MG Reads Dark Empire #5
Jul. 10th, 2025 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalf
Dark Empire #5
On Byss, Shalla and Ninx have taken refuge with another smuggler, Lo Khan, on his ship, the Hyperspace Marauder, since the Empire impounded Starlight Intruder. Shalla thinks everything on Byss gives her the creeps and if Han doesn’t show up soon, she’s leaving without him. Lo Khan explains to Ninx that the Empire has been hiring every pirate and smuggler they can find to help transport goods and weapons for them as part of a massive military buildup; they’re interrupted by a message from Han explaining things have gone wrong and they’re in trouble. He transmits coordinates before getting cut off and Shalla heads off, with Lo Khan telling her to make sure nobody sees the Falcon launching from his ship. Before they can, however, a massive Imperial hunter-killer probe droid intercepts them and its scanners locate the Falcon; they try to run, but the droid catches them with a tractor beam and swallows them into its guts.
In the Emperor’s personal apartments, Palpatine tells Leia that he knows Luke has been sabotaging him behind his back and doesn’t care – everything proceeds as he has foreseen, and he knows Leia has the potential to be far greater than her brother. He tells his guards to leave them, as he has something to show her that only a Jedi should see. Muttering to himself about how his body is weakening but soon he’ll be young again, he takes out a strange, cube-like object – a Jedi Holocron, which he took from an old Jedi Master before his unfortunate demise. He tells Leia to take it, and she can feel something familiar, almost mystical about it – he says it knows she is a Jedi. Leia asks if it’s magical, and Palpatine says it’s not, just very old technology – as Leia takes the Holocron, a holographic image of an alien Jedi Master appears in front of her. Palpatine explains that he lived centuries ago and was part of a group of Jedi who set out to make a comprehensive history of the Order, for future Jedi to use… like Leia.
The ancient Jedi introduces himself as Bodo Baas, and he starts describing how certain Jedi of his acquaintance tried to discover the dark side’s secrets from within… all were lost. Leia tells Palpatine he has no right to a Jedi device, but Palpatine insists he does – after all, his apprentice, Darth Vader, was a former Jedi, and doesn’t that make Palpatine a Jedi Master, in a manner of speaking? He demands the Holocron back, but Leia only tells him that her father died because of him, and now her brother is in danger. Palpatine protests that he is a harmless old man, and that he’s dying; he asks Leia to help him into bed. As he settles in, he explains that soon Leia will see how he has the ability to transfer his spirit into any of his clones – in fact, into any body he chooses. Even the child now growing in her womb… Leia, enraged, grabs Palpatine’s bed and turns it over, spilling him onto the floor, and flees. As she goes, Palpatine observes that, as he has foreseen, she clearly has the Skywalker temper… but his amusement turns to rage as she realizes she stole “his” holocron…
As Luke is getting a new prosthetic hand, an Imperial officer reports to him that their signal here on Byss has been tampered with, and now three World Devastators have self-destructed. The officer tried to inform the Emperor, but he has secluded himself; Luke tells him to keep it to himself for now and dismisses him. He starts uploading something into Artoo’s databanks, over Threepio’s protests, as Leia arrives. Leia begs Luke to come with her, and he assures her he knows what he’s doing – and her presence has helped pierce the grip of the dark side here. Leia senses danger and says the Emperor is toying with them – but Luke reveals he’s just finished uploading everything in the Emperor’s personal database into Artoo, including his battle plans and the master control codes for the World Devastators. They can get Han and Chewie and return to Pinnacle Base! Leia is unsure, but guards are coming and so the twins flee together.
In a prison cell, Han and Chewie are trying to cut the bars in the window. One of the hunter-seeker droids appears outside, watching them – but it’s the same one that captured Salla and Ninx, and they’ve hotwired it. The droid shoots open the window and extends a ramp, Salla telling Han that’s two he owes his old girlfriend. But now they’ve got to leave on the Falcon; security will have figured out they captured the droid. Han says they can’t leave without Leia, but at that moment Luke and Leia arrive; Han demands a blaster to shoot the “traitor,” but Leia tells him to stop – it was all a trick, and they have the command code for the Devastators! Luke promises they can finish the Empire for good; Han wonders why they don’t kill the Emperor while they’re here, but at that moment security discovers them and attacks and they have to flee in the Falcon.
