Legacy #4: Noob

But remember, these are Legacy-class Sith.

 

I was just annoyed by the lieutenant's age, lack of armor, and very presence.

The fact that stormies are now regular infantry is depressing, but understandable, given that this is not the same Empire Lumiya and Jax killed.

 

^ Also true. They can't all be Vader.

 

QFT.

I just had a read, and while the "noob" speak was mildly annoying, I thought the Full Metal Stormie speak pulled me out of the story even more.

It was a nice enough filler, but it suffered a lot from way too much narrative exposition (why do all SW comics have so much exposition?) and the general feeling that it could have been any war movie.

 

Heh. You should read the old Marvel comics-- sometimes panels are almost entirely blocks of text.

 

Stormies are led the same way in the GCW. I'm not sure they make up the entire army.

I think the writing that made it seem like a war movie was done intentionally for that very purpose. It's Star Wars, but it's still supposed to feel like real military action.

 

Very true, but as I've been rereading a lot of the comics lately, I've just noticed that a lot of them use massive blocks of text to tell the story. In some of the cases, like KJA, I thought maybe it was because he wasn't used to the medium, but with others like Tom Veitch and those who have experience with the medium there's still massive chunks of dialogue that just seems unneeded and out of place. LEGACY and KoToR aren't so bad, with KoToR being the better of the two, but the massive infodump narrative chunks still show up.

It's interesting that a lot of the SWT comics lacked this, when names like Garth Ennis took a crack they knew to let the art tell the story instead of trying to cram too much narrative in.

It's weird since most comics have moved away from being narrative heavy to see so much exposition in caption boxes in the SW comics.

 

Actually, I liked the fact that he was brought down by a 'random trooper'. Too often are the Sith portrayed as all-knowing and impervious to being ambushed, so strong that only a Jedi can defeat them. Remember, the Rebels were fighting the Empire without the help of Jedi for years. If only Jedi can kill Sith, then what's the point?

All in all, I really enjoyed this issue. Much as I like Cade and co, the break from 'Broken' was nice, and served as a nice reminder that there's always been more to the Star Wars story than just Skywalkers.

 

Jagged- To be honest, I don't like the sith being killed like a bunch of punks, anymore than I want the same for a jedi. Also, what I really want to see is more land battles and space battles, as well as fighter to fighter combat and the introductions of different type of weapons and versions of troopers. I'm getting tires of reading the betrayal, redemption, sith, jedi, and bounty hunter stories. There killing me. Thats why I kind of starting to like the novels better. I want to read wide sweeping conflicts, not all these personal wars.

 

Are you trying to say that a picture is NOT worth a thousand words? You have outgrown the medium indeed. Myself, I will not turn down Quarren BBQ for our troops.

This is merely a closeup episode, showing direct effects of Fel's reinstating himself and the grisly face of the actual mopping-up required.

 

That's a problem with expanding the Star wars universe. When it's just stories about Han, Luke, Leia, and so on then no one has any problem with there being no X-wing action. When the story is expanded to fans of Corran, Kyle, Jacen, etc then it becomes problematic.

 

Two frogs. First ribbit: you've only seen one issue, we don't know if there's more than meets the eye with the next. Second ribbit: the Sith of that era are quantity, not quality. There's echelons of power, and just because you're called one does not mean you're the real Nintendo Power Glove.

In fact there's a third frog ribbit: who says you can't get backstabbed as a Sith mage? It's not incredulous at all.

 

You've got a point there. Problem is, Jedi have been dying like punks for years in various EU fiction: the precident has been established. To paraphrase Vergere, we can't put the idea back in its box. It's nice to see that both Jedi and Sith can be killed by normal, non-Force using humans rather than simply Jedi.

 

Since they offed Maleval, what's next for the 908th (is that the correct unit number?) Legion?

To Bastion, or possibly going rogue?

 

I think it was actually the 406th. The 908th was the legion they wiped out.

 

ExcellenceTwo frogs. First ribbit: you've only seen one issue, we don't know if there's more than meets the eye with the next. Second ribbit: the Sith of that era are quantity, not quality. There's echelons of power, and just because you're called one does not mean you're the real Nintendo Power Glove.
In fact there's a third frog ribbit: who says you can't get backstabbed as a Sith mage? It's not incredulous at all.

Thanks Ex, I really needed the laughs and your ribbits sure did the trick! Too much thesis background reading is frying my brain!

 

Yeah, that was perplexing. The age could've been a political demotion or something, but he was still really old.

I actually would rather have stormies be standard infantry, than for them to be supposedly elite, but always doing garrison duties and such in lieu of the unseen Imperial Army.

Yeah, I agree.


Maleval: Do you think a Lord of the Sith dies so easily?!
Trask: Yes.

 

Could he have worked his way up from private, as opposed to starting as an officer and never going anywhere?

 

Matt: I assume you're referring to Sunber, and yeah, that bugs me too (the fact that an Army officer leads stormies), but that's for another discussion. The problems with this issue are that a stormtrooper squad is lead by a noncom, first of all (even the Sunber chronicles didn't make that mistake); second, any officers should wear armor as well with rank badges bolted to the exterior.

Lt. Nowis: That's true, yeah; since authors and artists insist on using Stormies exclusively, we may as well say the Imperial Army is no more at this point (or, more realistically, the stormies are no more and the IA just took on the symbolic Stormie armor and monniker.)

Havac: It's extremely rare for an enlisted man to work his way up to the prestigious position of Sergeant Major or the like, and then give it all up to start back on the bottom rung as a loot.

 

Maybe he got demoted when his brother went renegade.

 

Yes, but if we need an explanation . . .


Remind me again why we don't have a kriffing shrug emoticon yet?

 

I think the only problem with the age comes from the fact
that we, based on the current situation on Earthly armies,
think it odd for an apparently old man to be a lieutenant.
This would not have been odd in many armies in our own
past; for various reasons - like in armies were the
positions of officers were mostly bought, not earned in
current manner - rather old lieutenants were nothing odd.
And as we are not talking about any Earthly army here but
an army that has no reason to follow any our current rules
about rank, promotion and the age we associate with them,
then I see no problem with the apparent age of the
lieutenant. And he also can simply be looking older than
his true age. That happens too.

 

I think a better point is that the man just happens to be more active in his current position. There's no indication that Enlisted Men ranks exist in the Empire actually (at least as we know them). The Stormtroopers are expected to live their entire lives in the service to the Empire so a private rank is somewhat artificial.

It could be the position of Lieutenant is very near a Sergeant Major.

 

What in the hell are you people talking about? Of course enlisted ranks exist in Star Wars. There's a Sergeant in this very comic if you need proof of actual rank, for Force sake.

And no, the "position" of Lieutenant is nowhere near that of Sergeant Major. A Sergeant Major is the highest enlisted rank there is and is essentially the enlisted adviser for the unit's CO (Colonel or whatever). It's a position that carries a great deal of prestige and takes many years to work up to. A LT on the other hand is a bottom-rung officer rank.

 

000, I'm talking about the fact that there's no sign that there's a difference between enlisted men and comissioned officers. It could well be there's a direct promotion from the position of Sergeant to Lieutenant.

I'm well aware of the difference between a Sergeant Major and a Lieutenant thank you.