Comics Star Wars #21-25: The Last Flight of the Harbinger

Hmm, interesting claim, which Legends works did you have in mind for advocating this?

As, like the films, the books have never been quite as strictly black and white as they are perceived to be.

 

Might be shades of grey - but even in Lost Stars the Rebellion is very much A Lighter Shade of Grey than the Empire.

 

I was more or less referring to the way the movies told the story. I'm sure legends had shades of grey storytelling as well.

 

The same movies that have Luke refusing to kill Vader and then redeeming the up until that point Grand Super Bastard of the Galaxy Vader?

Yeah, no shades of complexity there at all.

 

Got some artwork for the next issue:

Spoiler

 

Can't say I'm impressed with that artwork.

 

yeah...

 

Thought this was a nonsense story.

Considering how Star Destroyers are hyped elsewhere in canon, the Harbinger went down way too easily.

How many Rebel fighter craft were there?

An Imperial class Star Destroyer caries 72 TIEs. Did something happen to all those TIEs? Am I to believe that the Rebels had 100+ X wings attacking the ISD? The attack scene made no sense to me because how the Rebels achieved the initiative wasn't really elaborated on. How did they get past the fighters? Why weren't they harassing the X wings more? How did the Rebels have enough firepower with just a few fighters to completely overwhelm the SD? Did they have a hundred or more X wings?

 

Star Wars is not anything close to a realistic depiction of a war.

The Rebels have never killed any civilians/children/innocents ever in their campaign but that would be an inevitable side effect of fighting a war.

Everything bad that would be done by both sides is only ever done by the Empire because Star Wars is a fantasy story that at the heart of it doesn't make logical sense.

George actually came up with this best out for all this, Star Wars is just a story told by R2D2 (a unreliable narrator according to George), who knows what actually happened in the Galactic Civil War.

 

Actually several canon stories have mentioned / shown the Rebels / New Republic causing civilian casualties, including Last Call at the Zero Angle and Aftermath: Life Debt. Moving Target also has a Rebel propose executing everyone serving the Empire, no matter how insignificant their role. Not to mention Saw Gerrera was apparently a very vicious Rebel leader. So Star Wars hardly keeps all the side effects of war / war crimes limited to the Empire, at least post-reboot. I can't think of any pre-reboot.

Personally, I don't find anything morally wrong with the Rebels shooting at fleeing Imperial shuttles. They are armed and therefore fair game, and in this case every dead Imperial is one less who might figure out that the Star Destroyer was not destroyed.

 

These for example
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Justice_Action_Network

 

This argument doesn't hold up since Star Wars portrays a Light side and a Dark side.

When the Empire purposely kills civilians it's Dark Side/Evil, when the Rebels purposely kill civilians that's Light Side/Good?

That's ISIS type thinking.

Star Wars completely side steps this by having the Rebels never purposely kill civilians.

In an actual war you'd have Alderaan equivalents like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Alderaan is portrayed as an evil Empire killing people for no good reason, while Nagasaki/Hiroshima is seen by some as a necessary evil to stop a war. Objectively though they can both be viewed the exact same way yet Star Wars as written tells you the answer to that moral question by making one side moustache twirling "dark side" villains.

 

...what? I never said that Rebels killed civilians on purpose or that it was portrayed as a good thing. Just that civilians were accidentally killed in the crossfire or when they got careless with orbital bombardments. One canon proto-Rebel group led by Berch Teller in Tarkin did target civilians who worked at Imperial military facilities, but even members of that group had serious reservations about what they were doing and did not view themselves in a heroic light.

Star Wars is not entirely Evil vs. Good. The conflict between Jedi and the Sith is. The conflict between the Empire and the Rebellion is not. There are lots of shades of grey amongst Imperial and Rebel members.

 

Heroes on both sides?

Like I said Star Wars does a poor job of illustrating that and goes out of it's way to give an answer to any and all moral questions in the series.

 

I'm not sure how much of the new canon you have read, but that just isn't true. Lost Stars and Twilight Company have heroic Imperials who believe they are fighting a violent terrorist insurgency threatening a hard won peace and orderly galaxy.

 

this was a legit fun issue which it kind of needed because it's been sort of heavy lately (the Han / Luke stuff in Rebel Jail was fun but it was almost pushed a bit too far into madcap comedy to coutneract what was actually a super-dark Rebel Jail arc) and this just had some gee-gollicking rocking adventure. And I'm always a fan when ANH era Luke uses the Force but not exactly like a pro, he sort of more goes with the flow and does something spectacular. And flying INTO a Star Destroyer is pretty interesting and a really decent swerve on that ISD going all blown up like but with the twist in the final few pages (and Han bickering at Chewie to get it moving again)

To be fair, I think "Hey, you almost blasted me outta the sky!" wacky misunderstanding in Shattered Empire is more Star Wars in tone than if Shara had received a chewing out about the protocols of war and mused morality of the rules of engagement.

 

I like how the comics build upon Luke's crazy courage. Like crashing into Vader's TIE in Vader Down.

 

Yoda: "You are reckless."

 

well if Yoda was truly looking in on Luke as well, then he would be shaking his head at all the silly stuff he got himself into.

 

It's pretty amazing how high Marvel's quality has been. I'd rather they keep up the quality and have fewer story arcs if need be.

 

Star Wars is a disjointed mess with random story plots and ideas fired at a wall shotgun style in the hope that something might stick, sure there are some interesting concepts in there, but it certainly doess not seem to be going anywhere or be adding anything meaningful.

Vader is a shambling monstrosity that jumps from random location to random location only connected by random wanton murder and villains that seem even ridiculous by comic book standards, and a running joke that was kind of funny the first time but that has been dragged out beyond painful by now, with about the only side character that series has not killed off being kind of interesting and ironically her best story arc was not even in the series that she was made for.

Still unsure about the Poe series, it has its great moments, which are mainly due to having a truly great villain and a pretty solid sense of humor, so there is at least some hope there.

The various miniseries and one shoots are mostly forgettable or seem deeply unguided, though they all that least had some interesting ideas, with imho only the Lando one keeping a unique enough style, story and direction to have been really good. Also the Kanan one was rather interesting, especially the first arc and I would have loved for it to keep going, alas we only got two arcs of it, though I can at least get my story fix for that stuff via Rebels.

 

Well, that's just your opinion, man.

 

Where's the required The Dude image Voider?

If you're going to use the line.... You need the image man, it'd really tie the post together.