Once they’re in hyperspace, Luke tells them to plug Artoo into the Falcon’s comm systems, so he can beam the shut-down codes to the World Devastators. Luke himself still has something he has to do, and if he fails, the others will have to fight their greatest battle. Han doesn’t understand… and then Luke says he’s still on Byss and vanishes, having been a Force projection all along. Leia admits he must have done it because he knew she’d never leave him willingly, and he had to do it to save their child. Han protests that the kids are safe on New Alderaan, but Leia fears that Luke’s path is heading for destruction… and that he knows it.
In the clone lab, the Emperor is surprised to see Luke, since he shouldn’t have been able to get in; Luke says he’s here to keep the Emperor from taking a new body. He’s learned many of the Emperor’s secrets, and he no longer has power over him – and when the clones are destroyed, Palpatine will die for good. Palpatine makes Luke an offer – he’ll take his body instead, and they can rule the galaxy together as one being! But Luke refuses and Palpatine dies, his body erupting in a flash of white light. Luke goes through the lab, smashing clone tank after clone tank, but he’s too late – one of the clones lives long enough for Palpatine’s spirit to inhabit. He asks if Luke really thought he could defeat him here – Luke slams him into the wall with the Force, declaring that he is a Jedi Master and now he knows the dark side as well. Palpatine says that Luke won’t be the first Jedi Master he’s killed, as he takes up a lightsaber he keeps nearby and leaps into battle. As they duel, Luke says that he has seen what his father never could – he knows the dark side is doomed to fail. But Palpatine tells him that he’s the stronger of the two of them and disarms Luke, forcing him to the floor. He tells him he won’t kill him, but make him submit, for real this time, and that he will break him. They’re going after Leia, to retrieve the holocron and Leia’s unborn child, and crush the rebellion once and for all!
MG’s Thoughts
This issue… is rushed. So many plot points seem to happen off-page (the Intruder getting impounded), get dropped on us very suddenly (Palpatine’s true agenda and plans for Leia, Salla and Ninx managing to hijack the probe droid, which seems way too easy), or just move so fast that it gives me whiplash (Luke’s heel-face revolving door – is he genuinely corrupted, breaking free of corruption, or never corrupted at all and faking it? The comic seems to flip-flop from scene to scene! And how did a dying, decrepit Palpatine get from his bedchamber all the way down to the clone lab in what seems like a very short span of time?). Once again, I can’t help but think that this comic needed a lot more space to tell its story. I also can’t help but feel like this story was clearly outlined before Jacen and Jaina were a thing, and references to them had to be worked in rather awkwardly (ie, nobody actually responds to Han when he brings them up).
On the other hand, the hunter-seeker droids, as essentially scaled-up versions of the Imperial probe droids we know from ESB, are a nicely ominous feature. I also rather like the design for the younger Emperor (who in my experience seems to be more strongly associated with this story than the old version we’ve seen so far, probably because it makes it more obvious he’s a clone), and interestingly I think he’s believable as a still-younger – and certainly buffer - version of the man we see in the prequels, even though those were still years away when this comic was written (I wonder if they got pictures of a younger Ian McDiarmid to use as a reference?). We also get to see Palpatine wield a lightsaber for the first time, long before RotS would have him doing the same! However, I do think his duel with Luke is rather short and underwhelming and results in Luke being forced back into submission far too easily, and it’s kind of hard to forget that Palpatine is naked for the whole thing (possibly – I wonder if the clones are meant to be wearing some sort of skintight bodysuits while they’re in the tank, since not only does Palpatine not have any visible genitalia – thankfully – but he also doesn’t have visible toes). I also have to wonder if Luke smashing the clone tanks counts as murder; from what we see, the clones are basically mindless husks until Palpatine’s spirit moves in, but if we do count them as people (or potential people) in their own right the way later sources will always depict clones (and with the way the art and narration depict them as flopping pitifully around on the ground after the tanks are shattered)… then yeesh, this may be the darkest thing Luke does in the whole comic!
