MG Reads Dark Empire #2
Jul. 1st, 2025 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalf
Dark Empire #2
The Rebel Alliance fleet gathers above the moon Da Soocha V, where Admiral Ackbar has just returned from a mission in the Core. He reports to Mon Mothma that Imperial ships from both sides of the Imperial Mutiny have been seen vanishing into the Deep Core; she confirms that she’s heard reports of similar sightings. Ackbar further reports that Coruscant has been left a wasteland by the recent battle, while Mon Mothma fills him in on the recent rescue mission; they hope to get more specific news, since the Millennium Falcon has just returned.
The Falcon, accompanied by the survivors of the Coruscant mission, descends to the surface of Da Soocha V and passes through a forest of stone pillars, guided by local creatures called Ixlls, until they reach the main hangar. There, Leia reports to Mon Mothma and generals Dodonna and Madine that Luke was captured by the dark side, while Threepio panics that Artoo was with him too. At a strategy meeting later, Mon Mothma informs everyone that a massive war fleet has emerged from the Deep Core while the Rebels were distracted with the battling Imperial factions; General Dodonna speculates that some dark side genius must have been behind it to design the terrible new weapons it contains. Massive ships called World Devastators have appeared over planets sympathetic to the Alliance.
Mon Mothma displays footage from Mon Calamari (here just called “Calamari”), one planet where World Devastators have appeared. Ackbar recaps his home planet’s recent history, how the Empire tried to enslave the Mon Cals but they fought back and were hardened into the strongest soldiers of the Rebellion. Mon Calamari would have been destroyed by the Death Star had it survived; now the World Devastators have been sent to punish them. The Devastators forcibly extract resources from a planet’s surface in brutal fashion, then use those resources to fabricate more war materiel for the Empire. Ackbar thinks they’re far more frightening than the Death Star, and if they don’t act fast, the galaxy is doomed. As Da Soocha Prime is a habitable water world, the Rebellion will dispatch its fleet to begin the evacuation of Mon Calamari. Lando and Wedge Antilles will lead captured Star Destroyers against the World Devastators themselves.
After the meeting, Han and Leia have a rare moment alone. Han wanted to go with Lando, but would rather stay with Leia; Leia, for her part, fears for Luke. She senses something terrible has happened to him. Han thinks that if Luke said he can do this alone, he trusts him – and he’s not about to challenge the judgment of a Jedi!
Luke himself has been deposited in a holding cell on some sort of vehicle by the Force Storm, where he waits with Artoo. He determines this is an Imperial Dungeon Ship, where they used to hold Jedi prisoners during the Clone Wars, and it’s reached its destination – Byss, a planet in the Deep Core steeped in the dark side. If there’s a dark center of the universe… this is it. The prison ship lands, and Luke is deposited into a cage meant to hold Jedi; a local official orders him transported to the great hall. Luke’s unease grows as he’s escorted through a strange, alien city, and senses a dark presence full of mocking laughter in his mind. The guards release Luke outside the palace, but he bats them aside with the Force – he’s here of his own will; the officials order the guards to keep an eye on him but note to each other that Luke is heading to his doom and only thinks he’s here by his own choice. Inside the palace, Luke enters the throne room and confronts the Empire’s new leader, shocked to discover his true identity – Emperor Palpatine himself, back from the dead! He senses that Luke has grown strong in the Force since they last met… but Palpatine is stronger too.
He reveals that this isn’t the first time he’s died. Flesh is too weak a vessel to support the dark power of his spirit, so every time he dies, he transfers his consciousness into a new, cloned body. The process is terribly unpleasant, but the reward – immortality! And Palpatine’s true form now is not flesh at all, but pure energy. His apprentice, Darth Vader, is now dead, and Palpatine asks Luke if he’s here to take his father’s place. He calls up an image of his World Devastator fleet, promising Luke they’ll be his to command. The Rebels had the chance to take the galaxy back, and they failed. Now it’s Palpatine’s turn again, and it's Luke’s destiny to take Vader’s place at his side. Luke considers killing the Emperor, but Palpatine promises if he does, he’ll just return again – and maybe he’ll possess Luke’s body this time. Palpatine senses that Luke is no longer a brash youth at war with his own anger, and he knows there is only one way he can defeat the Emperor now – to join him, learn his secrets, and overthrow him. And so, Luke himself realizes that the only way to conquer the dark side is from within. He drops his lightsaber, bows before the Emperor, and pledges his allegiance, taking his father’s place. Palpatine, pleased, declares it is time to celebrate their conquest of the galaxy.
