hell is Ania Solo?” And that’s where we end. I have to admit, I like “Who the hell is Ania Solo?” better than JJ Abrams’ production catchphrase for TFA, “Who is Luke Skywalker?” Also an indication that the royal Marasiah knows less of her family history than junk girl Ania Solo.

 

It's off topic but what i really missed in DOTJ is Coruscant. Would have loved to see how the planet looked like in these ancient times and what happened there!

 

I find it difficult to believe there would have been a reboot if there had been no Disney deal.

 

Disney or no Disney, if they made a sequel trilogy there would've been a reboot. GL wouldn't have stuck with the EU.

 

George's ST would've ignored and contradicted the EU aside from some place names and a few female Twi'leks, but people like Luceno and Abel would've done ridiculous complex retconning to make it all make sense. Just like what the EU did with the prequels and TCW.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think many people understand that a sequel trilogy, from George or whoever, would require a removal of the post-ROTJ EU.

What many including myself are having trouble with is the needless overwriting of EU that won't ever be filmed in the future (Moving Target overwriting Shadows of the Empire, undoing Shatterpoint so that Depa Billaba can have a one-line mention in Rebels and then never be referred to again, the nonsense with Dr. Cylo by Marvel overwriting the superior newspaper comics bridging ANH and ESB, the Dark Disciple novel completely trashing Quinlan Vos' character and needlessly killing off Ventress, actually reducing film opportunities--money made from Ventress screentime etc--for Disney instead of increasing them, etc.) I'm not sure a Lucasfilm without Disney would have done this.

 

I'll always wonder what exactly the Galactic Federation Triumvirate is/was. We never got a good look at the governing structure. I always assumed it was a provisional measure, working out the kinks before the galaxy reassembled in basically what would become the Galactic Alliance 2.0. We know that the new triumvirate was supposedly the sum of the three groups (Alliance Remnant, Fel Empire loyalists, and surviving Jedi), but I really wonder how things would work out. Was there a Senate? Was it a federal government or a alliance? We'll never know.

Legacy Vol. 2 definitely suffered from a rushed ending. The Jedi getting the worst end of the stick, so to speak. Marasiah and the Imperial Knights get their big moment (the finale), Gar Stazi and the Alliance Fleet get their big moment (ala liberating Dac and returning the shipyard to the Mon Cala & Quarren), but the poor Jedi literally are just ole' Hat Head sitting around doing nothing. I would of loved to see what the Order was up to in the aftermath, but obviously things changed when Disney came around.

--Adm. Nick

 

I think newer fans forget how when TPM came out, it was seen as something that completely destroyed the existing EU. Stuff with the other prequels also (The clones fight for the Republic? Jedi can't have relationships? The Death Star came from bug aliens? The Jedi all get killed off at once without Vader hunting them down?) but even within Lucasfilm, Ryder Windham wanted them to do a full continuity reboot as a result of TPM. Flash forward to now and it's just seen as accepted that the prequels pretty much fit in fine with the EU.

 

Strangely enough, I was around when TPM came out, and I don't remember that kind of reaction at all. Yeah, some pre-conceived EU notions were out, but this was completely overshadowed by the attempts to fit it in. Coruscant was in the movies! Darth Maul used Exar Kun's lightsaber! Jorus C'Baoth was even in a TPM tie-in book. There was no comparison to what is going on now at all.

There was an active attempt on all sides to get it to work. They even tied in the Valley of the Jedi from the Dark Forces 2 game with the newly revealed origin of Darth Bane.

 

I probably should have qualified it to say that some fans had that sort of apocalyptic response to TPM. Never a good idea to generalize like that, after all. Coruscant and the double-lightsaber were certainly connections to the EU that came about 'organically.' At the time, reading the TPM novelization before the movie came out, I was floored by the fact that the beginning had Anakin working on an old Z-95 on Tatooine, which really made it feel like TPM was part of the pre-existing 'real' Star Wars universe (though also one of the few pre-existing EU references in the novelization, if I recall.) But like you pointed out, other connections had to be made and other discrepancies solved by the active work of the professional continuity corps, and it's to their credit that after the fact, it seems like it's a seamless fit.

