Comics Dark Empire Trilogy

I am new to the Jedi Council Forum and I am already so overwhelmed and at the same time blown away with all that it has to offer. With that said I am curious about the Dark Empire trilogy. I am collecting and reading as many novels as I can ( and have quite a few ), but that is not showing up on any list or timeline I have of books. I have been looking for the title of the book where Luke goes dark but could never get a staight answer. I really thought I knew alot about the EU until I got here. I still know more then anyone I know but WOW!!!!!

Anyways the question is:
Where does it fall and does it go with the general timeline of the EU??
Am I really that out of it to not know this already?
Is it worth finding and reading???

 

It's a comic book series, takes place in 10 and 11 ABY (After Battle of Yavin) and yes, I think it's very good. Back in the early 90s, I had only read this comic series and seen the movies, but they still gelled together pretty well, atmosphere-wise. Get used to the monochromatic coloring, but Cam Kennedy's art is pretty solid, regardless of the color-choices.

 

I enjoyed the series, apart from certain events related to Boba Fett's part in it.

 

Thanks for the quick response!! I will try to find it and check it out.

 

It's never a year at TFN that we don't get a new Dark Empire thread. Good job.


Good comic; the sequels are pretty money-pandering but the first one is solid.

 

It's confirmed by Leeland Chee that Luke doesn't actually fall in DE. In the Luke Skywalker omnibus Chee writes instead that Luke "nearly" falls to the dark side in DE. Possible spoiler: Luke doesn't really do anything really evil and is sort of an undercover agent who tries to sabotage the Emperor's plans while pretending to join the Emperor.

 

The DE Trilogy is definitely a must-read for anyone venturing into the EU, right with the Thrawn Trilogy IMO. It's certainly campy and a little corny at the end, but really worth the read.

 

OK... so When DOES Luke fall to the Dark Side? I am pretty sure a few novels mention his falling...

 

To the best of my knowledge, they're referring to Dark Empire. Which we have official word was 'nearly' a fall, not a true one.

But the characters don't necessarily all know this, and Luke is of course the type of person to be hard on himself for his failures even if someone DID say he only 'nearly' fell.

 

I'm in the "Luke didn't completely fall" camp. He certainly came close, dangerously close, but managed to stay just beyond the borderline. Like Quinlan Vos, he was able to hang onto the light despite being surrounded and drowned by darkness, and I think that speaks volumes for his character.

 

Ahh fair enough, I can accept that

 

He nearly fell...and then he fell.

Dark Empire is not the best written thing?its central premise is weak and its dialogue is outright dismal?but there's a certain something about it I like in spite of myself. It captures a certain feel, in a way that's very reminiscent of the movies. I don't mean the way it brings back the entire cast and setup of ROTJ?that's aping the movies, like cribbing movie lines. But the way in which a visual identity for the era is created with ship design, the way that each world is given its own distinct look and feel and role in the plot, the way the main and supporting characters are kept limited, and played and used off each other to make for a very tight story, and the way just enough of the character background and galactic history is left offscreen. (Credit for the first two especially goes to Cam Kennedy, whose art and design create some great atmosphere.) It's a surprisingly subtle homage to how the movies work, in amongst the random Fett resurrections and such that hearken back more superficially.

Except for Kennedy's art, none of that applies to Dark Empire II. Its cast is bloated, its callbacks to Dark Empire I are gratuitous, its plot sort of wanders around randomly, and bringing back Palpatine again just moves into ridiculousness (and while DEI kept him relatively Palpatine-ish as a schemer, now he just goes into angry rants and shoots giant guns and zaps people into super-dark-siders with the Force, so it's not even bringing him back to be used well). Even the galaxyhopping isn't as interesting; Ossus is a cool idea for a world?an ancient Jedi headquarters?but the actual planet itself in DEII is fairly dull, Ganath is just stupid, New Alderaan is sort of...there, and the rest of the planets are reused from DEI. The dialogue manages to get worse, somehow. The superweapon gimmick, while cool in DEI because they were an original kind of weapon, goes back to the "big gun" paradigm of copying the Death Star. Other than that...Kam's a neat fellow.

