Dark Empire

[joysweeper]

If you're familiar with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, you've probably heard of Dark Empire, the comics arc where the Emperor came back and Luke Skywalker turned to the Dark Side. Fandom has mixed emotions about it, and for good reason.

Apologies for scan quality. It's taken from a huge omnibus thing, which couldn't be flattened very neatly on my scanner. And since it's in an omnibus, the issues aren't marked, so I don't know how which scans were taken from which issue. But Dark Empire, the first book of it, which I'm taking all of these from, is a hundred thirty one pages long.

This is sixteen pages. I'm focusing purely on Luke's role, since in all honesty I don't find the rest very interesting.

I also got to listen to the audio drama, which I actually prefer. It's got some things which aren't in the comic. A little of it's on Youtube - here and here, Luke wanders in secret passages, wonders why his father fell, and finds a holo of the Emperor speaking. That happens before this.

Coruscant fell back to the Empire, and Luke and Lando are on that planet.  The crew of the Falcon go to retrieve them, but are distracted when people who want to scavenge the ship unleash Nek battle dogs and droids on them.  Leia wants to try a Jedi trick to shoo them away.  Han is skeptical.




The AT-AT goes down and explodes.  Luke tells his friends to leave.  He's aware of a powerful Dark-Sider, a vast evil that knows he's here, who he must face alone.  They protest.

A wormhole opens up in orbit, and a storm descends and starts raking the surface.  Luke shouts that there's no need for them to die too, it only wants him.  "Leave!  All of you!  Or be destroyed!"



Sorry.  Han's saying "Believe me, Leia... Luke knows what he's doing...  I think", and she's saying "I'm not so sure, Han... something about the way he looked at me... I was afraid of him."

They fly back to Pinnacle Base, report, and hear more about this big Imperial fleet coming out of the core, with "diabolical machines".  World Devastators attacking Ackbar's homeworld.  They're sort of low-grade superweapons which chew up whatever they find and mass-produce ships out of it.  Of course this comic has someone saying that this threat is far greater than the Death Star.  Whatever.

Leia says she's worried about Luke, who is at this very moment with Artoo and being transported in an Imperial dungeon ship, specially designed to imprison and transport Jedi.  With the Force he's able to look through the walls and see that they've almost reached a planet deep in the galactic core, Byss.  "If there's a dark center of the universe, this is it."

He's stuck into a cage and taken through a strange city towards the Great Hall.  Luke feels a mind full of mocking laughter reaching out to him, and tells Artoo that this is where his opponent is waiting. 


Reminds me of a scene in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, when Cronal captured him, a stormtrooper hit him with a blaster rifle, and Luke said "Please don't hit me."  Then he was hit again and broke the blaster.  Then another stormtrooper shot him, but Luke absorbed the energy harmlessly, gave a friendly shrug, and said "Please don't shoot me, either.  Let's try to end the day with nobody else dying, shall we?".

LSatSoM is a good book.  Anyway.  Back to Dark Empire.


*sigh*  The caption box says "Sensing Luke's indecision, the Emperor presses the young Jedi... with the very temptation that ensnared his father-"


"I see you have grown wise in the ways of the Force... you have achieved control.  You are no longer the impulsive youth at war with your own anger...  But you can still conquer me... by learning the secrets of the Dark Side.  We both know there is no other way for you."

Leia senses that something horrible has happened and says they have to help Luke.  Han sighs and says "They told me marriage to a Jedi princess wasn't going to be easy..."  The New Republic fights the World Devastators and does a very poor job.

Later I may post other pages from Dark Empire.

Comments

[silverzeo]

The coloring is trippy!

[joysweeper]

They really overused the watercolors. And I think there are a total of three instances in the whole book which have actual human coloration used.

[silverzeo]

Yeah, but with that LukeVader scene, it really works in my opinion, really shows the colors of darkside of your mind..

[joysweeper]

Here and there, maybe. But when every single page is like that, the effect is kind of lost.

[houbanaut]

I really like the coloring here, and I question whether there is such a thing as overusing watercolors.

I read a fair bit of this book back in the day, and I remember liking the art (and particularly the colors!) - which I still do - but that the plot ended up with too many damn clones.

