Comics Rereading Legacy Volume 2 in light of TFA

I really liked this underlining theme in LV2 too. It's all about winning the peace, returning to normalcy, de-escalating while hunting down the last remnants of the old evil.

And Ania is a relatable character to guide us through this, for the most part, especially her common sense (and not to get ahead of ourselves... but just the way she defeats the tortured philosophizing between Wredd and Jao about him being destined to go evil against his will... let's just say, she doesn't buy it.)

As for the Imperial Knights' number, in the beginning I think John was undecided but thought they might be around a dozen or two... but near the end of the series, such as when Roan Fel is meeting with the Jedi and they're ambushed by One Sith, it's revealed there's many more Imperial Knights (and Treis Sinde was another veteran resassigned to training duty, like Val).

I also love the idea of the Droid being the main pilot, even sort of the mentor figure like Qui-gon/Obi-wan/Han, needing an assistant.

Btw, why exactly does Ania decide to side with Jao and go against the government after all?

Also, how do you pronounce Ania? Ahn-ya or Ah-nee-ah?

 

Looking the issue over again now, Ania looks out at the stars pensively, then looks to her blaster sitting on her table, and then goes to Jao's quarters on the ship and says, "We have to find him. We have to stop him. If we don't, no one else will." Which might seem abrupt, but when you consider who she's descended from... but beyond that, I think it also dovetails with the political stuff at the beginning of the issue. The central government won't/can't do these sorts of services, so the two local planets decide to team up and do it themselves. The central government won't/can't go after Wredd, so the two individuals decide to team up and do it themselves.

I personally pronounce it "Ahn-ya".

 

Was Ania ever stated to be force sensitive or not?

 

I honestly can't remember from my original reading of the series if she is revealed to be so eventually, but as of issue 7, it hasn't been indicated yet.

 

As far as I remember she was never said to be Force sensitive. To me that was a welcomed aspect, as it's not very often (though obviously there are exceptions) where the lead character is not Force sensitive, but her/his sidekick/companion is. In this case it's Jao Assam.

 

Issue 7:

We pick up right where issue 6 ended, with Jao and Ania being confronted by Val and four stormtroopers. Val says that “We must trust that the Force will guide the Empress in this. We must trust in the Force.” A bit Taoist – the best action is to take no action. Also kind of reminds me of Chirrut’s blind (heh) faith in the Force in Rogue One. Jao points out that trusting in the Force is exactly what he’s doing – his vision from it, and his instincts that Wredd won’t stop simply killing other Sith.

At this point, a stormtrooper yells “Look out!” and starts blasting away at the pair. From the art and progression, I can’t tell if it’s because Jao suddenly ignited his saber, or because Ania pulled out her blaster, but I would guess the latter. Jao deflects the blasts with his saber as Val lights his, and Ania succinctly asks, “Are we really doing this?” Jao adds that this isn’t what anyone wants, and after a moment, Val agrees and turns off his saber, telling his troopers to stand down and telling Jao and Ania to just go, but reminding Jao that he’s being selfish, and that Ania doesn’t understand what this means. Ania decides they should get going before their luck turns.

I’ll say that I appreciate that Val decides he ultimately doesn’t want to fight, and just let his apprentice go. In TCW or the original Legacy there would probably be some kind of lightsaber fight or Force trick to incapacitate Val, after which Jao would leave, probably after making a pithy saying. But not even that here, just Val reminding him that he’s making a mistake, but letting Jao be free to do it to himself if he wants. Again, kind of Taoist of Val.

On Coruscant, Stazi is approached by a woman who on first reading, I thought was supposed to be Marasiah. After a second pass, it’s obviously not supposed to be her, but I’m not really sure who she’s supposed to be or what her job is. She asks him to do something about cleaning up the sector around Dac, and Stazi says the Triumvirate needs to focus on worlds that are still alive.

Back on the borrowed Imperial shuttle with Jao, Ania, and the comm droid, Ania asks, “That vision of yours give any hint of where we should be going?” To which Jao replies, “It doesn’t work like that.” At least Jao knows that much over his TFA counterpart! Jao brings up holograms of ‘incident reports’ in the area to try to find something that matches Wredd’s modus operandi. Ania asks if the records go back to the Imperial Civil War or if they got purged when the Triumvirate took over (interesting implication that there was some kind of general amnesty or jubilee to mark them coming to power) and talks about how during the war, some people had to do things they didn’t like. Jao makes the obvious connection that Rey is talking more about herself than Wredd, but stops herself when she notices the hologram of Wredd’s assistant from the Floating World, who got picked up in an escape pod and extradited back to his homeworld, Nalyd, which he flies them to.

