Fifteen Years of Dark Empire
May. 14th, 2007 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lazypadawanAn anniversary nearly slipped past me until Abel Pena brought it up in his starwars.com blog and that is the 15th anniversary of the seminal comics series, "Dark Empire."
"Dark Empire" was to SW comics what "The Dark Knight" was to Batman. Notice the similar titles ;). DE #1 was technically released December 1991 but I didn't find it on the stands until January 1992 when I stopped into a comics shop in Washington D.C.'s Georgetown while my mom was getting her hair done in a salon nearby. I went into the store to look for the latest issue of "Sandman." Imagine my thrill and surprise when I saw Dave Dorman's awesome cover in the "new" stacks. You see, I'd first heard of DE in 1990. Starlog mentioned it in a blurb, supposedly published by Marvel and due out any time. I'd spent months looking for it and no one had ever heard of it. I figured it was an urban legend or a project that died (actually, Marvel dropped it) and gave up on it. But there it was, produced by some publisher called Dark Horse. I read the first issue before I even paid for it and read it several more times afterwards. The story hooked me so much, that when I discovered issue #3 was coming out the day I was leaving to travel to Greece for a week or so, I made sure I left work early, bought it on the way home, and read it before leaving the store's parking lot. I wasn't going to wait that long to find out what happened!
Even though you may not agree with the plot line involving Palpatine's resurrection by cloning, DE revived SW comics and made them even more successful than during the Marvel years. Marvel published a SW monthly with a few specials for nine years (1977-1986). Dark Horse has published scores of SW titles for 15 years and its comics program is still going strong. DE also marked a shift in tone away from Marvel's old school sf, occasionally campy approach to SW. This was a dark, serious-minded story about good vs. evil. Not only have old favorites returned, they've changed...Leia and Han are already parents with #3 on the way, Luke dabbles with the dark side, and Boba Fett returns from the dead. Cam Kennedy's art was different from anything SW comics fans had seen before. As far as I was concerned, it was all pretty cool. I even wrote a long piece about it in late '92-early '93 for a fanzine called "Southern Enclave."
DE spawned two sequels ("Dark Empire II" and "Empire's End" in 1995) and there was even an audio drama released in 1994. I recall listening to it while riding the Metro to work. DE has been published in several languages and reprinted several times over, most recently as part of Dark Horse's hardcover SW 30th anniversary collection.
Today, I consider most of DE's events to be alternate universe; not all of it meshes with what we know about canon today. Still I consider it a classic and part of my fond SW memories.
"Dark Empire" was to SW comics what "The Dark Knight" was to Batman. Notice the similar titles ;). DE #1 was technically released December 1991 but I didn't find it on the stands until January 1992 when I stopped into a comics shop in Washington D.C.'s Georgetown while my mom was getting her hair done in a salon nearby. I went into the store to look for the latest issue of "Sandman." Imagine my thrill and surprise when I saw Dave Dorman's awesome cover in the "new" stacks. You see, I'd first heard of DE in 1990. Starlog mentioned it in a blurb, supposedly published by Marvel and due out any time. I'd spent months looking for it and no one had ever heard of it. I figured it was an urban legend or a project that died (actually, Marvel dropped it) and gave up on it. But there it was, produced by some publisher called Dark Horse. I read the first issue before I even paid for it and read it several more times afterwards. The story hooked me so much, that when I discovered issue #3 was coming out the day I was leaving to travel to Greece for a week or so, I made sure I left work early, bought it on the way home, and read it before leaving the store's parking lot. I wasn't going to wait that long to find out what happened!
Even though you may not agree with the plot line involving Palpatine's resurrection by cloning, DE revived SW comics and made them even more successful than during the Marvel years. Marvel published a SW monthly with a few specials for nine years (1977-1986). Dark Horse has published scores of SW titles for 15 years and its comics program is still going strong. DE also marked a shift in tone away from Marvel's old school sf, occasionally campy approach to SW. This was a dark, serious-minded story about good vs. evil. Not only have old favorites returned, they've changed...Leia and Han are already parents with #3 on the way, Luke dabbles with the dark side, and Boba Fett returns from the dead. Cam Kennedy's art was different from anything SW comics fans had seen before. As far as I was concerned, it was all pretty cool. I even wrote a long piece about it in late '92-early '93 for a fanzine called "Southern Enclave."
DE spawned two sequels ("Dark Empire II" and "Empire's End" in 1995) and there was even an audio drama released in 1994. I recall listening to it while riding the Metro to work. DE has been published in several languages and reprinted several times over, most recently as part of Dark Horse's hardcover SW 30th anniversary collection.
Today, I consider most of DE's events to be alternate universe; not all of it meshes with what we know about canon today. Still I consider it a classic and part of my fond SW memories.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 06:42 am (UTC)i wouldn't say that DE is AU - some authors tend to perhaps ignore (or claim ignorance) regarding the events of DE, but at the time it was written, a lot of work was made to make sure that KJA's Jedi Academy trilogy didn't conflict with it. still, perhaps only Kam Solusar is the main character/plot point/idea that came out of DE that still gets air time these days (and the return of Boba Fett).
happy anniversary Dark Empire!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-17 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-17 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 10:59 pm (UTC)Since then, unfortunately, I've grown more than a little ambiguous about bringing the Emperor back and having Luke casually turn to the Dark Side and then get argued back... although some of that may have come from "Dark Empire II," which I was convinced would deal with the heavy burden Luke would have to face completing his turn back to the light, only to be nothing of the sort. (No doubt deciding little by little to view all six movies as a self-contained unit had something to do with my changing mood.)
In any case, I'm sort of oddly interested in learning that the comic started as a Marvel project, and I remember either feeling just a little smug on reading references to it in the first "Jedi Search" paperback... or, perhaps, wondering what the people who I could imagine not having read the comic would make of them.