 

Ironically, I think if Disney had kept the EU pre-Shadows of Mindor and just eliminated Heir to the Empire and forward, there wouldn't be as many complaints. The issue with me (and likely others) is that pre-ROTJ stuff was deleted too (although I understand why Disney did this, for their own prequel film material in the future).

An analogous situation is if in 1999 Lucas decided to wipe out the Thrawn Trilogy, Jedi Academy Trilogy, etc even though it wasn't getting in the way of his prequels. Then we'd be seeing the type of fan discontent we're seeing now. But Lucas didn't do that back in 1999.

 

Oh? My, you're being optimistic here!

 

Maybe, I can only speak for myself. I'd actually be ok with what Disney is doing now if their newer material was really good. But after reading the Classic Star Wars 'Escape to Hoth' and then reading the Dr. Cylo stuff that overwrites it, and Ostrander and Duursema's Quinlan Vos arc next to Dark Disciple... I'm just not seeing why Disney rushed to overwrite stuff that didn't need to be overwritten with haphazard material.

Even these Aftermath books are killing a great animation opportunity to have a Thrawn Trilogy adaptation that just replaces Jacen and Jaina with Ben. There are 30 years of in-universe time between ROTJ and TFA to set up the First Order, it doesn't need to be done immediately after ROTJ and close off stories.

 

The Jedi were criminally underused in Legacy v2 and I missed them a lot. A pity we didn't get to see Shado Vao as much as he deserved, considering he was a key Jedi character in volume 1. I guess they had to remove the Jedi stuff in order to wrap up Jao's story that was tightly linked with the Imperial Knights. If there were more issues of Legacy v2 we would have gotten more Jedi for sure.

Dark Disciple is not because of Disney, it's because of Filoni. That story would've aired on TV if Disney didn't cancel the show. Because of Disney we got it in novel form...Quinlan was more or less doomed with or without Disney

 

I like the concept of the Sith being infiltrated in high spheres of society.

 

To bad they did so little with it.

 

I can understand wanting to see more of that, but I also think it was specifically not what the authors wanted to focus on. It's kind of interesting that Legacy Vol. 2 has two main core groups of characters: Marasiah/Antares/K'Kruhk/Stazi, and Ania/Jao/Val/Sauk/AG-37/the comm droid. The first group are all remnants from Legacy Vol. 1, mostly set on Coruscant, and mostly involving big picture stuff. The second group has the bigger focus of the narrative overall, is all new, essentially all in new locations, and doing new storylines that tend to be smaller scale focused, though with Wredd in the backdrop. I don't think it's a coincidence that the group who tend to be dealing with the 'cleanup' of Legacy Vol. 1 are all characters from that series, and Bechko and Hardman prefer to use the established setting of Legacy to tell their own story.

I think the problem is that, especially by the 2013/14 period, the old EU was winding down, so Legacy Vol. 2 had to carry the weight of exploring not only what should have been its main story, but explaining more about the wider setting of the era that, ten years earlier, would have gotten stuff like regular WOTC releases or Insider short stories to help explain. Even with Legacy Vol. 1 there were aspects of this problem, even with it getting its own campaign guide. It was trying to tell a story while also establish and expand and explore a radically new setting. And of course Vol. 1 could tell the occasional side stories and one-shot issues that, due to the impending license change, Vol. 2 couldn't. So I think that explains some of it, along with why the end of Vol. 2 seems kind of rushed and crunched, because they not only have to wrap up their characters, but also the overall Legacy setting, and the entire 1976-2014 EU on top of it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That being said, you both bringing the concept of Sith infiltration up is apt for today's post....

Issue 6:

We begin with two Gran talking with three Snivvians on Cadomai Prime via hologram. I think this is the first time Cadomai Prime has ever actually been used in a story. I remember at the time thinking they put the Snivvians in as a little reference to how popular Marn was in the KOTOR comic. Two of these Snivvians, however, have toupee-esque hair, which I find a little disconcerting.

One of the Snivvians is the senator, who says to the Gran, “If we’re being frank,” which immediately made me think of Palpatine’s line in TPM leading to the joke of his full name being Frank Palpatine. Turns out the Gran and the Snivvians are in discussion over creating a new trade route, as well as solving the criminal infestation of the Dac system. I feel like, other than the general setting of the comic, the stuff with Dac here is the first time someone who came into Legacy Vol. 2 without reading Vol. 1 would get lost.