[greenmask]

I'm with you on that!

Not the clones, I don't know about the clones.

[another_murray]

The idea that Palpatine's bodies suffer rapid decay is such a better explanation for his appearance then a bout of force lightning to the face.

[joysweeper]

Parts of the EU have use of the Dark Side of the Force make one's appearance change like that. At one point it happened to Luke.

[icon_uk]

But... but... Luke HAS to be the pretty one!!

Ahem, sorry, I had a major crush on Luke of the original Star Wars trilogy. Even after Mark Hamill's accident he was still cute.

[joysweeper]

Aww. *laughs* Does this help?

He changed back. It was a weird book.

[icon_uk]

Oh my.... oh my my my.... Hee hee hee! Ahem... as I believe the saying goes... "I'll be in me bunk".

(No wonder he was the hero of the Rebellion if their PR Department released THAT as an image of him! :) )

Thanks for the link, it's awesome!

[joysweeper]

Hey, you provided the one of him in a gold bikini. :P


I... am trying to color it in Photoshop. ...because. So far, it highlights my lack of skill.

[icon_uk]

Off to a good start, and better than I've ever been able to manage. Some more texture to the shading on the fleshtones and you should be there.. (I appreciate that's a little like saying at the start of a course on international diplomacy "We're going to start assuming that world peace has broken out")

[joysweeper]

I am a raw newbie at Photoshop. This is a good way to learn about layers and transparencies, though.

Heh. Thanks!

[icon_uk]

I was waiting for Revenge of the Sith to show either;

A) that the Palpatine we had seen all these years of the Prequels genuinely was a fundamentally decent man (Hence why no Jedi sensed evil from him), but was a puppet Kamino clone created and manipulated by the real Palpatine, who would be revealed at the end as showing signs of the decay inherent in Dark Side usage.

B) That it would be the ravages of age, Dark Side usage and grotesque self indulgence that lead to the Emperor of the original trilogy.

[another_murray]

option A sounds awesome and makes the prequels a little less dumb.

Someone get this man a time machine and George Lucas's phone number!

[insectposse]

C) That George Lucas was capable of making a good film. Still waiting on that one.

[icon_uk]

Suspension of disbelief can only be taken so far you know.

[mullon]

Isn't this going against the entire point of Return of the Jedi?

[icon_uk]

Not sure about that, an older, wiser, more powerful Luke may well feel that a true understanding of the Force can only be gained by better understanding of the Dark Side. A sort of "There can be no appreciation of light without shadow as a counterpoint" idea.

[recognitions]

Ugh. Like I said in the other post, Dark Empire is just so inconvenient. Luke has been the EU's golden boy for time out of mind, and still, nobody's ever found out about this little slip. Kyp Durron would have a field day if he knew.

It still rankles that they felt the need to bring back the Emperor, because it diminishes Vader's sacrifice at the end of ROTJ so much. Plus I like how the fact that Palpatine apparently died before was never followed up on. Are we expected to believe that his incarnation in the prequels was a clone as well? Or that he died and was reborn in between the two trilogies? Has anyone involved with Lucasarts even stopped to think about any of this?

And ye gods, the colors, the colors. I originally just remembered the art being bad, but the pencilling is actually serviceable. But why does everything have to look like a photo negative?

[joysweeper]

Very little of the EU has acknowledged any of this. In I, Jedi Corran thinks that since the Emperor Reborn Luke's sense of hidden power has doubled. LSatSoM has Cronal thinking that the Emperor had a bodyswitching plan like his, but involving clones. And, well, there's Anakin Solo.

Timothy Zahn reportedly hated this comic. The Emperor's brought up once in it and Mara derisively says that she doesn't think it was really him. She also went and blamed most of Luke's more questionable actions since this period on Dark Side influence.

It's George Lucas's favorite comic, one of the few EU features he's actually read. That might say something.

[recognitions]

Between this and Kevin Anderson, it's a wonder Zahn didn't develop ulcers during his initial tenure on the EU. It'd be great if they just retconned the whole thing away. The lack of mention is especially galling when you think about how much loss of life the World Devastators and Galaxy Gun no doubt caused; tragedies that would be up there with the destruction of Alderaan, Carida, Ithor, the remaking of Coruscant, etc.

