What are the best Legends novels or content on Mandalorian society and culture. Karen Traviss? And sorry but jango and boba are definitely mandalorians. Sorry disney fans.
Personally, anyone but Traviss will give you better Mando material. The bigger problem will be availability of the material.
I was thinking primarily of DHC but that'd qualify, but Marvel should have re-issued that in the last few years since reacquiring the license.
(Sorry, I somehow missed that you asked for stories on Mandalorian society and culture, not about Boba and Jango) Short stories A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett Comics Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction Boba Fett: Bounty on Bar-Kooda Boba Fett: When the Fat Lady Swings Boba Fett: Murder Most Foul Boba Fett ½: Salvage Star Wars Adventures: Boba Fett and the Ship of Fear TV The cartoon from the Star Wars: Holiday Special- Yes, damn it, I'm serious. Quit laughing. That voice actor provides my all-time favorite Boba Fett voice and I love how well Boba Fett pretends to be a kind stranger who has no love of the Empire. If you can look past the wonky animation, you might find something enjoyable.
Best Mando content is by Karen Traviss. She nailed them and developed them further and made something great out of all the various previous loose ends. Old comic stuff isn't hard to find, given all the rereleases in collections. But the marvel stuff, the old one, is really weird and needs getting used to. You can skip those easily. Some guidebooks had expanded mando stuff nicely, added retcons and also some lore Articles in Insider or on Hyperspace were Mando-centric.
The original 1980s Marvel comics had quite a lot of Mandos in some of the issues. Especially #'s 68-69. Although they had this weird Berenstain Bears thing going on and lived in trees with curtains and stuff. Jango Fett: Open Seasons had a lot of Mandos from Jango's time. The KOTOR comics had a lot of Mandos... also the games (especially Dxun in KOTOR2 at their camp... that was pretty awesome actually...)
These are all the best mando sources imo; I'd add to them Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor and Legacy #41, which both feature mandos in the same tradition(s) as the above. You could also check out Tales of the Jedi: The Sith War if you want to see ancient Mandalorians before they started letting humans and other species in. The thing to bear in mind is even before Disney the Mandalorians went through something like a half dozen iterations depending on the writer, some of which were mutually exclusive and nearly all of which were controversial to some degree or other. Later retcons smoothed a lot of them over, sometimes rather well, though it never all totally worked... so, you've got a bunch of sources to choose from. The ones Coffee recommended and I added to are more or less the "original" version of the mandalorians, which basically came from four separate and fairly different sources but were later patched together into a cohesive culture (or series of cultures) in Abel Peña's History of the Mandalorians in Insider (don't know the issue, just google it-- with some judicious googling you might even find scans or a transcription of the article itself). Following that, Republic Commando: Hard Contact writer Karen Traviss took a liking to Mandalorians and took them in a somewhat different direction than previous iterations; her version was controversial, to say the least, but generated something of a cult subfandom and effectively set the new direction for mandalorians. So then in The Clone Wars, which is, alas, technically (for the most part) "Legends" as well as "canon", Dave Filoni et al used Traviss's version as a springboard for yet another version, which is, more or less, the one now featured in such shows as Rebels and, of course, The Mandalorian. So yeah. Which version of Mandalorian most appeals to you is, I suppose, largely a matter of taste. I prefer the older pre-Traviss versions, which is why I recommended the sources I did; however, the Traviss and Filoni versions obviously resonate a great deal with people as well, so if that's what you're into you should probably seek out Karen Traviss's books in addition to the above.
It's Lucas who set forth the "Fetts are not Mandos" thing, which was ambiguously executed by Filoni. We're only assuming that it's in play in Disney canon, and to the extent that we're assuming that, it's because of Filoni's role in portraying them... again, per GL's take on it. Bottom line, though, is it's in Lucas canon that the Fetts aren't Mandos, while in Disney canon we don't even really know.
