Comics Join Me In Rereading: Knights of the Old Republic

I hope that Knight Errant, Jedi v. Sith, and Lost Tribe of the Sith will be included in an Epic Collection. Complete artwork and all story text would be nice in collected form.

 

TRUTH

Great story from beginning to, new beginning.

 

Thanks for the reviews @Slater! KotOR is a Star Wars masterpiece, both in video games and comics. Looking forward to your review of KotOR:War.

 

Congrats on finishing the run (well, almost, what with War left). Its always fun to go through KotOR again over the years, as well as hear other people reminisce about it as well. When the comic ended, it was the end of an era, well, it sure felt like one to me at least. Wow, its been nine years since this issue came out originally.

I still love that cover of the main three (though I still miss Camper), perfect final issue cover. Not to mention having Brian Ching as the artist for the last arc, same as the first arc (though honestly Commencement's art was probably better), really feels like full circle. I'll always wish this series could have gone on longer (and thank you to JJM for talking about what could have been) but I'm glad the fifty issues we did get were wonderful. I'll keep an eye out for the epic collection whenever it pops up at my local bookstore.

 

They had a couple of pages spare in the third Epic Collection, so I suggested including my essay from #48 on how we went about hiding Demagol. Didn't actually think they'd include it, but there it is!

 

So here we are at the end of a very long journey. A fun one minus all the delays.

So first off like I said, I'm not doing 5 more full summaries, I just can't, not enough time IRL and not as much to say.

Like I said this isnt going to be a summary/recap, I'm just gonna talk about what I think worked and some stuff that didnt as well as musing on what we know of what would have come after War, and for fun some personal head canons.

Gonna note a bunch of things though. First off unlike the main series the threads for War were very small, so small in fact I couldn't find most of them. A big part of the fun with this reread was going back and getting to read raw live reactions to things as each issue progressed.

The theories people would come up with, the things they enjoyed, all of that was very fun to look through, especially to see all those theories that were way off the mark be discussed so much.

There is none of that with War sadly, the announcement thread: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/more-zayne-carrick-kotor-war.31941103/ is pretty much were all the discussion is and its all pre release. Contrasts quite heavily with the Legacy: War issues which have tons of discussion, but given that L:W was very much a grande finale while K:W was basically just another adventure not that surprising.

Side note, its still such a shame Dark Horse shutdown there forums, I have tried to find caged copies of the Kotor threads from there for so long with zero luck. I would kill to be able to read even more raw Kotor reactions, but alas not happening. Unless of course anyone here has a way to access them?

Its also worth nothing that from what discussion War does get, its easily the most middling response to a JJM Star Wars comic overall. No bad, not at all but still a shame that the last ever Kotor media in Legends couldn't hit the highs of the past.

But yes speaking of another adventure this one finds Zayne thrown into the middle of, well a War as he is forcibly conscripted while he was going to visit his family. Typical Zayne luck. And of course thats not enough he has to be placed under the Command of dear old Morvis, Karath's former second in command and a man of questionable competency.

And Morvis is without question the highlight of War, easily the most fully realized part of the Mini and a satisfying arc. Actually I personally noted pings of Lucien in him, He comes from privilege just the same and those privileges have helped shape a very arrogant person who is also being crushed by the weight of his last name and what he thinks thats supposed to mean. But wheres Lucien on the surface projects power and competency he is at his core of course and easily manipulated little boy who's mistakes tend to be compounding and catastrophic. With Morvis he doesn't come off as impressive to anyone, but in contrast his mistakes while not at all small are not the insurmountably massive kind, and by the end its clear he is also a great deal more self aware about himself under all that bluster and doesn't need nearly as much effort on Zayne's part to take the steps to atone and do better.

Meanwhile with Zayne he's in a tough position where his inherent pacifism is put up against a very real and deadly war. Zayne shows an absolute commitment to not killing anyone at all during War. After what happened with the massacre he just doesn't see himself as being in the right to make that call. Naturally a zero death run in the middle of a real war is rather hard, but it does give Zayne a chance to flex his quick thinking and character grown competency which is fun.

So if both Zayne and the most important other character were fine to great in War why did it receive much more neutral reactions then the main series?

Well, with hindsight and on reread some things are obvious

The lack of any of Zayne's team is notable, someone, I think it was @Jedi Ben said in another thread talking about War that it broke the cardinal rule of breaking up the band. Which I agree with, well kinda.