It also shows a kind of interesting aspect of galactic politics, how these representatives of the two systems are discussing galactic trade and solving the issues of a third-party system. It might also be significant that this is perhaps the only time we see a senator in either Legacy series, and he’s on his homeworld, not Coruscant. I wonder if by this era, with the galaxy in so much chaos, especially after the multiple competing governments, local systems are taking (either out of necessity, or being directed to by Coruscant) more and more issues into their own hands. Kind of in line with how the Galactic Alliance was originally described (but never actually shown as functioning in any subsequent source) or how the post-ROTJ galaxy is being shown in nu-canon. Paging Havoc123.

A bit of a departure, but this also reminds me a bit of some of the very earliest rumors about the setting of Episode VII (still not TFA), where either the “Jedi Hunters” had taken over the Empire after the Battle of Endor and imprisoned Luke and prevented a New Republic from being created, or how the civil war had dragged on for pretty much thirty years and the entire galaxy was just ruined battlefields with no central authority. When I first saw the TFA images of the crashed Star Destroyer in the desert that was how I thought it would be, too – that there had just been titanic battles across the entire galaxy and those crashed starship graveyards were a common sight on worlds, maybe that the battle itself had caused Jakku’s ecosystem to collapse. I still like that thought more than “everything wrapped up in a single battle one year after ROTJ.” But I guess I digress.

In any case, one of the Snivvian senator’s aides is a covert One Sith, and Wredd shows up to attack him. They get into a war of words as well as a war of lightsabers, and what I think happens is that Wredd’s saber sizzles away the Snivvian’s fur, revealing the red and black Maul One Sith tattoos underneath, which leads to more questions about how those One Sith get tattooed. Wredd kills him with a stab through the chest and then drops him down the building onto the ground, Mace Windu style, where people crowd around his body and realize he was a Sith.

Back on AG’s freighter, the crew sit around wondering how long it will be until they get rescued. The question is soon answered when an Imperial Star Destroyer shows up to take them in. I like the inversion of having our band of scavenger heroes in their little freighter seeing an Imperial SD appear, and it’s them being rescued rather than them getting shot at or imprisoned. Back on Corsucant, K’Kruhk tells some stormtroopers to give him space, and goes in to tell the rest of the little Marasiah/Antares/Stazi council about Wredd killing the Sith on Cadomai, and how along with other incidents, it’s clear that Wredd is going after the One Sith survivors. Stazi suggests that they do nothing and let Wredd keep doing their job for them.

Back on the ISD, the captain (who looks an awful lot to me like the captain of the Donnager in The Expanse) tells Ania that Marasiah was impressed and wants to meet her on Coruscant, might give her a fancy job. Elsewhere, Sauk helps another tech repair AG (who seems to indicate that most of his current form was built/rebuilt haphazardly over the years) and the tech makes what I feel is a vaguely racist statement in the GFFA: “Nice work. You Mon Cals know your stuff.”

Even more elsewhere, Val gets a hologram from Antares, telling him the Empress is saying not to hunt Wredd, and that Val is to be reassigned to be a Knight trainer on Coruscant so he can held in “finding new recruits to bolster our ranks.” I feel like early on in the Legacy Vol. 1 run, Ostrander claimed that there were only a dozen Imperial Knights, although I think we saw far more during the original series. But even so there was definitely a sense that, like with real-world knights, it was more of a tightly-knit hereditary relationship, not something that they would just go out into the galaxy to recruit people for. Plus, with the Jedi also presumably trying to rebuild their numbers, one wonders at the potential conflict there.

Jao is healing in a bacta tank, when he gets a red-tinged vision in the Force of Wredd killing Marasiah, and then staring at him through the tank. Not exactly Rey’s vision from TFA, but maybe it would have been closer if Abrams had kept the Vader vs. Luke duel included in it.

