Lit Star Wars comic books (The Old Republic)

Up until now I've only ever read the Star Wars novels and have read everything through to the X-Wing series. However, I have decided its time to delve into the Star Wars comic books, mainly because I am most interested in The Old Republic and there are very few novels covering the events of that period.

With that said, I am completely lost as to where to begin and how best to go about chronologically sourcing and reading through the comics. So far I have seen that its possible to pick up 'Dawn of the Jedi', 'Tales of the Jedi', and 'Knights of the Old Republic' in various forms however they seem relatively expensive compared to the novel prices. Going forward past the early time periods, are there other omnibuses/collections, such as the two volumes for 'Tales of the Jedi', or does one have to buy lots of individual issues/series (which in my mind could get quite expensive)?

Any advice/guidance would be useful. Are there particular issues/series of importance that are unmissable? Likewise, are there any that are unnecessary or not worth acquiring?

 

Start with the Tales of the Jedi Omnibi that do exist. They were the first ancient Republic stories, and they provide the context for almost everything else. Next, play the original KOTOR video game if you have the ability.

 

Don't forget the Jedi vs Sith comic series. Defintely worth a read. Or ten.

 

To second the others, TOTJ and JvS are both classics and easily accessible. A few things have been retconned, but the same is true of the Thrawn Trilogy, so they're still very readable.

The KOTOR comics are more recent and were very popular too. It's true what you say about cost, since they aren't Omnibused yet and there's a lot of volumes and it's one big story, but I'd still encourage buying Commencement and seeing if you want to get into the rest later on as and when you can get hold of them.

Dawn of the Jedi you mentioned, and it's still ongoing, so the story isn't yet finished, so that depends whether you want to follow it as it comes out or not? There's also the Lost Tribe series, which will be out as a paperback... early next year I assume.

Oh, in theory I suppose there's also the TOR tie-ins, but I'd advise caution with some of those, as several are just hard copies of what were freely available web comics on the TOR site, several of which were of very poor quality, both in art and story. The later tie-in stories like Lost Suns were much more well produced, though the reception was probably still fairly lukewarm, so you might want to try and see if there's still a preview online you could try first.

 

You should buy all of them, they are still aviable in trade paperbacks.

Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith, The Fall of the Sith Empire, Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon*, The Saga of Nomi Sunrider*, The Freedon Nadd Uprising*, Dark Lords of the Sith, The Sith War and Redemption
*collected in Knights of the Old Republic/Tales of the Jedi - The Collection (Nomi and Ulic), The Freedon Nadd Uprising (Freedon Nadd) and Tales of the Jedi - The Collection and the Freedon Nadd Uprising (Ulic, Nomi and Freedon)

Knights of the Old Repulic: Commencement, Flashpoint, Days of Fear, Nights of Anger, Daze of Hate, Knights of Suffering, Vector Volume 1 Chapter 1 and 2, Vindication, Dueling Abitions, Destroyer, Demon and War

The Old Repulic: Treat of Peace, Blood of the Empire and Lost Suns

Lost Tribe of the Sith

Knight Errant: Aflame, Deluge and Escape

Jedi vs. Sith

 

Definitely start with Tales of the Jedi. In omnibus format you can save a good deal of money on those. If you then didn't really mind jumping through different eras you could just keep going through the omnibus collection. And I have to mention the KOTOR comics like everyone else, as they are quite good.

 

Thank you for the responses; all very helpful. I will go ahead and purchase 'Dawn of the Jedi', 'Tales of the Jedi', 'KOTOR', 'Knight Errant', and 'Jedi vs. Sith'. I feel more comfortable now about what I am supposed to be reading, however, looking forward to the comics set between 1,000 - 0 BBY, there are hundreds. Are there more collections/omnibuses? I can't seem to find an outline/timeline to the comic book series....just seems a bit daunting/confusing where to begin and I feel there's a good chance I could end up spending a lot on individual comics.