See Zayne as a character works on his own just fine, he still works here, but if your someone who say really wanted to see how Zayne and Jarael would now act as a couple (ME, I MEAN ME), then the fact that War doesn't have her at all till the last issue can be disappointing.

Also the Mandalorian Knights that serve as antagonists pale in comparison to those antagonists that came before, While Kace there leader has decent motives and canon fore wielding Mando Knights is a cool concept, not much is done with them at all. The Knights minus Kace have zero personality between the 3 of them, there not even 1D, there dull as can be. So unimportant are they that two of the three don't even have names, and Jaska the one that does, you probably will miss because its that unimportant. The Mandalorian Knights are supposed to be the mix of two fascinating cultures, but they lack in comparison to both of the groups they take from. The Jedi Covenant and Cassus/Ultimate/Demagol are both fantastic villains and characters and the Mando Knights just totally fail at being what should have been the successors to both.

Also this is more personal then consensus, but I am really not found at all of how Zayne is drawn in War. On the Covers he looks great a natural progression. On page? He looks like he aged about 20 years, got a terrible hair cut and his face was fractured half a dozen times. Which is jarring because Morvis and the Mando's look totally fine.

Some of the flaws I blame on hindsight. See whereas the main series had arcs where Zayne was separate from his crew (Adasca arc) or where the crew just seemed to be going on small adventures without an overall myth arc( Post Vindication until the Crucible reveal) both of those things benefited from still having the overall cast and there chemistry at the time, and then once the Crucible was revealed the plot beats and threads those issues were setting up became more clear adding even more meaning to them then they already had. But with War Zayne is on his own, on an adventure that matters and puts him in a new direction but also leaves the audience anxious to see him back with old friends. Which as we know now will never be the case as War was the end and thus there was never another arc to expand upon what was done and add new meaning to it. It doesn't get the benefit of hindsight, if anything it suffer from it, where the fact that it ended where it did feels wrong, like the story wasn't finished even though the mini was. Which isn't a feeling you get from Kotor #50 at all. (But you totally do from Legacy #50)

Of course the biggest flaw is Zayne mentions he got an apartment before he went to see his family but we dont get to find out if him and Jarael tested out the bedroom. (This one isn't a serious crit, and the answer is obvious anyway...........of course they did)

The stuff I just wrote is easily the most critical I have ever been of anything Kotor comic. But like I said its not at all a bad story, it has some great stuff, its just lumped with more obvious problems then we were used to when it came to this series.

But beyond that, what would have come next, well thanks to JJM's posts in this very thread we know Jarael would have rejoined the story proper by looking

Wonder if that means there adventures would have ended up entangled with Zayne's through shenanigans or maybe Mini Series with them as the protags? Or Both? Also always wanna know how far it could have gone if the series didn't have to end. all the way to Malachor maybe? Even beyond? Surely we would have gotten a Zayne/Jarael couple adventure some where in there.

Oh, speaking of Malachor and thus Kotor 2, it actually brings me to that headcanon I mentioned: I really like to think that Zayne helped organize and get all the Jedi to the Conclave at Katarr.

Getting a bunch of fugitive on the run Jedi to a secret meeting sounds like exactly the type of thing the Rogue Moon Project was built for, add in the Vandar and Zayne were close and it makes even more sense. Plus there's just something that really resonates to me about the idea that Zayne managed to sneak 100 Jedi under everyone's noses only for the actions of a fallen Jedi convinced there pure messing it up. It would tie Atris to Lucien thematically and be the ultimate expression of Zayne's "disability"

Of course Zayne and co would live, probably be the ones to help hide Bastilla because hey why not? It would be a neat connection without being intrusive on anything else.

And as a capstone on the reread if any one else has any headcanons about future Zayne and Co stories feel free to share them or anything else like, for example, who you would pick to voice the cast? I for one would choose Kyle McCarley to voice Zayne. No future stories they can contradict after all which makes it fun.

And this has been fun, rereading this series, writing all this. A nice twist on my yearly reread of one of my favorite series in any media ever.

So thanks to everyone who bothered to ever take a look at this thread. I hope it wasn't to rambly but I have reread many of my posts and found so, so many spelling errors and run-ons so maybe to late to hope for that.

Also thanks to JJM for stopping by all these times and posting his insights, this thread would probably be about 9 pages shorter without his contributions.

It been a ride that I enjoyed, hope you did to.

Cheer's, y'all

 

ZAYNE LIVES!

This has been a fun ride, gave me the final push to read buy the collections.

