Cam Kennedy

As I delve into the Expanded Universe/Legends series of Star Wars media, one of the things that I've come to appreciate is just how interconnected are all of the various works. This isn't like the Star Trek franchise, in which novels, comic books, and other creations exist as stand-alone material unrelated to one another outside of the occasional author-driven character: the works that were created as part of the Expanded Universe were meant to fit together to build exactly what the title implies. I discovered this by reading Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology, which references not just his earlier Thrawn trilogy, but subsequent events in the Dark Horse Comics series of Star Wars comics. Intrigued, I decided to do some research, which led me to the highly praised Dark Empire series that was Dark Horse's inaugural publication for the franchise.

After reading it, though, it's hard to see how it earned its hype. Set six years after the battle of Endor and a year after the events in Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, it depicts that New Republic's struggle against a revived Emperor Palpatine, who survived his seeming demise at the hands of Darth Vader through a contingency plan involving cloned versions of himself. Now restored to the leadership of the remnants of the Empire, he launches a renewed series of assaults on the New Republic involving mobile automated factories known as "World Devastators" that attack their targets by consuming them and using their resources to produce yet more forces for the Empire. Yet Palpatine's greatest weapon is the New Republic's best hope: the Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, who accepts the Emperor's offer to join him in wielding the power of the dark side against his former friends.

Skywalker's turn to the dark side is easily the freshest thing about the series, and while it plays out in predictable ways it's not without its moments of suspense. The problem is that, having resolved the storyline (and given all that followed I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the whole Luke-as the-Emperor's-apprentice thing doesn't stick), the company had to figure out something else when the popularity of the comic led to the commissioning of the sequels that make up the other two-thirds of the collection. Here the quality falls off quickly, as the World Devastators are succeeded by yet another planet-killing weapon (an early example of how the franchise gets stuck on this concept) while Luke discovers scattered Jedi that he recruits to build a new force of knights. The action quickly degenerates into melodrama, as Luke and his friends in the New Republic fight off a series of gambits thrown at them by an increasingly desperate Palpatine, who by the end of the series is little more than a cartoonish villain appearing up in a lame disguise so he can kidnap an infant.

Yes, you read that correctly: by the end of the series, the shadowy leader who dominated a galaxy-spanning empire with Sith apprentices, fleets of Star Destroyers, and millions of stormtroopers is reduced to abducting babies in person in order to realize his schemes. It's a silly use of a character so fearsome that J. J. Abrams felt it necessary to bring him back for Episode IX of the series, and one that raises the question of how these comics came to enjoy the stature they did among Star Wars fans. For while they're necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the canon of the Expanded Universe, the stories themselves really don't measure up to the best the franchise has to offer.… (plus d'informations)