Book Review: 'Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy'

Cover art by Dave Dornan. © 1991, 2010 Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Following the deaths of Darth Vader and the Emperor at the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance formed a New Republic over much of the galaxy. Long years of struggle have ensued.

Remnants of the Empire have regained strength and reclaimed the majority of worlds, including the city-world of Coruscant. Now a civil war within the resurgent Empire has erupted, and the New Republic has seized the opportunity to increase confusion.

A recent raid over Coruscant has left Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian stranded on the war-torn planet, but help is on the way...- Opening crawl, Dark Empire


On September 15, 2010, Dark Horse Comics published Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy, a 352-page hardcover volume that collected Tom Veitch's 1991-1995 Expanded Universe trilogy of stories in which the fledgling New Republic's legendary heroes - Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, R2-D2, and C-3PO - face a suddenly resurgent Galactic Empire led by a mysterious leader with mastery of the Dark Side of the Force. Beginning with 1991's bimonthly six-part series, Dark Empire, Veitch, aided by artists Cam Kennedy, Jim Baikie, and cover artist Dave Dornan took readers on a visually striking if somewhat thematically dark journey across the vast reaches of a galaxy far, far away.

Dark Empire introduced many new planets, spacecraft, Imperial superweapons (especially the World Devastators) and characters into Lucasfilm's growing literary Expanded Universe, a series of licensed works set in George Lucas's conflict-torn Star Wars galaxy. Set six years after the Battle of Endor and one year after the events depicted in Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy of novels, the series chronicles the apparent fall of the galaxy's lone Jedi, Luke Skywalker, to the Dark Side.

To its many fans, Veitch's three Dark Empire series (which includes Dark Empire II and Empire's End was an exciting addition to the still-new Expanded Universe. It built upon the foundation laid down by Zahn's novels for stories about a galaxy still suffering from war and strife six years after the destruction of the Death Star and the deaths of Emperor Palpatine and his henchman, Darth Vader.

The series, especially the first six issues of Dark Empire, also influenced other works in the still-nascent Expanded Universe. Some of the events depicted by Veitch and his artistic collaborators were just too impactful to be ignored; Coruscant, the city-planet at the Galactic Core and capital of both the Old Republic and the Empire, was no longer the pristine Washington DC-like world envisioned in Zahn's novels or Kevin J. Anderson's in-the-works Jedi Academy Trilogy. In fact, when Anderson was told about Dark Empire's plot, he had to go back and rewrite many scenes set on Coruscant to show a planet scarred by the devastating effects of a civil war fought by rival Imperial factions.

A panel from Dark Empire. Art by Cam Kennedy and Jim Baikie. © 1991 Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Likewise, Anderson had to redo a lot of the scenes set on Admiral Ackbar's homeworld of Mon Calamari, which had been attacked by the Empire's new World Devastators.

Many other novelists, including the dean of the EU writers - Tim Zahn - also added references to events in Dark Empire in their works. Because of this, Dark Empire and its two sequels were "must read" works for fans, especially those whose first exposure to Star Wars was through the novels and comics published between 1991 and 1999.

Six years after the fall of Darth Vader and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, a New Republic has been formed, but the galaxy is not yet safe. The Empire has been mysteriously reborn under an unknown leader wielding a new weapon of great power. Princess Leia and Han Solo struggle to hold together and defend the New Republic while the galaxy's savior, Luke Skywalker, fights an inner battle as he is drawn to the dark side, just as his father was.

It is a struggle that will set Luke on a quest to rebuild the Jedi Order - and himself. But even as Skywalker searches the galaxy for Jedi who might have escaped the Purge at the end of the Clone Wars, another battle looms, for the Imperial war machine is readying for another fight. And this time, the dark power behind the resurgent Empire has its sights set on a new target: Han and Leia's newborn child! If this new plan is successful, the galaxy will surely be plunged into a new dark age.

