Taking a break from Vintage Marvel Star
Wars for a moment because that's a big long run and variety is the
spice of life.
In the early 90s, Dark Horse Comics, a
young independent comic publisher founded in 1986, was given the
licensing rights to Star Wars. Their first comic in the franchise was
released in 1991 with Dark Empire
issue 1. Written by indie comics veteran (and former Benedictine Monk) Tom Veitch and illustrated by 2000 AD
artist Cam Kennedy, the story was originally developed for
publication at Marvel before the license transferred over.
In
production around the same time as Timothy Zahn was writing his
Thrawn trilogy, Dark
Empire is set six years after
the Battle of Endor and the opening crawl makes it clear that a
resurgent Empire has re-taken Imperial Center and driven the New
Republic back into a rebellion. But a Civil War has broken out within
the Empire.
It
begins with Han, Leia, Chewie & the droids leading a rescue
mission to Coruscant to rescue Luke, Lando & a force of Rebel
troops that have crashed in the middle of a war zone.
They
find Lando and the troops without much trouble, and fend off
battlefield scavengers until an Imperial walker shows up. They're
rescued by Luke, who solos the walker and warns the rest of them to
get off-planet.
Luke taking down a walker on foot after deflecting its shots
would be pretty cool in live actio--oh, right.
The Last Jedi happened.
He's
in an emo phase and warns that something powerful is coming for him
and he has to meet his destiny.
The
rest of the heroes escape the planet while Luke & Artoo are
caught up in a Force Storm that takes them off Coruscant for parts
unknown.
There's
a lot of stuff thrown at the wall, and the art is strikingly
gorgeous. Its radically different from what came before (and after),
which gives the whole thing an air of gravity. I remember the
original floppy issues were printed on higher quality paper too. As a
relaunch for Star Wars
comics, it felt like a
prestige product.
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