I have no trouble believing that, actually. To this day, I feel like the real brains behing the original trilogy was Marcia Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, and Irvin Kershner.

[joysweeper]

It's fun going through the Hand of Thrawn duology and seeing all these references to previous things. You get the sense that Zahn was going "Okay, where were you going with that...? Get back here."

As a basic idea, I like the concept of Dark Empire. Luke faces a ludicrously powerful Dark Side adept who can bodyswap, and decides to pretend to fall in order to muck their efforts up from within. But he falls for real, or at least drops shy of his original intentions, and Leia redeems him. The basic idea interests me; there are problems with even that, sure, but it could be done well.

Dark Empire is such a waste of that idea, though. It's so... off-panel.

George comes up with some beautiful visuals. That's pretty much all I can say without adding qualifications.

Fascinating..

[steverodgers5]

Hadn't seen this in many a year. So thanks for posting it.

I'm curious though, since the only EU books I read were Zahn's trilogy, The Courtship of Princess Leia and The Han Solo Trilogy, I was wondering in the books that have been written since the prequel trilogy, did Luke ever find out exactly what happened with his Father in the prequel films?

I know there was a book where Leia went back to Tatooine and found out some stuff to do with her Grandmother, that was written between AOTC and ROTS, but did Luke ever find out the full events of the last prequel movie?

Re: Fascinating..

[joysweeper]

He did. One author, Troy Denning, really seems to love showing Luke and Leia their parents. Tatooine Ghost, a standalone set just before the Thrawn Trilogy, has their grandma. The Dark Nest Trilogy has a subplot with Artoo having recordings of pretty much the entire prequel trilogy and playing them back.

Re: Fascinating..

[icon_uk]

Tatooine Ghost, a standalone set just before the Thrawn Trilogy, has their grandma.

I assume that's invalidated by the Prequel Trilogy, since Grandma died during the prequels and there was no grandpa around.

Actually, I've never thought about that, have Luke and Leia ever gone looking to meet their maternal family since we now know Amidala had quite a large family?

Re: Fascinating..

[joysweeper]

No, it wasn't. It had Shmi's diary and a bunch of people who'd known her and/or Anakin.

Not as far as I know. There was a trilogy where someone claimed she knew their mother and would take Luke to her, but she was lying and this led to what I think is the most pointless side story I have ever seen.

Re: Fascinating..

[icon_uk]

That's a point, did Luke and Leia ever even learn that Padme was their mother?

Somehow or other apart from Palpatine, only Obi-Wan (out of the entire universe) seemed to have worked out that high profile Senator Amidala was pregnant with Anakin's children (Why Palpatine never leaked that in an effort to destroy her political career and opposition and possibly get Anakin thrown out of the Jedi order and into his clutches is another matter), and he seems to never have shared that with anyone.

Re: Fascinating..

[joysweeper]

At some point they know, but I don't know if there's been anything where they learned of her.

Maybe she had someone people would think was the father, like her head of security? I know he was in love with her... Otherwise, I don't know.

Re: Fascinating..

[icon_uk]

One might hope that there would be SOME record on Naboo of her marriage.

Given she literally lost a planet, Leia might have been the one to actually investigate her "other" homeworlds of Tatooine and Naboo.

Re: Fascinating..

[joysweeper]

The Thrawn Trilogy comic has a random portrait of someone who looks suspiciously like Padme hanging on the wall of Leia's suite on Coruscant. It was drawn years before the prequels, though.

Re: Fascinating..

[starwolf_oakley]

Close. A year or two before the prequel, and after Natalie Portman had been announced.

Re: Fascinating..

[hero_of_lallor]

Well, there was Tatooine Ghost as said. She was shocked people still regarded her father well there. Kitster build his life from the few credits Anakin give him from the sale of his pod racer.

I think it was in Jedi vs. Sith, there is a short story about Leia going to Naboo to meet up with Pooja Naberrie but for some reason she goes on more about what Anakin was like than Padme.