Nalyd is a pretty cool design. A bit of Geonosis, but with giant flying jellyfish and huge creatures that look like a cross between goats and spiders being used as mounts by the natives. The natives themselves also look kind of like brown-furred versions of the Narquois from TFA, though I suppose both aliens were probably based on Ugnaughts. And the entire planetary population, at least what’s shown, are the natives, foiling Jao’s hopes to blend in.

Back on AG’s freighter, Sauk manages to secure a giant purple alien in an energy cage. Han and Chewie wouldn’t have lost the rest of their crew if they had had Sauk to keep the rathtars contained. And interestingly, AG drops that they’re taking the animal to Iego. Definitely not an angel. Sauk notes that that will take them close to Dac, and relates his encounter from the prior issue. This leads to a little flashback panel of Sauk remembering the evacuation of Dac from one of the last Legacy Vol. 1 issues. Complete with a ton of ships from LV1 being shown, especially noteworthy given that so far, I think the Pellaeon SD has been the only returning LV1 design. This ends with AG noting that the genocide of the world damaged the shipyard ring, but didn’t fully destroy it.

On Nalyd, Ania and Jao make their way to an arena where their target is about to get shot. Jao claims, “Near as I can tell, it’s some sort of show trial.” Seems a bit ignorant from two offworlders who just showed up, when the guy has been in their custody for presumably some time. Ania scowls and says, “This is ridiculous.” She steals one of the goat-spiders and charges into the stadium to rescue the guy so they can get Wredd’s location from him before he’s shot.

Ania rides the goat-spider down a vertical cliff face in pursuit by the similarly-mounted law, while Jao grasps the tentacles of a flying jellyfish, rescuing Ania when her mount gets shot. Unfortunately the Sith minion isn’t as lucky and falls to get impaled on seven spikes of a giant cactus. Whoops.

On Coruscant Marasiah is being briefed by Val and Antares, asking how Ania ‘escaped’ given she wasn’t a prisoner. Antares says that maybe they didn’t convince her of that. Which isn’t exactly how it went last issue, but I guess he wasn’t there. Marasiah asks, “Is she who we think she is?” followed by “This is disturbing” when a datapad apparently confirms her worries. Marasiah tells Val that she’s losing faith in him and doesn’t feel like she can trust in her closest Imperial Knights any more. Val, to his credit, sticks up for Jao and tells her that he’s doing what he did because he saw a vision in the Living Force. Marasiah retorts that that means he deserted, and tasks Antares with killing Jao and taking Marasiah prisoner to return to Coruscant.

Personally, this doesn’t really seem like something an organization that sees itself as opposing the dark side would do, but I suppose this is again a leftover from how the Imperial Knights were established in LV1. Also, I think this is a point where Val might be thinking, “I’m not down with this.” The issue begins with him telling Jao to trust in the Force, and trust the Force will guide the Empress. And now, she summarily dismisses a Force vision and doesn’t seem to be getting any guidance from the Force. Relying on the laws of man rather than the laws of God, to put a Christian context on it. It does slightly remind me of nu-canon Leia in one way – someone who we’re told is equally powerful in the Force as her brother, but doesn’t seem to have any indication of it or rely on it for enlightenment in her political arena.

Back on Nalyd, Jao and Ania try to get the minion to tell him where his master is. He tells them to go to hell, and then dies. Just then, two native police on the goat-spiders show up, aiming blasters as them and telling our heroes that they won’t be taking the criminal back to Dac now. Hmm… I wonder if they’ll meet up with the other pair of our central cast there?

That’s where we end. This is the first issue that feels like it was a bit light to me, even though on the surface a lot happened. Also, virtually nothing that could be seen as a TFA relation. I have a feeling that the first five-issue story arc was probably where the heavy connections remain. But still having a good time re-reading it!

 

Yeah, I think that if there was ever more than a coincidental relationship between Legacy II and TFA (which I'm not particularly convinced of, but it's fun to speculate), I suspect it's over by this arc. Which I actually like a lot, although more once everything starts happening around Dac.

 

There' still Episodes 8 & 9

And I see you wrote Ania as Rey (and Marasiah) a couple times.

 

Well, what can I say... captured by my sources, so to speak, I suppose! But I think I avoided it here. I also think Rey at least will be less common to refer to as the series progresses.

In any case, I apologize for the almost two week delay. Got hit by a ton of work, but also outside of that, went to the LCS and got a big backlog of comics, including the last couple Poe Damerons. In keeping the Legacy/TFA links going where I can, the last issue of Poe Dameron 10 ends with a giant splash page of various ships in a hangar... and the ship at the very top looks a bit like the underside of the Mynock from Legacy Vol. 1. Coincidence? Well, perhaps. But it also doesn't seem out of the question that the artist looked for established ship designs to get inspiration from.