And then EE gets rid of Kennedy's art, and thereby the last good thing remaining in the series. Decent things about EE: seeing Onderon thousands of years later is kind of neat; sending Kam and a bunch of the non-Jedi to assault the Eclipse II is a good thing to do with them and parallel Luke's simultaneous fight with the Emperor, and is the only part of the comic to approach being interesting; and finally, Crimson Empire's summary of the story, which makes it sound much better than it really is. By which I mean it makes it sound good at all. Which is really quite the triumph on Crimson Empire's part, because yeesh.

 

I agree with the above statement about how the first DE captured the feel of the movies. It's amazing how even plot points from the prequels, like Palpatine's obsession with eternal life, are in the story. It was obviously just a coincidence on the part of the writers, but it's a great tie to the movies nonetheless.

On the subject of DEII characterizing Palpatine incorrectly, however, I have to partially disagree. While he was certainly lacking in his scheming nature, his "I will destroy everything and gloat about it!" nature is definitely represented in the films, specifically his duel with Yoda in ROTS.

 

A fan novelized the trilogy. I haven't had time to read it yet, but people in previous DE threads say it's decent: http://www.domuspublica.net/files/The_Test_of_Wills.pdf

 

I liked the Galaxy Gun myself (silly name..but whatever ); sure it wasn't mobile, but the idea struck me as pretty sound, particularly compared to the World Devastators, which came off as terrifying but not terribly effective at actually destroying things. I'm sure that's been mentioned in non-DE material, but my impression is that they were on Mon Cal for a fairly long period of time, but didn't actually cause buttloads of damage.

 

Parts of that fanfic are hard to read because there's a use of all these designations and what not that are alien to Star Wars, so it becomes somewhat cumbersome in some ways. But there are other elements that work quite well.

 

I've read the first 100 pages or so (still need to find the time to finish it one day) and it's surprisingly good. (I did skip to the end and read the final duel to begin; that was definitely one of the best Star Wars duels I've read, and really made Palpatine feel all powerful.)

Though, yeah, the phraseology is somewhat awkward. There's a tendency to refer to characters by their full names and titles, like saying, say, General, The Baron Calrissian of Bespin, blah, blah, blah, which got rather tedious in places and draws unnecessary attention to itself as showing off. The same thing happens with ship names and things, as it jerks you out of the narrative to read a full serial number designation for the droid model or whatever every time it's mentioned. Still, those foibles aside, the way the guy has put the actual plot together is well done.

 

There are also references to earthly things that is completely foreign to Star Wars, or at least the EU that comes off very out of place. It's not just an odd reference to ducks like the ANH novelization(and thus their presence in AOTC on Naboo), but other things that I'm not remembering specifically because it's been a couple months since I was reading that thing.

But yeah, there is some really good stuff there... and then random things that pull your right out of it and drive home that it's a fanfic and not profic and there's a reason for that. Also... it's very condensed.

 

The main "real life" reference I disliked was the way he keeps calling him "Doctor Palpatine" and I think in one place mentions his PhD. It's not exactly... "wrong" per se, as there are doctors in Star Wars, but... I found it a bit weird.

That aside, I did like the parts where he talks about Palpatine's experience with a multitude of different Force traditions. That was really good. He took a few liberties about the Heresiarchs and such, but it added to the feel of Palpatine being the true master of the Force.

 

True, and I would characterize his lack of subtlety as a shade of "clone madness", which ties in fairly well with the Thrawn Trilogy, with C'Baoth.

I've never ready any fanfiction, but I'm gonna have to read this... I'd really like a novelization of DE.

 

The Dark Empire trillogy is my favourite EU story.

 

Whoever wrote Dark Empire either must have gotten a Force 101 conversation from Lucas, or they just really understood Star Wars. The plot is a little hard to believe, and it really isn't a very complex story, but like the films it focuses on the themes. The prequels only support much of what was written in it. That's why DE stands alone for me as the post-Saga epilogue.