Its been badly handled. There is no cross-family interaction with the Naberries at all, even when Mara died. You would think they would turn up to that funeral. As for Luke, just sadness and acceptance. I don't think Dark Nest was done right. They wanted to show Luke her fate (Leia wasn't there for most of the holos) but its so skewed it gave the impression Anakin didn't love her but wanted a possesssion which flies in the face of everything from TPM through Clone Wars.

Re: Fascinating..

[icon_uk]

Just following in Uncle George's remarkable talented footsteps of not being able to deal with female characters worth a damn and everything being about ruddy Anakin.

Re: Fascinating..

[starwolf_oakley]

IIRC, its a funny/tragic scene. Artoo accidentally shows a holo of Padme, Luke orders "Show me a picture of that young woman again," and Artoo shows the famous holo "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

Luke, Leia and other characters see the major confrontations from ROTS (from Artoo's POV) in the final Dark Nest book. They are understandably shocked and hurt, but seem to have a "nothing we can do about it" acceptance of the matter.

Re: Fascinating..

[steverodgers5]

Thanks...I may have to give that a try!

[red_menace]

Aw, man, this brings back memories. I gotta see if I have any old copies of Crimson Empire laying around. That was good reading.

[skalja]

On a mostly off-topic note, I loved Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor! I need to reread it soon.

That is all.

[joysweeper]

It's a great book.

"Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker… you are not afraid of the dark."

[icon_uk]

Reminds me of Dream of the Endless' comment to Kyle Rayner "You will be a greater Green Lantern than Hal Jordan was, because you know something which he did not. You know fear."

[joysweeper]

Stover wrote Mace Windu, one of those Knights of old, facing the one making the quote. Mace is impressively badass and awesome, but Luke's... different.

[icon_uk]

Considering what a staggeringly ineffectual mess the Jedi of the prequels were, I'd damn well hope Luke would be different.

[joysweeper]

I'm pretty sympathetic to them. They'd been getting jerked around and manipulated for generations. The ones who were starting to wise up and get in the way got killed off. Stover's Palpatine is a lot subtler than this one, that's for sure.

[tahngarth.livejournal.com]

Dark Empire is a problematic thing in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

It came out very early, rather quickly after Zahn began the "Thrawn trilogy". As such it should be a founding rock to build the EU on, a cool story that could lead to multiple future stories and establish what the universe is about.

It did pretty much none of these things.

While I love the -visuals- of Dark Empire (the World Destroyers, the enormous Eclipse star destroyer, the deadly war droids, the holocron etc), the story itself is so weird, and breaks so much of what I consider important from the movies and Zahn's books. Dark Empire pretty much negates Darth Vader's redemption and sacrifice, saying it wasn't really more than a slight setback for Palpatine. It also has Luke fall, or at least be tempted, to the Dark Side, and the return of Boba Fett.

Most the characters from these comics never really made any mark either. The ones who were set to have their story told in Lightsider just appeared in Dark Empire II with only a sentence to explain them, making them little more than names and faces. And even the more developed ones like Vima-da-boda never really appeared anywhere else. You almost get the feeling the other EU authors just looked at it, wondered what to make of it and then shook their heads.

It would have been okey as an Infinities-type book ("What if the Emperor returned?"), but as a cornerstone of the EU it doesn't really work. It has great visuals, but a deeply flawed story.

It did lead in to my favorite Star Wars comic of all time, though, Crimson Empire.

[starwolf_oakley]

Most fans, creators, etc. seem to go with a theory that a Dark Jedi found Palpatine's stuff and tried to use it to his advantage.

Backup clone bodies make sense in that Palpatine seemed oddly cool about Luke killing him in ROTJ if that meant Luke would join the Dark Side as a result.

[zechs80]

I just took Dark Empire as a twisted clone of Palpatine trying to restart what the original had lost. I like Dark Empire for what it is, but Dark Empire II and Empire's End.. yuck. I hate both those stories, even if they both gave my favorite EU story in Crimson Empire. Carnor Jax for the win!

[hero_of_lallor]

Nah, don't buy it. Leia's the one like Anakin. If any go, its her. Luke, he's the Golden Boy because he's all his mama.