Thank you and JJM.

 

So...when's the post KotOR: War (mini)series getting published? How do we persuade Lucasfilm to greenlit the release of that story?

 

Zayne is a very underrated character in the EU he is like the Ezra Bridger of the Old Republic
It's a pity that his fate is unknow after the comics

I would have liked to see him during the Jedi Civil War or the Sith Civil War

 

Zayne survived everything and helped rebuild the Jedi, and then he got married to Jarael and they have a bunch of kids (uncle Gryph).

When was the holocron of Zayne and Gryph made? (It shows up in Rebellion or Empire Vector)

 

The loss of the DH forums are a really serious blow to key pieces of Legends info from the horse's mouth (so to speak). I remember a lot of posts from people like Stradley, Weaver, JJM, Ching, and others giving inside bits, and that's just for KOTOR itself.

Much as I hate to be critical of anything KOTOR or JJM related, I'm one of the ones who's rather critical of War. It's not bad, but it just doesn't feel like something... I guess 'substantive' in the way even the side-stories of KOTOR proper did. It felt kind of like a storyarc from the middle of the comic was cut out and then pasted on the end. Especially given there was nothing after it. It's a coda that not only feels like it doesn't go anywhere, but intrudes on a story that essentially was wrapped up. If there had been additional KOTOR stories after War that showed other characters and what they were up to, I might feel different about it.

But as it is, it's like... I don't know, for a really ridiculous comparison it'd be like if there was one extra chapter at the end of The Great Gatsby showing that Nick went on to get involved in the Teapot Dome scandal. Interesting on its own maybe, but not the best ending point for the story on a whole as it is.

TOR does have a major Republic space station named after Zayne, though I think it's only mentioned in the Codex and not anything in the 'proper' game. Always wondered how that came about in-universe. I think that might be the only KOTOR comic reference in TOR. I do like the idea that Zayne and the Rogue Moon Project were involved in saving Jedi from Nihilus in between KOTOR games.

 

In TOR we can find datacrons which retell some parts of comic's story:

Also, for some reason Marn Hierogryph's Utility Belt ends up in the Sith Vault alongside other "artifacts" like G0-T0 Photoreceptor or Skull of Canderous Ordo

 

Gryph's "Memoirs" showed up in Dark Times: Vector. They were recorded on Jebble, probably shortly before Zayne put Celeste to stasis in Dreypa's oubliette.

 

Oh ok. I thought they were made years after everything.

 

It was after, actually. Gryph's memoir mentions having put her in the oubilette and that they didnt expect the Mando's to nuke the planet.

As for comic references in Swtor Carrick Station is explicitly named in game when you click on the travel option there on the world map.

Also the codex entries and other things Raf posted. As well as each OC member of the cast besides Shel having a server named after them when the game first launched.

Actually going by the Wook:
"The 2011 video game Star Wars: The Old Republic is set three hundred years after the Knights of the Old Republic games and comics, and features numerous references to the games, comic series, and Tales of the Jedi. The game's Codex includes a series of entries in the Galactic History section that recap the Mandalorian Wars and the general events of the comic series, particularly Commencement, Vector, and Vindication. Forty-seven of The Old Republic's servers at the time of its release were named after elements from the comics. All of the main characters of the comic series, excluding Shel Jelavan, lend their names to servers, and the names of almost twenty items and locations are used as server names, such as "Jebble War Forge" and "Vanjervalis Chain." Even some minor characters, such as Dace Golliard, Lord Ieldis, Karness Muur, Senator Goravvus, and Goethar Kleej are the basis of server names, as are the eight main ships that appear in the series—the Courageous, Deadweight, Chancellor Fillorean, Arkanian Legacy, Swiftsure, The Last Resort, Hot Prospect, and the Moomo Williwaw. The Republic hub in The Old Republic, Carrick Station, is named after Zayne Carrick, and two of the Republic bases on the planet Taris are also named after characters from the comics: Waypoint Station Draay and Waypoint Station Morne. The game's crewskill system includes several missions that reference the comics; for example, the mission "The Butcher's Lab" involves one of Demagol's laboratories. The Rogue Moon, Odyrn, the bombardment of Serroco and the underground shelters, exogorths, and Remulus Dreypa are also involved in other crewskill missions.[229]