Issue 8:

On Nalyd, Jao and Ania are surrounded by a number of Nalydian police/soldier on their giant furry goat spiders, pointing blasters at the pair of heroes. Ania points out that Jao is an Imperial Knight, and that this standoff will end badly for everyone involved, so why not just come to an arrangement that’s mutually agreeable? In exchange for getting some info on Dieben the Sith minion (and being let free) the Nalyd soldiers let Jao and Ania go and take the credit for bagging the bad guy. Everyone wins. As with Val and Jao the previous issue, I appreciate this kind of reasonable agreement over solving issues with blasters.

Jao and Ania give us some exposition over how the Sith poisoned Dac and the Triumvirate abandoned it, which would make it the perfect place for criminals to hang out – or Wredd. They fly around the rings for a bit, until… ambush! Not just by other ships, but they get pounced on by humanoid droids that actually look like the Cylon Centurions from Bryan Singer’s unproduced 2001 remake of Battlestar Galactica. For some reason, the thought of humanoid droids jumping on the ship and beginning to tear it apart is way more effective to me than the buzzsaw droids from ROTS. The Separatists really should have jumped on this for psychological warfare.

As their ship gets disabled, they get drawn in by a tractor beam to a landing bay set in Dac’s shipyard ring, ANH style. A Gran and an Aqualish thug watch their shuttle get pulled in, and walk inside to investigate. As this is a clear ANH homage, you can guess what happens next. Honestly, this little segment sticks out a bit from the series so far in how closely it copies ANH while still being technically different… so I guess it is inadvertently a bit of a TFA parallel in that respect. Also a bit of a Rogue One parallel with Ania taking the Aqualish’s outfit and helmet to blend in, while Jao pulls an Obi-Wan esque hood over his head.

Walking around, they find a whole room full of Quarren and Mon Cals being kept as slave labor by the gang running this place. They corner a female Mon Cal and a male Quarren (hasn’t this kind of interspecies couple been shown in a nu-canon story recently also?) and tell them they’re here to help, asking what’s going on. The slimy gross crab monsters show them the hangar nearby – the Mon Cals and Quarrens tricked into returning to Dac are being used as slave labor to build a fleet of starships for a “rogue Sith.”

As a Weequay guard finds the Gran and Aqualish knocked out on the shuttle, Jao tells the comm droid to send an Imperial-encrypted message back to the Empress on Coruscant. Luen the Mon Cal refugee talks about how the gang preyed on the hopes of the Dac refugee communities across the galaxy, bringing the educated ones back but trapping them and controlling them through hostages, using their expertise to work on their project. I like this, as it builds off of the longstanding EU association of Mon Cals and Quarren working as shipbuilders without driving the point home bluntly for new readers. Plus, again, it sadly is much more resonant now than it was back in 2013.

At that point the gangsters (all of them still OT aliens from either the Mos Eisley Cantina or Jabba’s Palace) find our heroes and chase them to… a Twi’lek member of the One Sith! Jao demands to know where Wredd is, and the Twi’lek just laughs off the assumption he’s working for Wredd, “undisciplined” and a “scum apprentice” with an “idiotic master.” I kind of like the thought that the reason Wredd got so messed up was because his master was actually a terrible Sith Master himself who basically flunked out of the One Sith pedagogy class. It explains why he has Wredd in the bondage helmet at the start of the series, when we’ve never seen any other One Sith master do that to their own apprentices.

The Sith reveals that the woman lobbying Stazi from the previous issue was actually a Sith agent designed to see if the Triumvirate cared about Dac, and since the government has shown it isn’t interested at all, they’re free to do as they please in the system. Another nice bit of commentary. And another nice bit of inversion from Jao and Ania’s talking-down of the Nalyd guards at the start of the issue: the Sith says that as the government isn’t interested in Dac, he’s not going to get into a dangerous fight with them. Just drop them down an ESB Cloud City-esque tube into an escape pod on the ring, and shoot them into the bottom of the poisoned Calamari Sea… right into a Whaladon skeleton, too, even if that’s just a visual Easter egg for those of us who are familiar with the evils of Imperial whaling. I hope that’s not Leviathor… actually, since Aquarius was supposed to be a domed city, I wonder if it survived the Sith virus attack? I can imagine the inhabitants trapped by the deadly sea around them, cut off and resorting to post-apocalyptic sushi cannibalism….