Only the strength of the Jedi and the parents' courage can overcome the power of the dark side.

The seminal stories that helped to launch a new chapter in the Star Wars saga - Dark Empire, Dark Empire II and Empire's End - are collected for the first time in one volume. - Dust jacket blurb, Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy

The 2010 Dark Horse Comics hardcover collects the following publications in one volume:

• Dark Empire 1: The Destiny of a Jedi
• Dark Empire 2: Devastator of Worlds
• Dark Empire 3: The Battle for Calamari
• Dark Empire 4: Confrontation on the Smugglers' Moon
• Dark Empire 5: Emperor Reborn
• Dark Empire 6: The Fate of a Galaxy
• Dark Empire II 1: Operation Shadow Hand
• Dark Empire II 2: Duel on Nar Shaddaa
• Dark Empire II 3: World of the Ancient Sith
• Dark Empire II 4: Battle on Byss
• Dark Empire II 5: The Galaxy Weapon
• Dark Empire II 6: Hand of Darkness
• Empire's End 1: Triumph of the Empire
• Empire's End 2: Rage of the Emperor
• Handbook 3: Dark Empire

My Take

Star Wars: Dark Empire has never been one of my favorite stories - canonical or otherwise - set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." It's not the worst of the stories ever written for the EU/Legends collection of novels and comics – Vonda N. McIntyre's The Crystal Star and Bantam Skylark's Jedi Prince series win that award – but it isn't the best, either. Its art is a bit too exaggerated for my taste, its conceit that Palpatine's Dark Side presence survived the Emperor's death at Endor is too "out there" even for a fan of a space fantasy franchise built on the willing suspension of disbelief. and many of the Empire's superweapons were ridiculous. 

Nevertheless, I still read Dark Empire after reading Kevin Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy in the mid-1990s. I liked some of the story's themes and plot points. including the idea that a post-Endor Empire didn't simply collapse after Grand Admiral Thrawn's death in Star Wars: The Last Command; rather, it breaks up into rival fiefdoms that challenge each other for galactic supremacy.

And yet, as the years pass by and the post-Return of the Jedi state of the galaxy is revealed in canonical new films such as The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, the less affection I feel for Veitch's creation, which diverges greatly from Star Wars creator George Lucas's understanding of how the Sith behave, their abilities (and lack thereof) in the Force, and whether or not the 

Sith can retain their essence in the Force after death. 

In many ways, Dark Empire attempts to be edgy by nullifying the Rebel victory at Endor by not only showing an Empire still capable of building galactic vacuum clean-  er, I mean, galactic superweapons even more destructive than the two Death Stars, but also by resuscitating the Dark Lord of the Sith that manipulated the galaxy into war, Imperial oppression, and decades of death and destruction. 

I've never been fond of that plot point, especially after coming to understand that Sith Lords are motivated by the need for more power and domination. "Fear, anger, aggression....the Dark Side are they," says Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back,  To become one with the Force, one must resist the lure of holding on to things, places, and other people. By their very nature, Sith adherents are unable to embrace the Jedi concept of rejecting possessions; thus, they don't go to the other side as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda have. 

The book is, honestly, nicely done. It was done by the same publisher that released the hardcover omnibus edition of Mike Baron's adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy, which had come out in December 2009. The 352-page tome presents the entire three series in the Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy in its full-color glory in a durable hardcover, with cover art by illustrator Dave Dornan.

The book has been out for over nine years; I bought mine at Amazon along with a copy of The Thrawn Trilogy in 2011 and paid slightly less than its $29.99 retail price. But only a few years later, even before Marvel regained the comic books license in 2014. it became nearly impossible to buy Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy (or, for that matter, The Thrawn Trilogy) for that price. 

How much does this edition - a reissue was published more recently by Marvel Comics with the same content but has the Marvel logo on the cover - go for now? According to Amazon's product page, a third-party seller offers copies in New condition for - are you sitting down? - $986.86 plus shipping.