Lit Best and Worst EU Eras?

Dark Empire is like the prequels-- the bones of the story are not only fine but an integral part of the Skywalker saga; the package it's delivered in though is... let's say uneven.

Palpatine's defiance of death though and Luke's quest to understand his father's fall & defeat the dark from the inside is such a core part of the mythos that it's still kind of hard for me to wrap my head around there being no version of it in the new canon.

 

So. Something I noticed about the EU of the 90's which I found very interesting.

So if you look at in from a certain point of view (Pun intended) if you look at the post ROTJ stories being written I feel like they took Star Wars and moved it into the Science Fiction Direction. B

BUT

If you look at the TOJ series and all the stuff way back it took Star Wars and went in the more fantasy direction. I mean look at those comics Star Wars looks like middle earth in space lol

Just a note I find most interesting

 

I'm always partial to the 90's Bantam era since that what I grew up with

 

I say TOTJ or the Jabim arc of Republic. Has Open Seasons been put in trade btw? I have been meaning to get that for years.

 

Well, it was in trade, many years ago.

 

So was Dawn of the Jedi https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Da...rd_wg=Gd34V&psc=1&refRID=M03TVSYC7N2JQ035MT84

The curse of being a comic fan, overpriced trades that are no longer in print. I did not get my hands on Engelhart's Batman run till I found reprint issues that collected 2 each, at a warehouse sale my local store does. The trade version was $70 minimum. I guess good thing do happen to those who wait cause I got all of it in that sale for just $5.

 

Looks like you can still get it in Amazon Marketplace:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1479426990&sr=1-1

 

Best? TCW. Go ahead and fry me, I don't care.

In all seriousness, while I miss Republic, Coruscant Twlight, and the Tartakovsky short cartoons (and am glad for the attempts by various EU authors to slip them back in), TCW brought a much-needed degree of backstory and nuance to Anakin Skywalker's fall that was either, IMHO, missing or just ... badly done in the movies. Yes, there were things like Mortis, but for each bit of those, there were things like Obi-Wan and Satine's doomed love, the Darksaber, and so on.

And Ahsoka. Her journey ...

Worst? Got to agree with Havac about the butcher job that the Bane trilogy did on JvS. Oh, there were good bits and pieces - I particularly appreciated the tidbits about Belia Darzu and Tython, from a tragic "here's how the Jedi origin world ended up " POV - but otherwise? Eh.

Close tie for second is the sheer wasted potential of the back half of the NJO all the way to Crucible. J, J, A, and friends should've been champions of tomorrow.

Instead .. .Anakin gets killed off unnecessarily, and from there ... FACPOV, the Denningverse can be described as a tragic implosion of a family, with a needless side helping of PT leftovers.

It's Greek tragedy (nephew goes mad, kills aunt, tries to corrupt cousin, gets killed by sister, as uncle may or may not play puppetmaster of his Force-sect).

But it's not executed well. And there's so much awful (Mara's fridging; Jaina's love life ... again, and again; Ben not being allowed much, if any, of a hero's journey, and all but turning into an abusive boyfriend ; Anakin's needless death at Myrkr; etc.) that what bright spots there are get drowned out.

(I'm especially disgusted with FOTJ, because Ben in Invincible actually behaved with a shred of decency by trying to redeem Tahiri. Yet, years later, he ties up and slaps around Vestara? WTK? It doesn't matter if she's Sith - you don't act that way toward people you profess to care about. It's as if the boy learned nothing from listening to Habuur's death. )

Plus ... Abeloth. Really? If you're going to throw alien horrors into SW, at least have them make a shred of sensible menace (Waru gets lambasted, but he ate people, while yammosks enjoyed breaking captives - Abeloth was a bizarre, disturbing series of 'let's fridge Luke's exes' ).

In fact, that gets back to one of the more aggravating trends of the post-TUF EU. Instead of bringing back old characters in interesting ways, they tended to get thrown under the hoverbus. The Solusars suffered particularly egregiously in LOTF; at least Raynar got something of himself back in FOTJ.

 

Nice.

 

Nah it's cool dude TCW a fine choice a fine choice indeed!