This issue felt a bit strange for a few reasons – I think along with the entire storyline, it’s a change to see something that’s actually a direct continuation of Legacy Vol. 1. The references to the OT, plot and visuals alike, were also very heavy. And I think this is the first issue that follows Jao and Ania for the entire issue – it’s solely their story here, and other than the initial two pages on Nalyd, it’s all on Dac, too.

In any case, that’s where we leave off until next issue – which will be the halfway point of the series, unbelievably!

 

I just learned that there is a droid named AG-90 in the upcoming second book in the Join the Resistance YA series set around TFA, which naturally made me think it was an actual (if very slightly) Legacy Vol. 2 connection to the TFA era. But then I looked it up on Wookieepedia, and at least browsing it, there were actually droids with the prefix “AG” earlier in the EU. Apparently one of the Medstar books first mentioned “AG” droids in some vague capacity, and then they appeared in The Old Republic as proto-R2 units. So now this makes me wonder how Bechko and Hardman came up with the AG name. Did they intend AG-37 to be one of those droids briefly mentioned in Medstar? That’s kind of a deep dig, if so.

Issue 9:

In any case….

The cover text of this issue (“Sinking in a poisoned sea! One drop is all it takes to kill you, Ania Solo!”) reminds me of that embarrassing time that Dark Horse tried to put “retro” speech bubbles on their covers. From this to this. No thanks.

Our story picks up with the escape pod drifting to the bottom of the Dac ocean, past the skeletons of Mon Cals, Quarrens, and a Whaladon. They talk about how the pod, designed for space travel, can only handle one atmosphere worth of pressure, while they’re now way more than that underwater (a joke used back in 2000 by Futurama, by the way). The comm droid reconfigures his antenna to broadcast from underwater… which seems redundant for a droid designed to beam across the galaxy. Sauk and AG-37 pick up the signal, fly their ship to Dac, dive under the ocean, and recover the pod.

Actually, as this issue came out in November 2013, this might not be the source of a TFA connection, but taking inspiration from a different Abrams movie – is its depiction of starships darting underwater influenced by Star Trek Into Darkness, or just a sign of another coincidental convergence?

As they’re waiting for rescue in the pod, Ania and Jao have a conversation. Ania notes that if Jao had a Force vision involving them in the future, how could they die now? (Ironically her taking the Finn role from TFA to Jao taking the Han role.) His response is, “The future is always in motion. It’s the first thing they teach you when you’re learning about the Force.”

This puts Yoda’s use of that line in ESB in a new context. Jao’s “they” is presumably the Imperial Knights, but we’ve seen the Jedi use it in its first ever appearance. Is this kind of thing potentially something that Jaina Solo might have (hypothetically) brought over to the Imperial Knights from the NJO, who picked it up from Luke? Is this the thing that everyone naturally first learns about the Force, Jedi or Sith or IKs?

Back on Coruscant, Val gets interrupted from training new Imperial Knights to be notified his own signal has just been used from Dac. Val interrupts a meeting of the Triumvirate to tell them that Jao has sent him a message that a Sith is using the Dac shipyards to build a fleet from enslaved refugees. Marasiah tells him to get lost, but after he leaves, the conversation continues between Marasiah, the Human Imperial noblewoman, and Stazi, the alien Alliance officer – guess which one cares about the Mon Cal and Quarren? I wonder if it’s just racism, or Marasiah not liking a world so historically tilted against the Empire. If, say, Kuat was under attack, would her reaction be the same?

Incidentally K’Kruhk is here but has about as much to offer as Clarence Thomas does during a Supreme Court case. All he does is note that the Sith are like a “hydra flower” – cut off one bloom, two more grow back. Nice little setup for the end of the series? (Let alone a pre-emptive Marvel reference for when they would take over the license.) Still, you’d expect one of the last few Jedi Masters in the galaxy to have more to say on the matter of a Sith using slaves to create a pirate fleet.

Back with the main gang, we get some reunion talk and Sauk notes how AG “dispatched” the pirates off-panel to get back to rescue them. We get names for Tikin and Luen, the two refugees. Jao says that he knows that Wredd is being Darth Luft – which also begs the question, how does Jao know Darth Luft’s name? Are all the One Sith Lords notable enough that the IKs can memorize them? In any case, the refugees aren’t on board with the plan because Luft will kill their families in retaliation and Ania wants to get more firepower, so Jao and the comm droid stay behind while the others take off.

