Lit The Great River / Legends Haven MkII (Was: Should there be new stories in the Legends continuity?)

She looks okay, not completely sold though. No offence to her but she wears too much makeup and has a weird pout face.
She could pull it off I guess with natural makeup. See:



I think though that there are better choices out there.

 

Anybody going to re-up their old copies of Heir to the Empire / Dark Force Rising / Last Command for this sweet trio of covers?



Look at poor Thrawn on the cover of Last Command, unaware he's seconds away from being shanked by his bodyguard.

 

Well I can see the art, there. I don't need it on my shelf.

Also the "Legends" banner is gross.

 

C'baoth going full Burt Reynolds or GTFO.

 

I'd wager the reprinting is to hype up Thrawn for his appearance on Rebels but it's nice they went with the total red orbs of the Legends Thrawn depiction as opposed to giving him pupils as is his look now. Way to differentiate the two versions of the character. If they were 100% shameless cash grab they'd just use the Rebels art design.

Moneymaking aside, I still think it's a pretty sweet design of covers and they seem to be keeping the red and black colour scheme of Dark Force Rising.

 

Where's Mara?

Is she not included so to eliminate that desire to see her in Canon?

 

I might upgrade (if I can afford it). While I wish there were more characters than just the Big Three and Thrawn (Mara and Palleon, for example), the covers are a definitive improvement over the originals (2 is my favorite overall, while 3 has the best composition.

 

Legends shout-out on Penny Arcade a few weeks ago. Totally agree with the last panel. [LANGUAGE WARNING]

Removed embedded image for containing disallowed language.


Grand Admiral Thrawn is back, welcomed into loving embrace of canon, and I could not be more pleased. The younger iteration of myself liked him much more than the current revision, but the main thing is what it proves: that they aren’t above boring into the years upon years of calcified work to haul worthies to the surface. They have an eye on it. Hopefully not all of it. Hopefully we can erect some tasteful shōji or something to obscure certain parts. You can tell from Panel Two where my own fantasies lie, in the voice Karen Traviss brought to the setting, a little more military and a little less mystic. Time will tell.

 

I will say that I appreciate that Thrawn actually has a prominent spot on the covers now. He had a strangely reduced presence on the original prints.

 

I'm all over these.

Anyone know if these will be under new ISBNs?

 

Wait is there a columnist writing this? The mysticism is why I'm a star wars fan. Okay that just makes me mad, Star Wars is mysticism, not Heinlein's Starship Troopers. If people don't like the force/prophecy/metaphysical aspects they shouldn't consider themselves Star Wars fans. To each to his own I guess.

 

I don't know, just because you like something overall doesn't mean that you like all aspects of it.

(Ironically, while I consider myself a Legends fan, the idea of them borrowing stuff from it for the new material doesn't really jazz me that much. While I'm more or less onboard for Thrawn now, I'm perfectly happy to let each version of the franchise stay in their own corners of the sandbox.)

 

I don't like the mining either.

 

Fair enough. It doesn't bother me the way it does some people (like the "Disney is ripping off the EU! The 'we needed to reboot for creative freedom' claim was a lie, since they're just aping the EU anyways!" crowd). It's just that I'm more invested in the new characters they've created rather than new versions of old ones. Case in point, the comic suggests canonizing Mara Jade. While that could be cool, if I want to read about the character, I can just pull one of the original books off the shelf. I also suppose there's the the "overwriting" effect. While the Mara character is Legends-only and thus non-canon, she's still the "real" Mara. Once they come up with a Disney canon version of the character, Legends Mara isn't the "real" one anymore (yeah, arguing about reality in fiction ) . It's all subjective, but my perception of the character has changed, and I'm not sure I really want that to happen too often or to all characters.

At the end of the day, I suppose its all a case-by-case basis. I mean, since Thrawn is an antagonist, I can have an easier time imagining him being repurposed, since we never got into his head in the same way we did the heroes. Either way, I think a healthy mix of new characters alongside any Legends ones they grandfather in is the best way to go.

 

With regards to the mysticism, it is an integral part of Star Wars, I know not everyone is religious and that heavy philosophizing and metaphysical grandeur puts some people off, but's that Star Wars to me. The fleets, the city planets, the sexy aliens as engaging and fun as they are aren't the heart of the franchise.

 

I disagree. As a primarily Legends fan (sure, I love the movies, but when I need my fill of old school Star Wars, I'd pick a NJO book to re-read rather than rewatch Episode 4 for the umpteenth time), Star Wars has become a franchise that is open to many interpretations. The Force itself has many interpretations in Legends that I like to theorize on. Yes, mysticism is an important aspect of Star Wars and there are people who are primarily fans of the Dark/Light dichotomy, the good versus evil scale, but that's not the entirety of the franchise. A Franchise should expand to new grounds and have something for all of its fans. Star Trek, for example, isn't just Kirk, Picard and their Enterprises exploring strange new worlds. Deep Space Nine tackles war, espionage and making hard choices. Wrath of Khan in particular goes into the whole motif of revenge. Legends has done similar, exploring beyond the Dark/Light duality of the Force and beyond good vs evil. I'd like to see that in Disney canon, but I probably won't.

 

BigAl6ft6

You've been posting here long enough to know the rules we have in place regarding language. Disallowed words list. Linking to material containing such language is fine, embedding it is not.

 

Yeah, "Tycho" is the writer (I dunno if his moniker is inspired by the Legends character, maybe) and columnist. Guy is more into the military aspect of Star Wars than the mysticism. Just thought it was a funny shout-out comic also it gets across the point that some people do get genuinely excited to see Legends characters incorporated into the new canon. Not a bad thing at all to me. Although there is a completely anti-using-Legends-in-new-canon contingent but I'd wager there's more mainstream nerd joy on the "Yay, they're using a Legends character" side than not.

 

I've never been one to give in to new book covers (the Han Solo Adventures and Lando Calrissian Adventures, for example, even though they look nice) but I'm seriously considering buying the Thrawn trilogy all over again because I like this art a lot. Though I do find it strange/sad that Mara or Pallaeon don't appear on the covers, or even Joruus C'Baoth, considering he's the prominent figure on the original Heir cover.

 

Those are some cartoony covers.

Back when the official site made a casting poll for HTTE characters, they had Pierce Brosnan as the "never imagined that" option, and I really like it. He can really pull off long beard and hair, and I don't mean political prisoner Bond. Burt Reynolds sounds like a natural/obvious Karrde. If Zahn's not available, that is.

btw, the german audio drama of HTTE had the guy who's generally dubbing Michael Caine playing C'baoth, so there's that.

The irony. The Vong are closer to canon than anything else mentioned thanks to the abandoned TCW script.

 

I'm personally a Vong fan, had they made that episode I might have been able to sit through a TCW episode. I just don't understand why people don't see how amazing the Vong are.

 

I thought they were an interesting idea and I don't hate them, but they never really stood out to me as a highlight. (In some ways, I actually think they might've been more interesting in the Star Trek universe.)

 

Alien Invasion stories were all the rage in the late '90's/early '00's (back then they were about what zombie (survival horror) stories are now)). The Vong were really just an attempt to bring the current popularity of that theme into the Star Wars universe.

 

Because they don't know how to appreciate a lengthy series of novels that lets the story unfold for itself.