On Da Soocha V, Han tells Leia they have good news – the galaxy is coming together again to fight the Empire, and more fighter squadrons have just joined them. But Leia, who’s been sitting alone in her room for days, says she shouldn’t have listened to Han or Luke. She senses something terrible has happened and hears evil laughter in her mind – she fears that Luke has been lost. Han tries to reassure her, but Leia is convinced Luke is in terrible danger. Han has a bad feeling about this, and he says he knew marriage to a Jedi Princess wouldn’t be easy, but he wraps Leia in a comforting embrace. Later, Han heads out to Chewie and says they need to get the Falcon ready. They have a date with the dark side!
MG’s Thoughts
If last issue was mostly fight scenes, this one may have a bit too much plot. The already breakneck pacing really picks up here, with major events happening very quickly, or even off-page entirely. It makes the story feel less big and epic than it probably should, considering the events it depicts, though that’s probably an inherent hazard of it being told in a six-issue graphic novel rather than something longer to begin with. And some of the dialogue is rather awkward, in particular Ackbar giving an infodump on his people’s history with the Rebellion (they’re still not being called the New Republic, btw) that literally everyone he’s talking to ought to already know. But, despite my reservations with some aspects of the story (more on that in a minute) I think that it does sell how serious some of the big wham moments in it are, and I can only imagine what a punch to the gut this issue must have been for readers checking it out for the first time in the early nineties.
The art… I was actually not entirely correct in my assessment of it last time, in that the color palette is somewhat more diverse now that we’re away from battle-ridden Coruscant, but it’s still extremely limited, stylized, and, to my eye, rather garish. While it works on some scenes (it suits the eerie, eldritch environment of Byss, for example), and when it does work it works very well, overall count me as someone who isn’t a particular fan of this art style, strictly as a matter of personal taste. The cover, of course, is once again gorgeous.
And now for the bantha in the room, or rather, banthas plural, as we have three major plot developments in this issue. First off, and least overall, is the World Devastator attack. The Legends EU, especially in the Bantam/Dark Horse era of the nineties, had a reputation for loving over-the-top superweapons, each deadlier than the last (ironically, the first major storyline, the Thrawn Trilogy, very deliberately didn’t do this – Thrawn got good mileage out of creative uses of obscure technology, but he clearly considered these sorts of wunderwaffen to be an ineffective waste of resources). The World Devastators, in my experience, don’t really seem to show up in that conversation very often, compared to the likes of the Sun Crusher or Galaxy Gun, but I actually rather like them conceptually. As giant, roving, predatory factories that slowly chew up planets for resources and spew out Imperial war machines, they have a very different vibe and represent a very different threat from the Death Star, or from subsequent superweapons. Could’ve done without Ackbar literally calling them out as worse than the Death Star, though; that just feels like shallow overhyping of the new big threat.
The bigger issue… somehow, Palpatine returned. There, I said the meme, I won’t use it again (I hope…). I’ve got to say, as creepy as the reveal of his survival and apparent true nature is, I’m not really a fan of this as a concept. I really do think it undermines the victory at Endor, and I think it would have been even worse if this had been set within a year of RotJ, since that would have made it feel like the Rebellion didn’t even buy the galaxy any time at all. Especially in light of the fact that Palpatine claims it wasn’t even his first death, and thus barely a setback at all (iirc, that would get explicitly retconned later on; Endor was his first death, and Palpatine was lying here). And that brings us to the third big wham element – Luke voluntarily becoming Palpatine’s new apprentice. This one feels like it was meant as a massive shock to the reader, and it is even knowing it was coming going into it, but at the same time, after Luke’s past experience with Palpatine on the second Death Star (and, counting the Thrawn books, his more recent encounters with Joruus C’Baoth) Luke ought to be very well aware of the perils of the dark side and the slippery slope it offers, and I find it very hard to swallow that he would submit like this so easily, for any reason, even with the intention of working against the Empire from within. Part of it’s probably the pacing – this comic has a lot of plot to get through, and as I’d previously mentioned, it has to move fast – but I also just have qualms that this was a story that needed telling, much less in this particular way. It’s something I’ve always found off putting about this story, honestly, and probably subconsciously one reason I never read it before this. Still, even if Luke does give in far too quickly, IMO, the temptation scene itself is appropriately eerie and ominous, and the panel of Luke kneeling to the Emperor and pledging his allegiance is legit chilling, so kudos there.
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Date: 2025-07-03 01:09 am (UTC)