On Coruscant, Stazi goes to the IK training academy to ask Val to take his recruits with him on an Alliance “field training mission.” The IK facility here plays heavily on prequel-era Jedi Temple imagery. Along with Jao’s above use of the Yoda quote, and the IKs going with Stazi, this issue really helps position the IKs as heirs to the Jedi in this timeframe. The almost total absence of Jedi (a single male Jedi Master so far, come to think of it…), despite their ostensible return, is actually another Legacy Vol. 2/TFA similarity, come to that, albeit a much more general one. For the record, I counted 21 Imperial Knight trainees in the background of this training center panel.

Back on the Dac ring, Tikin tries to get favor with Luft by giving him information, and Luft kills him by Force pushing him out a window. It then leads to a fairly ridiculous scene of Luft leaning out of the now-broken window, pointing to Jao, and saying, “There he is.” I guess he could have sensed him through the Force, but still a bit of a funny thing to see. In any case, a slave uprising occurs and Luft tells his minions to kill all of the revolting slaves along with their families.

In space, the freighter is under attack by Luft’s pirate ships (what look like a mix of X-wings and ARC-170s) and Ania is trying to convince AG to “dispatch” them like Sauk said he had on the way in. AG says these ships are better, so he can’t. This does make me think of the scene in Shaun of the Dead, when Liz realizes that Shaun had completely lied about giving the zombies “the slip.” In any case, they’re spared the consequences of AG being unable to deliver on Sauk’s promotion when the Galactic Alliance fleet shows up, with Stazi, Val, and some IKs, to rescue them.

And that’s where we end! We’re now halfway done with the series – and it’s starting to show slightly, in that this was the first issue that felt really rushed in parts. Stuff like AG and Sauk suddenly showing up from across the galaxy and blowing up pirate ships all off-panel, for example. Next issue is the end of the second arc. We’ll see how things proceed from there.

 

Fun facts: luft is Swedish for air.

 

Heh... I was actually wondering what sinister word 'Luft' was meant to evoke. I like the thought that the One Sith ran out of creepy or aggressive names and just had to rely on everyday words. Though I guess there is kind of an elemental thing, with a guy named after air taking over a water planet.

 

While I had mixed feelings about Legacy Vol. 2, the way they handled & wrapped up the Dac storyline was great. The fact that Stazi got to ride in to the rescue is a great way to tie up his storyline too. I remember being bothered that the Jedi were not involved at all, but the combo of the Alliance Fleet and the IK's was pretty damned cool!

--Adm. Nick

 

I didn't like it they just said well "the Sith are destroyed" I get they had to end it and somehow wind up Legends in the process, but we don't have comfirmed deaths for Nihl, Wyyyrlok IV, and Talon and the other hundred to thousand Sith still alive.

 

It's almost like those Sith Lords were left out specifically to help reinforce that the character saying that the Sith are gone for good didn't actually know for sure, and that the Sith would still return as they had in the past... but when I get to the last issue, I have a lot to say about the ending, and I'll wait until then.

Issue 10:

Our issue opens with Ania proclaiming “Now, this is more like it!” as the Alliance fleet arrives to blast the pirate ships out of the sky. A bit of her great-to-the-umpteenth-grandfather during his first space battle. Once more, we actually get some rare use of Legacy Volume 1 ships, the Scythe frigate (one of my favorites) and the Crossfire fighter (one of my least favorites… looks like a flying 1950s pickup truck that crashed into a windmill).

On the command ship, Val and Stazi remark to each other how they’re both risking a lot to liberate Dac against the Empress’ wishes. I imagine the risk is a lot greater for Val than it is for Stazi. I can only imagine his response to Marasiah threatening to execute him for disobedience, like she has to Val. But it also maybe hints at the structure of the Triumvirate, with her being a head, if only formally? I forgot if this is something I saw get brought up here when LV2 was still coming out, or if this was an idea that I thought up, but one possibly way of explaining the Triumvirate is that Marasiah is technically in charge of politics, Stazi the military and various peacekeeping and security, and K’Kruhk is some kind of blend of judicial branch and “spiritual” guidance.

It does seem like the Triumvirate (Empire/IKs, Galactic Alliance Remnant, and New Jedi Order loosely working together) is more along the lines of what the Galactic Alliance proper was originally envisioned as at the end of NJO, where there would be the Alliance proper, Imperial Remnant, and Hapans as part of a wider GFFA, until Dark Nest essentially just made GA into a new name for the NR. But I’m getting us way off track here….

