Dark Empire (1991&1992)
Bold to have cover art in a more conventional style than the interior
Summary: Somehow, Palpatine returned. Luke and Lando get shot under (still Imperial controlled) Coruscant. While they're eventually rescued, some kind of big crazy force storm shows up, and Luke goes to investigate. Mon Calamari is attacked by the lamest super-weapon ever, the World Devastators, giant(ish) ships that eat planets like lame versions of Unicron. But like, tiny bites. It'd take days for a fleet of them to eat a planet with minimal interruption. They have plot armor, because all Imperial super weapons do. Han and Leia swing by Nar Shaddaa on their way to find Luke. They meet Han's old girlfriend, and an even older Jedi. Lots of double crossing ensues, but they make it to Byss where Luke has agreed to serve the Emperor (dun dun dun... it's obvious he's faking it the whole time). Palpatine has clones! But he's so evil they deteriorate rapidly. Maybe Leia's unborn kid (soon to be Anakin) will be able to hold his spirit better? Luke reveals that he wasn't really evil and loses a lightsaber battle with Palpatine. He gets depressed and is basically brainwashed for a while. But Leia talks him out of it and he beats Palpatine in a rematch.
What It Introduces:
Somehow, Palpatine returns: With clones. Disney, if you were just going to do Dark Empire, you could've at least done it for three movies instead of sort of one.
There are really Jedi everywhere: Zahn slips Mara Jade in, and that's okay. You can't literally have Luke be the only Jedi. Veitch starts the tradition of finding random Old Republic Jedi under every rock, and Palpatine has an assortment of pseudo-Sith. This is one of the worst things you can do in a Star Wars story.
A lot of vehicles: Most of them are cool. TIE Fighter tanks!
Ixll: Flying squirrel aliens that carry little bags?
Holocrons: The Jedi holographic portable libraries. This is probably the most influential thing in the whole series, which is kind of sad.
Commentary: I just want to use this space to point out all the weird inconsistencies in this series.
What is scale? (They eventually established that there were multiple sizes. You know, mini-planet eating super weapons)
THE WARRIOR SOCIETY OF JEDI KNIGHTS!?
This is Leia. She's in a punk phase, I guess.
Han Solo is older than the Clone Wars. This is back when we thought they took place decades ago, making it even weirder.
There's just a random tube from the Death Star on Nar Shaddaa. It's a big deal.
This is literally the dumbest dialogue I've ever read. Also, more unrecognizable Leia.
Review: 1/5 This is... impressively bad. I never read Dark Empire growing up. I think I maybe rented the audiobook from the library. And I read about it in the other books. I was pretty excited. Clone Palpatine! His giant crazy Super-Duper-Star Destroyer! Luke almost going dark side! I see now why Zahn got to overrule Veitch on the beginning of the EU. These are trash books with trash art. They barely even make sense if you don't read the little essays at the back. Why did you even do a comic book if you needed to cram a couple pages of prose in to make it make sense? Questionable art style aside, no one looks like their actual character, and it's often hard to tell who's talking to who in a conversation. The World Devastators are the least sensible super weapon ever. They (very slowly) eat planets to make TIE fighters and stuff. They'd be sitting ducks, except their invincible shields that R2 hacks from halfway across the galaxy. Ughhhhh.
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