 

Off topic but I still can't get over how cool (pun intended) the Flametrooper looks. I really was a live action TCW film more and more so we can get live action Clones. Especially this guy

 

Anakin's death wasn't needless. I mean, you're totally free to dislike it if course, but it's not just a random waste like all the crap that happened after the NJO-- it's absolutely essential the story being told. Myrkr, and Anakin's death, is like, the turning point of the war; it's the fulcrum on which all of history turns. If Anakin doesn't die at Myrkr, Jacen never discovers who he is, nor does Jaina; there's no rapport with the World Brain, no Trickster Goddess, no bridge to understanding the Vong. the war lasts much longer-- and when it ends, if it ends, it ends devastatingly, in xenocide, in crimes against sapience so monstrous that what's left of the New Republic can never erase the stain on its collective soul. And then moving forward into the future, there's no Fel Dynasty, no Imperial Knights, and no Treaty of Anaxes; no century of peace and recovery following the end of the Vong invasion, and likely no one to stymie Krayt's machinations whenever the One Sith reveal themselves.

Anakin's death is absolutely devastating, I agree-- but a galaxy without his sacrifice is a far darker place.

 

We don't know that for certain. Jacen could still end up captured and no one except Ganner goes after him eventually. Anakin and Tahiri could start a Shamed One Rebellion, that changes everything. The Legacy era that we know wouldn't exist but I could see a universe where Anakin lives that ends the Vong war quite well.
Jaina could still become Yun Harla as well.
Dark Journey would be different because of Hapes and what happened at Centerpoint Station.
Riina Kwaad would also happen differently. I think Anakin could help her with that. Or it wouldn't be as bad.
The events we know wouldn't happen. And the war be shortened or lengthened but complete disaster if Anakin lives? Not likely imo.
Everything after that? No comment.

 

... well, Force Smuggler already beat me to the reply.

Trip, you raise an excellent series of points; I just think the road to get there could've been a little different, IMHO.

(And, I definitely agree in the need to avoid an Alpha Red scenario. That wouldn't have been SW-esque, but something far darker ... )

 

I think the better argument about Anakin's death being "needless" is less the in-universe than the out-of-universe one. It wasn't just for shock value or the like, but an important part of the overarching structure of the NJO. (The execution is debatable compared to, say, Chewie or Ganner in the same series, but then one place where I do agree with Onderon1 is that Denning isn't very good at these things).

 

If we could change Anakin Solo's death, how would you?

 

Best: Old Republic Era and Prequels, I loved the Clone Wars Legends stuff. I was very sad that they ditched it and kept the movies. The Old Republic had a lot of great stories (Tales of the Jedi, Bane Trilogy, Knight Errant and SWTOR are stories we had not scene before, so they were good)

Worst: Legacy, just bland done before stories (books, comics, all of it)

 

If that's addressed to me - the main thing that stands out is that the whole Myrkr suicide mission is really a pretty contrived setup.

 

THIS - yes, precisely. Thank you, Vthuil.

I won't beat a dead Thakwaash about the Anakin issue; better to keep the thread moving. A few thoughts on other eras:

* I really like DOTJ, and wish it'd continued into the further Force Wars. There was a lot with Tython that seemed to work, and the Je'daii philosophy was a spot-on indictment of the failures of the "Golden Age" Order. (Of course, so was Kar Vastor's note to Luke in Mindor that "You are not afraid of the dark.")

* While there are (IMHO) fewer problems with TOR than some people have mentioned, I do agree that separating out Revan's arc and giving us a proper KOTOR III would've been more satisfying. The Revan novel was ... not good in its execution, nor was Revan's fate in TOR.

* TFU ... Juno, Proxy, and Kota, I don't dislike. Starkiller himself, OTOH, is a textbook Gary Stu.

* Underexplored era? The Golden Age up to the 100s BBY. I can think of maybe two, three stories set during the 800-plus years between JvS and the start of A'Sharad Hett's arc, and one of them involves Minch (who, while hardly a terrible character ... isn't exactly inspiring. )

The Jedi Path gave some intriguing hints about the Order just post-Ruusan (and, IMHO, better written than the Bane trilogy), but nothing concrete.