During the battle, we see some more of those Cylon-esque battle droids get blasted by Ania, as the Alliance fleet ushers a water tanker (looking a bit like a jumbo Lady Luck) come in to dock, as the slaves continue their uprising and Jao fights Luft. The Alliance floods the section of the ring with the freighter, drowning the remaining guards (grisly…) while the Quarrens and Mon Cals can breathe under water, and the IKs and Stormtroopers have underwater armor on. Incidentally, I didn’t think about it until now, but presumably those Stormtroopers were serving on the Galactic Alliance ships under Stazi, since Val only brought his IK cadets with him, and I can’t imagine Stormtroopers would just go along with following an Alliance official defy the Empress unless they were under his chain of command.

Two Weequay guards decide that since they’re not getting paid any more, they’re getting out. So they put on space suits and blow open cargo bay doors into space. The water flows after them, freezing into ice, but which isn’t stable enough to last for long. (The Dac shipyard ring being filled with water, and it freezing when vented into space, ties in with the start of the series where Sauk was involved in mining the natural solid ice ring around Carreras Minor, come to think of it.)

Ania dons a breath mask and goes into the water with Sauk, but they find out that since the controls are encrusted with ice, there’s no way to get them to work, so the only choice is to evacuate the loading bay. Val and the Seatroopers work on clearing out the next chamber of guards as AG-37 flies off to avoid the pirate fighters, and Jao keeps dueling Luft. Meanwhile, Ania and Sauk note that the ice is starting to crack. Thankfully, the comm droid proves again why it’s one of the most effective characters of the series when it flies outside and tells the doors to seal, saving everyone.

Luft pins Jao under a pillar that’s under water and then turns to fight two IK cadets, but on the verge of defeating them, having been distracted himself, doesn’t realize Jao has risen from the water, stabbing him through the chest from behind. So uncivilized. And actually, something I’ll come back to for Jao’s fight with Wredd in the final issue.

The last few pages of the issue tie up the arc. Luen the Mon Cal has adopted Tilin, the orphaned Quarren boy. The Mon Cal and Quarren refugees have taken back the Dac shipyard ring, keeping it flooded (really, why wasn’t this always the case, for two aquatic species?), and Sauk notes that some Whaladon refuges will even return. (One wonders how many there are, and where they’ve been – Kamino? And what about the Moappa?) Sauk gets offered a job on the ring, but decides to stick with Ania and AG.

Jao notes that it’s good to see the ring in the hands of refugees to help start healing the war, and Val agrees. (As do I; whenever they inevitably return to the old EU, I’d love to see something about life on the rebuilt, flooded Dac shipyard ring.) Val asks if Jao will be returning to his regular duties, but Jao says his job is still to find Wredd to protect the Empress, even though the Empress will sentence him to death for disobeying her.

The heroes take off in their ship and AG tells Ania that he agrees the important thing is to find Wredd, but that paying the bills is also necessary and they’ll need to get a job. Maybe they could have asked Stazi for an Alliance line of credit? But then the conversation gets interrupted by Wredd calling them to tell them all that he planned everything, so that they would follow his trail to Dac and kill Luft for him. He promises Jao a place in his restored Sith order, and then hangs up. Jao frets over having done Wredd’s bidding, but Ania retorts with a so what, if Wredd’s plans allowed them to kill a Sith Lord, defeat pirates, and free Dac. “After all that, I’m sure we can take down one arrogant Sith!”

Helpfully the letters section is just a preview for the next issue cover alongside the original Han/Leia ESB picture, in case we don’t get the connection clearly. But there ends our second story arc! Will the comic go downhill after this? We’ll see….

 

Dr. Steve Brule

Very enjoyable reread. I rushed through Legacy Vol. 2, so I think mainly for that reason I don't remember enjoying it quite as much as the first Legacy, but I also remember being kind of annoyed how rushed it itself felt near the end. When you finish, I'd very much be interested in hearing your thoughts and theories on where the series was going to go, before the Mouse took over. As the last work in the Legends continuity, it's really interesting for me to think about how it might have "capped off" the Legends continuity.

 

I really wish we got more of an explanation behind the Triumvirate (and I do miss the original implied version of the Galactic Alliance).

I forget if I've remarked on it in this thread or not yet... but I really hate the idea behind "disobedient Imperial Knight needs to be executed." In volume 1 they played with this with Treis Sinde, and Roan even showed some flexibility with the rule. Marasiah was originally written as an idealist, you would think she would replace "execution" with "apprehension with the Empress/Emperor to decide the verdict" once she became Empress. It's just such a forced flaw, even worse than the PT's "no married Jedi" rule. It can still serve as motivation for Jao to want to stop Wredd before he's apprehended... it just doesn't need to be an automatic death penalty. I get she probably doesn't like the idea of rogue Imperial Knights, since one killed her mother (maybe that's where the automatic death penalty rule came from? I doubt Jaina would have had it), but she should know the difference between a murderer and someone trying to do good in her service.