AG offers Sauk the chance to join him as his copilot/mechanic on his freighter, and so Sauk and Ania say farewell. AG offers Ania the choice to join the crew also, but she defers: “I don’t know, I think I’d be stupid to miss this opportunity. They’re giving me a good job on Coruscant. I can get a nice apartment. I’ve never had… stability. I mean, I should take it, right?” So on the one hand, it’s like Rey refusing Han’s offer to become the third member of his Falcon crew; on the other hand, it’s the exact opposite of Rey’s reason – rather than wanting to go back to her desert junk yard, she wants to get a cushy government job and a nice apartment in the big city. I like that, even though Ania is kind of jumping the blaster here, given that she doesn’t actually know for sure she’s going to be offered a job.

Jao and Val talk while Jao spars. Jao tells Val about his vision, and Val tells him to cool off and obey Marasiah’s orders to lay off the search for Wredd. “I don’t like it either, but we serve the Force by serving the Empress. You’d do well to remember your vows.” I didn’t find this sort of job description of the Imperial Knights either very compelling or very clear, but to be fair, that’s a holdover from Vol. 1. Jao doesn’t take this very well and slices the sparring droid in half (a sign of aggression that would make Anakin proud) and goes to chat with Ania over drinks instead.

Ania: “You can do that? See the future?”
Jao: “No… not the way you mean. But I can get… well, impressions.” Should have just said, “That’s not how the Force works!”

Jao tells Ania that he can sense that Wredd wants him to be his apprentice. Ania doesn’t quite get it, saying he’s clearly past the apprentice stage. Jao explains it further in a passage I really like:

“Before the One Sith banded together to take power, it had always been another way. A master and an apprentice. Together, they were unbelievably strong. Palpatine and Vader. They upended the galaxy. The reverberations from their reign are still being felt. For a thousand years before them there was peace in the galaxy… for more than 100 years since, nothing but chaos. I think he’s systematically killing off the other Sith so that he can bring back the old ways.”

I like this because it highlights something that I think really doesn’t get mentioned much, or considered by fans. That everything from the roughly TPM era on (90% of the old EU continuity, and 100% of the new continuity) takes place in an extremely aberrant time in galactic history, when governments are regularly corrupt or despotic or both and democracy is upended and the Jedi are either fully or mostly gone when they had played a central role before. The sort of galaxy we see as Star Wars fans is not the galaxy that it historically generally is. For most of its history, there is very little war in the Star Wars galaxy. I like this being emphasized here, because it helps drive home the efforts shown earlier in the series, of the Triumvirate’s efforts to try to bring the galaxy back to normality and end this prolonged chapter.

And am I misremembering, or was Bane’s idea of the Rule of Two, either from Jedi vs. Sith or Path of Destruction, that having a mass of Sith diluted the power of the dark side, while having only two expanded their power and concentrated it as its only ways of expression? In any case, I also like the interpretation here of Wredd being a kind of iconoclast/Counter-Reformation figure who wants to return the Sith religion to its earlier, purer form.

Jao worries that it’s his destiny to join Wredd. Ania gives her own input: “You know, I’m not originally from the Carreras system. I ended up there almost by accident. Some people thought I’d come to a bad end. Some thought I was destined for greatness. They were both wrong. I bought myself a junkyard and ignored them. I don’t believe in destiny.” So another difference from Rey, beyond Ania fully knowing her own family and origins: Rey was dumped on a planet, Ania chose to “just walk away,” in the words of Lord Humongous.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, Sauk and AG land on a planet and while loading the ship, another Mon Cal comes and asks Sauk if he’s also going back to the Dac shipyards, in the process of rebuilding. This gives Sauk pause as AG calls him and tells him to get going. Back on the ISD, Ania and Jao decide to ignore orders and go stop Wredd. They decide to sneak off and find their own ship… only for Val and some stormies are in the landing bay to stop them! If only Phasma and the Finalizer’s crew had been this diligent!

That brings us to the end of the issue. Hard to believe that we’re a third of the series through already. Not a lot of TFA connections here; this issue came out late August 2013, so maybe by then a lot of the TFA concepts were already laid down and diverging. In any case, some interesting looks at the worldbuilding of the GFFA, at least in this timeframe. Different artist who’s not as good, but I honestly had to check Wookieepedia to realize this was technically the start of the second story-arc. It flows together pretty seamlessly, and I think I prefer to think of this as a single storyline rather than one divided up into chunks. I think the narrower focus of the cast helps with this.