 

blackhole... was like six months to a year after they'd just beat the emperor. who else, exactly, would there even be to for that fight? luke wasn't even thirty, for crying out loud. he's supposed to just be done?

 

Not he should be done, but his saga as a main hero should end there. The galaxy should stay in peace overall, then start another big crisis in decades later.

 

so let me get this straight. simply because the leader of a galaxy spanning empire dies... they should just be done? there's no way someone steps into that power vacuum... (like happened, and then it fractured and there were all kinds of littler problems that still needed to be dealt with), and said leader had other people than vader who could cause big problems, should completely bow to the whims of a rebellion that couldn't even begin to establish a legit republic until years later? the hero, and only known living jedi at the time, should just hang it up in his twenties?

i'm sorry, i genuinely don't see how that makes any sense, at all. especially how the empire should just be done because a weapon blows up and the two leaders are dead. there's always a next man in line to step into power like that. i mean, the fleet wasn't even destroyed, they just left, so the bulk of the practical power that the empire had was still left. what they really did was win a massive battle, and a massive moral victory, but the war? how's that end the war? until the war itself is over completely, luke has no reason to even consider being done. nor do leia, han, wedge, anyone in rogue squadron, any of the military leaders, ground troops, ship captains, admiralty, etc, etc.

and then you have the whole warlord situation when there wasn't one person powerful enough to hold the empire together, meaning you have a whole bunch of littler empires all fighting with each other, and trying to take chunks out of the galaxy at large. how does the galaxy suddenly become peaceful in this kind of situation? again, how does that actually make sense? and luke, again, being the last living jedi, and very much a doer, shouldn't be involved? han, very much a doer, and suddenly a general in the military, shouldn't be involved? leia, one of the leaders and founders of the rebellion, when it's not even remotely actually done, shouldn't eb involved? they're the exact people that everyone, in real life, would be looking to to help them with the continued problems. you establish yourself as a problem solver in real life, you aren't done after the one big problem that you proved yourself with... you move on to the next one because people expect it of you. and then you move on to the next one after that, etc, etc, etc.

i'm sorry if this comes across as attacking or anything, i'm just really having trouble grasping the logic here.

 

Havac already mentioned it, but I can imagine the PT era EU sucking a lot of fans in, simply because it was necessary.

The PT EU makes the PT better, because AOTC (and I'd throw TPM in there, to a lesser extent) did such a terrible job of setting things up, of establishing much of anything with clarity.

With the OT, everything works, you just watch it and you totally get what's going on, it's very clear. You go into the OT EU with an excellent understanding of the characters and the setting, and you're really just looking for more.

With the PT, it can be very difficult to get a clear idea of the political element, Anakin's characterization is a disaster and needs fixing, for a lot of people the Jedi were in desperate need of positive portrayal or what have you, Dooku and the Separatists need to be established from scratch because AOTC basically did none of that, etc.

So, because the PT is so lacking, you turn to the PT era EU for answers, and it encourages you to pour yourself into it like a researcher or a detective. You're not just a casual fan looking to enjoy the adventures of Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme (LOL), you're now an insane hardcore fan desperately searching for clarity. Who was...Sifo-Dyas? Who was Darth Plagueis? Who is San Hill? How much truth was Dooku telling? Pleeeease give me a story where Anakin isn't a total brat. What's the revenge of the Sith about? How did Nute Gunray escape prison? What exactly was going on with the political situation in TPM, anyway? Who are the Separatists?

The OT isn't as incomplete, so investigation doesn't seem as necessary.

And of course, the PT has plenty of fodder for filler, too. Darth Maul and Qui-Gon's backgrounds, since we got so little of them at first. Filler on every background Jedi you can think of, and more. More clone action, and handling of the morality of their involvement. War stories, every battle you see glimpses of in ROTS. Details on Order 66, down to how every last Jedi bought it.

 

Don't forget about the New Jedi Order. Won't remake itself, you know. And some people out there are going to do everything in their power to stop it.