 

Well she is an imperial after all, they are at best the lesser evil.

 

Thank you very much! It's been fun doing this. A bit slower than I expected it to go, but finding unexpected connections in each issue has made it worth it. And never fear, I have a lot I plan on saying about the end of the series, how it relates to the end of the old EU and the DH license, and what might have been from it had neither of those happened.

I agree. With the caveat that it's been quite some time since I've read Legacy Volume 1, I remember it being a point of how the IKs "served the Force by serving the Emperor" and were supposed to ensure that the Emperor would not fall to the dark side. Especially given the Roan/Marasiah developments in the original volume, Marasiah taking such a hardline view of the rule, but the rule existing in the first place, makes it kind of hard to understand exactly how the IKs are supposed to operate beyond mindless extensions of the Emperor, which seems kind of hard to square with keeping the Emperor from the dark side and serving the Force.

 

Perhaps the emperor represents the light side and is an embodiment of it if he falters-turns dark then the IKs are to redeem or kill him.

Their militaristic Jedi fully integrated into a government's apparatus and hierarchy with the only one element of the Jedi's mysticism.

 

Maybe the idea was to subtly point out the hypocrisy and problems with the whole idea?

 

Given what we know what does everyone think the long term poltical future of the GFFA in Legends is? Is galactic unification inevitable? Will the Sith return as the cycle repeats itself?

I'm not asking for fanfics just reasoned projections based on Legacy's events.

 

Galactic Unification seems to have already been achieved by Volume 2.

The surviving One Sith would probably "wait out" while they're in infiltration or hiding, similar to how they "waited out" Luke Skywalker. I'd guess a few centuries of relative peace might pass before the galactic order is either really weak or corrupt or in crisis-mode, and then they would decide to strike. Though these descendants of the original One Sith might have branched out and now have different philosophies and goals, or be in outright competition with each other, which would allow the heroes of that day to still ultimately emerge victorious.

Hopefully something like the Ossus Project 2.0 would have been successful in the meantime. History being more like a spiral than a cycle, with the worst time for the galaxy (and best chance of evil) having been the time of Palpatine and Vader. But since the Chosen One ultimately chose good, that's now the ultimate fate of the galaxy and the Force too, with evil becoming less likely to succeed and have a lasting impact with each passing cycle until eventually it's powerless and irrelevant then gone.

 

Issue 11:

We now begin our third story arc and the last of the five-issue ones, “Wanted: Ania Solo.” On the cover we’re told that “History Repeats”, assuming we don’t get the hint from the picture (or the comparison in the letters column of the last issue). I will say that Ramid here on the cover definitely has a bit of a Cassian Andor look to him.

I’ll add as an aside that I’ve been scanning the articles’ Wookieepedia pages after reading the issues to see if there’s anything I missed, and this issue in particular seems like it’s the start of the content becoming kind of threadbare. I won’t lie, I don’t really care for Wookieepedia but it’s sad to see. A definite sense of the readers and editors knowing that the end was nigh. But as this thread has shown, four years on and still not forgotten.

But as a result of the Wook browsing, I didn’t even realize that this is set a year later than issue 10, into 139 ABY. Back on Ania’s junk shop on Carreras Minor, two thugs (I assume? They claim they “own this moon,” but that seems kind of an open brag) are looking around, trying to find Ania to get her to pay her debts, but a helmeted woman with a lightwhip shows up demanding know where Ania is.

We switch back to our heroes on AG’s freighter, gingerly piloting through a mine field to get to a planet. Sauk notes that since “the war” is over, he figured that someone would have cleaned up the mines by now. I kind of wonder which war exactly he’s talking about, but since I’m guessing the various One Sith-related conflicts all blurred together, it probably makes sense to refer to them as a single overall conflict, like the New Sith Wars.

They land at the Lasgo Port settlement (after flying through a giant hole in a destroyed star destroyer… hmm…), a small town that’s been essentially cut off from the galaxy by the mine field, and which isn’t high on the Triumvirate’s agenda to restore contact to. I like this idea of worlds that have essentially been forgotten due to the galaxy’s wars, and left to go their own way.

There’s a few pages of a frankly strange interlude where Ania sees some giant lizard animals who are the stars of a rodeo competition, she decides to compete, and loses. It’s a bit of a nonsequiter, so I’ll skip over it. Really, it’s surprising that they wasted a few good pages on it. Though that being said, a Solo being involved in herding (kind of) giant lizards on a rural planet – maybe kind of a deep reference to Han Solo’s early life as a coldpedda herder from Lucas’ early proto-EU notes from The Making of Star Wars?

