Star Wars: Invasion #0

[skjam]

Hi folks!

This one might have been on the LJ SD community, but I don't think it's been posted since the moves. In 2009, Dark Horse Comics did a number of one-shots with, purportedly, a complete story in each issue; counterprogramming it against whatever big crossovers Marvel and DC were doing at the time. This is one of them. (My copy was a giveaway by a local shop, thus the label.)



Seven pages of twenty-two.



We open twenty-five years after the Battle of Yavin. The Empire is almost entirely gone, and a New Republic is beginning to be fairly stable. Luke Skywalker has opened a Jedi Academy to train a new generation of Jedi Knights who we hope will not be as hidebound as the previous iteration. But a new menace faces the galaxy far, far away.

The explorer ship Pythea is near the edge of that galaxy, crewed by wookie Sarkkin and a blue-skinned woman named Panha. They bicker, but Sarkkin needs some quiet because he's picking up a faint communication.



Their strength meant squat-all against the Yuuzhan Vong. The speaker is now the last of his people, sending out this message that the Vong are coming. Not so the recepients can unite to fight the Vong, but so that they can run away. After all, his people were the strongest in the galaxy, so no one else could possibly have a chance. Sarkkin has never heard of the Yuuzhan Vong, but Panha clearly has.

She turns on the long-range scanners, and there's a large moving object that wasn't there the last time they checked. It's an armada, and no guesses needed as to whose it is. It's headed straight for Artorius, a peaceful inhabited planet. It's too far for communication, so the Pythea will need to move in closer, even though this means being directly in the path of the Yuuzhan Vong.



The Pythea is now within communications range of Artorius, but still no response. Since the Vong are on top of them anyway, Sarkkin pumps all power to the communicator.

The substitute repair person succeeds almost immediately after Sparky leaves in fixing the inbound signal, but the Pythea isn't hearing an answer. Finally, as the ship is boarded, the signal is answered, and Panha sends the data on the oncoming fleet along with the warning. The substitute repair person thanks them for the message. (We never get a clear view of the repair person's face.)

The ship is boarded and the explorers defend themselves valiantly.



Turns out that the explorers have just barely survived the boarding party, and they wouldn't be able to handle another, so they ram Commander Azca's ship. The sole survivor is the ferocious Tsalok, who is pleased by the carnage.








Your thoughts and comments?
SKJAM!

Comments

[crinos]

Aren't the Yuuzhan Vong the thing that ruined the expanded universe forever?

[obsidianwolf]

Depends on who you ask. EU fans are nearly as bad as comic fans with arguing over what ruined things forever or even if things have been ruined forever.

The fact that most of the EU is getting made non canon now that episodes 7-9 are a go just makes it an even bigger mess.

[q99]

I like being a comic fan among EU fans. Some panic, I just go, "Chill, now we just have two continuities, like pre and post crisis."

[starwolf_oakley]

To this day, DC has a lot of fun with Pre-Crisis references. (When DC is allowed to have fun, but that is another post.). The Daily Star being the oldest newspaper in Metropolis is an example.

So the question is, will the new Star Wars Continuity have "cute" references to the EU?

[q99]

Almost unavoidably ^^ Someone'll use jedi names of jedi not named in the new canon, and such.

[skjam]

Beats me, I mostly stopped reading Star Wars tie-ins after "Splinter in the Mind's Eye" because I was getting out of media tie-in books altogether. (i regretted it after Aaron Allston died because I missed the chance to talk with him about his Rogue Squadron stuff.

[doctor_spanky]

It did give us a pretty great Chewbacca death sequence :(

[q99]

To some, but a lot of the problem with the Vong novel story was the pacing, and too much losing before getting around to winning.

The comic version... of course, was *not* spread around nearly as many novels, and had cool stuff that the heroes did sooner.

I quite like Invasion.

[grumman]

No, Karen Traviss ruined the expanded universe. The Yuuzhan Vong had a few good novels in them - Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand in particular.

[icon_uk]

Is there a reason you choose to single out this one person for such specific blame?

Edit - Ah... just googled her name and found the details of the controversy.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Traviss#Star_Wars_Controversy

Ouch!

[grumman]

For starters, Karen Traviss thought the Star Wars prequels were a story about a Jedi conspiracy to create a crisis with an allegedly impossible foe (which wasn't, she just got the numbers wrong by many orders of magnitude), which the heroic Mandalorians resolved by committing an act of genocide against force-sensitives. Oh, and she literally used the "just following orders" defense to justify this genocide. But no, we're the Nazis for disagreeing with her Harrison Bergeron worldview that being more capable makes you a nail that needs to be hammered down.

[damar148]

Karen Traviss is also the one who started implying the existence of 'farms' in the Gears of War EU, where every fertile woman who was not in the military or of protected status was sent to breed children.

[mrstatham]

To be fair, the games did *very little* to dissuade that idea until the third game came along. It's yet another unimaginative crapsack world, after all, a 40K knock-off with the dubious distinction of arguably treating women worse than 40K does.

[arilou_skiff]

Weirdly enough 40K doesen't treat women *that* badly in general. Yeah, they can't become Space Marines, but that's pretty much it.

[mastermahan]

It depends. Some fans love the Yuuzhan Vong for being very different from the usual Dark Jedi and Superweapons that tended to dominate the EU novels. Some fans hate the Yuuzhan Vong for precisely the same reason.

[q99]

Yea, *at the time* it was something of a breath of fresh air, the novels under Bantam were in a rut. Imperial warlord, dark jedi, alliance between the two, superweapon. It'd get into pretty non-starwarsy stuff too (IMO, the Black Fleet Crisis was sort of a proto-vong, but with a less interesting foe).

But overall, the Del Rey big plotlines had a good deal of flaws and the Vong was often a war-story more than an adventure story, with a non Star Warsy foe.

The reason I like the Invasion comics is it did what the novels didn't- it made the Vong invasion about the heroic actions of brave characters standing up to a powerful menace, which brought the feel more back to the Star Wars vibe.

I'm going to miss Dark Horse not being on SW comics- they seemed to get the feel of the universe well.