Gorman Vandrayk also receives several mentions—conversations with the Jedi Consular companion Tharan Cedrax involve Cedrax's attempts to build a Vandrayk Generator, a machine that Vandrayk theorized which runs on a form of energy that doesn't exist.[230] During the Grand Acquisitions Race World Event, one of the items that players needed to locate was a Vandrayk's Tuning Apparatus.[231] Adascorp plays a major role in the Bounty Hunter class storyline on the planet Quesh, a storyline that also mentions that Adascorp is partners with the Draay Trust.[232] Trandoshani flatcakes with fruit, a dish discovered by Slyssk in issue #15, are sold by Brassk's Trandoshani Flatcakes, a company that sponsors the Huttballsport and markets itself as the only company that served them with authentic fruit from the planet Kashyyyk.[233] A Codex entry on the history of the planet Makeb The Old Republic's Digital Expansion Rise of the Hutt Cartel mentions Semako Thalien, a business magnate during the Mandalorian Wars; he shares the same surname as the Skrilling Jervo Thalien who appeared in the comics, but no connection has been made between the two as of yet.[234] A sarcophagus created by Karness Muur appears in Rise of the Hutt Cartel, containing the rakghoul designated Patient Zero.[235] The ruins of the Jedi Tower is the subject of a Republic mission on Taris, and a Jedi Knight class mision involves interrupting the sale of scavenged Jedi Covenant artifacts by a pirate.[236]"

They also eventually made Zayne and Jarael's main outfits buyable gear in game. So yeah, some people at Bioware were pretty big fans of the comic, which is cool

 

I was active when the DH boards went out. It was somewhere in the Oct/Nov 2014 period. I think they were gone by Nov. 1, 2014... All of the data from the forum threads are gone, or not publicly accessible, according to announcements made at the time the message boards closed.

What's gone? Creator/Artist fan interactions. Fan reactions to Star Wars developments. Story anecdotes. Etc...

 

You're right, it was recorded after - just checked the comic. My bad!

 

Only now got a chance to read this amid other things going on (which will, I'm pleased to say, include a run to Celebration this weekend).

I've gotten elsewhere in this thread into a bit of what was in play at the time: The next chance to revisit KOTOR after #50 landed during Dark Horse's 2011-12 five-months-on, five-months-off miniseries plan. Legacy had just gotten its War mini, so having one for KOTOR wasn't a big ask. I was strongly encouraged to go without the full supporting cast at the start so new readers could come in clean. This was not a new request: after several tries, my plot for Vector that got approved was the one with just Zayne and Gryph. Soldier Zayne was always in my mind to be the next mega-arc downrange from Fugitive Zayne and Freelancer Zayne (though I probably wouldn't have gotten to it until around #60 in a perfect world); so it made sense to do Zayne's draft story and call it War, in parallel with Legacy.

A solo adventure ran a risk with existing readers -- and so did focusing on Morvis, who I'd made deliberately unpleasant, knowing he'd be an interesting challenge to redeem later on. But he was always going to get a second chance (as the Knight Errant namedrop suggested) because he was a good candidate for it. Zayne could never reform Karath, but he could help Morvis, a misfit of another kind. If we got further downrange toward Karath's betrayal of the Republic, we'd have the chance to see the series' mentor/student frictions play out again in a different light.

The Mandalorian Knights were a different expression of Demagol's dream -- though they presented logistical story challenges. Mandalorians are tricky to write as a mass -- you can't see faces most of the time -- and throwing in a large Republic ground force meant a lot of people to manage. (It was further tough to find a Scooby-Doo scheme to fool the Mandos that was both visual and credible -- I'd have given that one another draft!) And while "fresh start" was the order of the day, Kace still might have benefited from having turned up in the previous series first.

The main thing I wanted to get to, we did get to -- and, it turned out, it was a bookend to the beginning: Zayne saving a school from a Jedi gone wrong. Part of Demon ended very downbeat -- he doesn't even have a chance to save Demagol's students -- and so we got to have that moment.

As it turned out, the five-on-five-off thing ended before a second arc could even be proposed; the Wood series and Legacy II series in development for 2013 swept up a lot of the publishing slots. Had there been room for KOTOR II (or had I found a place for it in prose) I'd have looked to pick up with Zayne on Reciprocity, but with Gryph brought aboard immediately and Jarael soon after -- but I'd just done a slew of SW comics, and had a couple of novels soon beckoning, and figured it could wait.

All of which underscores that every story in comics should be written as if it might be the last, because you never know what might happen. I was fine with Zayne ending as a free-wheeler with a nice bike, but I was also fine with sending him off with a job that offered him some stature and respect.