In any case, the whole diversion exists so Jao can find a Wanted poster of Ania, claiming she’s wanted for the murder of an Imperial Knight. Back in the ship in space, Ania claims she’s never met an IK before Jao, and Jao points out that her hiding in the Carreras system is suspicious, to say the least. Before Ania can offer an explanation, a micro-meteor hits their engines, stranding them. The comm droid goes out and Sauk notes that there is suspicious carbon scoring around the impact – but then also notes that the supposedly-disabled ship they’re stranded next to has survivors on board. They dock with the derelict and find that the spacesuitted survivors are led by….

Ania’s old boyfriend, Ramid! What are the odds? Probably about the same as a scavenger stealing the Millennium Falcon and then running into Han Solo by chance, at least! Sauk and Jao look equally shocked, but probably for different reasons. Ania and Ramid talk and it gets indicated that Ania, in some way, left Ramid for dead, or at least assumed he was dead. Jao is a bit suspicious, and immediately starts grilling Ramid about his deal. He doesn’t exactly ask Ramid if he’s got a girlfriend, but….

Ania offers to help fix Ramid’s ship, or at least give them a lift. AG, Sauk, and Jao head back towards their ship’s docking port, with Sauk and Jao immediately jumping to what the reader already instinctively knows, that Ramid’s ship was responsible for the ‘meteor’ strike and that someone is rotten on the planet Hoth.

Sauk tries to get Ania to come with them back to the ship for ‘help,’ but Ania blows him off, and makes what absolutely the most bizarre line in the series so far: “Bring back some of those Sewalian algae crisps we picked up… Ramid used to talk about those nonstop.” She’s telling her friend to fetch some potato chips for her boyfriend who just showed up out of the blue (or black, as it was) after being presumed dead for at minimum a few years.

There were some serious Stepford vibes from that scene, or since I just saw it, the atmosphere of the titular “get out!” scene from Get Out. Maybe I’m making too much of that one line, but Ania’s whole interaction with Ramid from this issue made me think of him being someone who just completely had her in his spell of charisma. Not quite Stockholm syndrome, but like… how to explain… she’s clearly a very independent and capable woman, but Ramid seems like the one person who, for whatever past they share, can turn her into a gushing girl. Again, maybe I’m making too much of it, but there were just very unsettling vibes from it.

It also made me wonder for the first time just how old Ania is supposed to be. I checked Wookieepedia to be sure, and they don’t have a birthdate for her. Between the general way she’s drawn and her personality, I could buy her as anywhere from as low as late teens to as old as mid twenties, but not much more than that in either direction. Around the same age as Rey, in other words, but probably because both Ania and Rey’s ages were intended to reflect Luke in ANH.

In any case, diversions aside, Sauk and Jao (and the reader’s) opinions of Ramid are proven right, when he shuts the bulkhead between the two ships and immediately flies off with Ania onboard with him, and all her friends back on AG’s (still disabled) ship. Ania must still be in his thrall because all she asks is, “Hey, what’s going on?” Biggest understatement since Luft’s issue 9 “There he is.” Ramid has Twi’lek and Weequay crewmates grab her in response.

Ramid’s ship starts shooting behind it, trying to blow up mines to hit AG’s ship. AG notes that they can’t get away because no one is stupid enough to jump to lightspeed inside a minefield. Well, you know what happens next. As AG just stares out at the evidence of his mistaken assumption with (what I choose to believe is) a disbelieving expression, Sauk cries out, “Ania’s been kidnapped!”

“Has she?” replies Jao. “I wonder…” Someone is jealous of Ramid! And that brings us to the end of issue 11. A shorter post today, but… well, a shorter issue, at least in terms of plot. Actually, surprisingly so. The animal rodeo, a few pages of flying through the mine field, Ramid’s ship… this had a filler feel to it, which given the next issue is the 2/3 mark of the series, is paradoxically where I wish they had gone the other direction and crammed more in here. Oh well… still a few good bits in this one, at least.

 

This is where the series really started to lose me. I actually stopped buying the issues around this time, and only ended up buying and reading the end in a trade paperback in December, because Dark Horse wouldn't be printing any more.

I forget if "the announcement" had been made yet or not about decanonization and the end of Dark Horse... but even if it hadn't been, this was going in a bad direction... boring filler. It's too bad. I had excitedly purchases every single issue of Legacy's volume 1 and the War miniseries. I know the EU was currently on a "let's tell smaller stories" mindset, but smaller doesn't need to be mean duller.

Also, is this issue really a year later? I thought they just had the never-depicted GFFA New Year.