Alternative writings

Dark Empire

By Tom Veitch

Alternate Title: Somehow, Palpatine Returned: The OG Version
SPORKER: MasterGhandalf

SUMMARY



Dark Empire was one of the seminal storylines of the early post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars Expanded Universe. Its original series ran roughly concurrently with Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy, and both works pitched themselves as genuine successors continuing the story of the movie trilogy and reviving IRL interest in the franchise after it had largely laid fallow for most of a decade (the original Star Wars Marvel comic had previously continued the story past RotJ for a few years, but its events, though considered broad-strokes canon, would largely be ignored by the rest of the franchise outside of a few characters and concepts that carried forwards). Picking up six years after Endor, Dark Empire (the original comic series ran for six issues from December 1991-October 1992; a follow-up, Dark Empire II, would run for another six issues from December 1994-May 1995, and the two-issue Empire’s End series would finish the storyline in the fall of 1995; the full Dark Empire saga covered 14 issues, plus supplementary materials) saw Emperor Palpatine returning from the dead in a clone body to restore the Empire to power, leading to the final confrontation between the Skywalkers and the Emperor. Which means that, yes, the old Star Wars EU continuity (now rebranded as Legends) did the whole “somehow, Palpatine returned” bit more than two decades (in fact, almost three) before Rise of Skywalker.

On the other hand, from the beginning there were… issues. Dark Empire was developed concurrently with Zahn’s Thrawn novels, and reportedly it was originally supposed to pick up within a year of Endor. However, Zahn doesn’t seem to have liked the concept and reportedly refused to write the Thrawn Trilogy (set five years post-Endor) as a follow-up to Dark Empire; in order to keep a single continuity, that required pushing Dark Empire to a year after Thrawn (Zahn would also, iirc, include some potshots at the storyline in his later books, including having Mara Jade openly doubt that Dark Empire’s Palpatine was the real deal and not just a delusional series of clones during the Hand of Thrawn duology). Lucas himself seems to have liked the art, at least, but reports on whether he liked the story overall are more mixed (Veitch has gone on record as saying he did, though Lucas apparently later said he disliked the idea of bringing Palpatine back after RotJ… though he also reportedly gave Abrams his approval to do the same thing in Rise of Skywalker…). In terms of its place in the wider Legends continuity, Dark Empire was always a bit awkward; while the general gist of the story’s events were always accepted as having happened, it introduced some Jedi lore that would go on to be further developed in some of the early Old Republic comics, and some characters introduced in the series (such as Anakin Solo and Kam Solusar) would continue to be important down the line, specific details of this story rarely seemed to get referenced and it never seemed to have the same level of lasting influence as the contemporary Thrawn Trilogy (or, interestingly, the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which took place chronologically immediately after Dark Empire). Compared to the largely beloved Thrawn books, or the so-bad-they’re-good Jedi Prince books, Dark Empire’s reception was always more mixed, with fans strongly polarized – to the point that one lengthy discussion thread on the series on the Force.net boards bore the memorable subtitle “Quality Literature or Galactic Trash?”

As for me… I have a confession to make. Though I gleaned the story from various sources, including the novels and most especially the Essential Chronology (I adored that book once upon a time…) I’ve never actually read the Dark Empire comics. There are various reasons for that. When I was first getting into the Star Wars EU I wasn’t a comic reader, and didn’t really even understand what a “graphic novel” actually was (to be fair, I was in middle school at the time); later on, after I became much more willing to get into comics, being aware of the comic’s polarizing reputation and generally being content with the Thrawn Trilogy as the de facto next chapter in the Skywalker Saga, I saw no particular need to seek it out, especially after the Disney buyout. However, I was recently able to acquire a copy of the whole saga in omnibus form, and I thought I might as well do a read through and write up my thoughts as I go! I’d also still like to do a reread of some of the Legacy Era novels (from the Dark Nest Trilogy through Crucible) later, though I probably won’t start it until after I’m done with this.

NOTE: If you’re reading this on Das_Sporking or Anti_Shurtugal, I won’t be posting my readthroughs there (as it’s not actually a sporking as such), though I did want to go ahead and post my TOC here in case anyone on the comm wanted to see it. I’ll be posting updates on my Dreamwidth and over on the Force.net boards if you want to follow along; I’ll try to do a couple per week. I’ll be taking this one issue at a time, posting a summary of the issue followed by my thoughts on it. If you’re interested in that, do follow along! The first issue should be up shortly.

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