Thank you guys. Appreciate it. I've read all the Traviss books. Definitely going to do more research on the Ancient Mandalorians.
If you're planning on reading the comics and don't feel like you need physical copies, the Marvel Unlimited app is the most affordable option. They have the whole run of the 80s Marvel comics and most of the other comics mentioned here too. (And most of the major Star Wars comic series, Legends and Canon.) Yes, it's a subscription service, but you can probably read everything Mandalorian related in a couple of months and cancel if it's not something you're interested in. I would highly recommend the old Marvel comics. They're not to everyone's taste, but the Mandalorian stuff came in late enough that the writers/artists had a better handle on what Star Wars was than the earlier issues. And their interpretation of the Mandalorians (if not their planet) arguably ended up being closer in some ways to the later/current version than the interim 1990s-early 2000s version too. Plus the characters, locations, and events end up being referenced and featured in the later novels. Also recommended: "Outbid But Never Outgunned" in Star Wars Tales #7, which ended up laying the groundwork for Boba Fett's storyline in the Traviss novels. If you've never played Knights of the Old Republic, those games are a must since Mandalorians play a huge part in the events of the game, plus you get to wander around Mandalorian camps and have a Mando as your companion. The tie-in comic series details the history leading up to the game, which again, is heavily Mandalorian oriented. The Revan novel has some Mandalorian stuff centered around the events following the first game. I haven't played the Republic Commando game yet, but I understand there are some things there that were later adopted as part of the Mando culture in the Republic Commando books. Finally, the Essential Atlas is a great resource because it helped to tie the entire existing history of the Mandalorians into the version seen in the Clone Wars cartoon; there are some retcons there that will make the many different iterations of Mandalore history and geography less confusing.
I'd add Jango Fett: Open Seasons to the comic list. And the Bounty Hunter videogame is a blast to play (PS2 version for me).
Abel Pena's The History of the Mandalorians article did alot for their culture before Traviss took over and expanded them! Basically he was the first to make a cohesive picture out of the varied depictions from which Traviss then jumped on board and bridged the Clone culture with Mando culture and from there went all into Mando stuff.
Both of those were my introduction to Mandalorians, never payed them much attention before the release of those. Would love a Black Series Montross figure.
The original Empire Strikes Back novelization mentions gives notice to the Mandalorians: "a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knight during The Clone Wars." The old 1987 Star Wars sourcebook mentions them in Boba's profile passage: Old Marvel comics introduced Fenn Shysa and the Mandalorian Protectors. They were basically Mandalorian mercenaries that fought in the Clone Wars before being all but wiped out, with Shysa eventually helping to form a resistance on Mandalore to free the planet from the Emperor(Star Wars Rebels re-imagined this story). Boba Fett was tied to them in Marvel's then continity and before all the retcons later on with Dark Horse. But it was actually Dark Horse's "Tales of the Jedi" that flushed them out from their Taung(basically very similar to the Predators Yautja) origin to them becoming a cross between everything from Roman centurions, Spartans, crusader knights, cowboys and barbarians.
@ColeFardreamer One could make the case that, were it not for Abel's Mandalorian article, the Mandos would not be where they are today. Even after the infamous TCW retcons, shows like The Mandalorian are still drawing from what that article layed the groundwork for.
Tagging @Mia Mesharad and @Bardan_Jusik in case something have been missed in the disucssion here. I would like to ad that we sadly dont really see much Mando culture beside the armours and some ships, the Marvel comics at least showed us civilian clothing, houses and statues/idols
I'd argue Open Seasons is maybe more pertinent than others because the Viszlas and Death Watch made the jump to canon under Lucas... though whether that version of Jango will ever be reaffrimed is anybody's guess.
It also makes some mention of the Mandalorian government, though nothing too specific I think. And speaking of the Mandalorian government, there is that old rpg adventure "The Battle for Mandalore" though it is yet another version that mostly does its own thing.