I also think it’s fascinating that holocrons, which would become the signature technology for Jedi (and Sith!) to store their knowledge, made their debut here, in this comic (though there’s a bit of early-installment weirdness with Palpatine implying that “the” holocron is a unique device; it’s also rather less elaborate looking than later holocrons, though that may just be the art – Leia speaks admiringly of its design despite it looking to the reader like a plain glowing box). There’s also some bits with Palpatine that are rather curious in hindsight; this was before it was established that Palpatine is Darth Sidious, Sith Master (iirc, the original Essential Guide to Characters – from the early days of the EU, but after this comic – actually said that it was unknown when and how the Emperor began to practice the dark side), but the idea of the modern Palpatine ever describing himself as a Jedi Master, even in a darkly ironic way, is pretty hard to imagine!
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Date: 2025-07-11 01:28 am (UTC)Again, I'm honestly not sure if this is cool, or just silly. We don't really see "up-scaled" versions of smaller pieces of technology in the movies, so it seems like Star Wars, despite its loose understanding of engineering principles, still has some form of the square-cube-law. Still, the general idea of a single droid larger than a ship does have a certain appeal...
Like it did last time? You'd think he'd have learned by now...And even last time, he made a good effort to turn Luke to the Dark Side, but once it was clear he wasn't making much progress, he defaulted to just torturing him to death. But now, he's happy to let Luke live, to keep beating the dead tauntaun, even after Luke has blown up three more of his superweapons? Granted, they are self-replicating superweapons, so I suppose it's not a huge loss in the grand scheme of things (Though surely, he doesn't have infinite manpower to crew them? Unless he's using clones for that, too?). But again, last time he gave up just because Luke said "no" enough times.
Okay, but why is he showing it to her, exactly? To tempt her with knowledge and power? Doesn't seem like the most efficient way of doing that, considering the first piece of knowledge it imparts is "Don't trust people like Palpatine."
I've noticed they're leaning heavily on "Leia the Jedi" in this story, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except most other parts of her seem to have fallen off in favor of it. Where's "Leia the Senator," or "Leia the Diplomat," or "Leia the Spy," or "Leia the Soldier?" Most other expanded universe stories preserved those aspects of her character quite well, but I'm not seeing much of them here. Although, in my opinion, most other expanded universe stories also don't use "Leia the Jedi" nearly enough. Seems like in a lot of stories, even a lot of the good ones, she doesn't think of herself as a Jedi at all, and barely uses the Force at all, which I think is a waste. It's important to preserve the core of the character, but it's also important not to deny the character the chance to go in exciting new directions.
Which "father" is she talking about, there? It's true for both, but which one she means seems relevant to this story's interpretation of her character.
Well, clearly, that's not entirely true, or else he wouldn't need to ask Luke to willingly give him his body later on.
Knowing the Dark Side is a bad thing! That was kind of the point of the movies!
His father did know that! He was the one who caused it to fail! Well, okay, that's not entirely true. More accurately, his hope and love for his son grew to the point where he didn't care if it failed or not, he was still going to try. An important theme in Star Wars is to do the right thing, even if you don't know if it will make a difference, but somehow, this Luke doesn't seem to have learned that. Though, he, and everyone else, may have just forgotten everything that happened on the second Death Star. The whole comic seems to be acting like Vader's redemption never happened.
Do they ever use the word "Sith," here? That was another funny aspect of the early expanded universe; while they do use the word in the movies, and I think it was always supposed to mean, roughly, "evil Jedi," they never actually explain that in the movies, and I don't think they explained it to the early authors, either. Hence, misunderstandings like Timothy Zahn initially wanting to call the Noghri the "Sith."
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Date: 2025-07-11 03:00 am (UTC)Counterexample for scaled-up tech - the Death Star II, significantly larger than the original Death Star. I also think in this case, it's pretty clear that while the hunter seekers look like bigger versions of the probe droids from ESB, they're actually fairly different tech with a different purpose.
Okay, but why is he showing it to her, exactly? To tempt her with knowledge and power? Doesn't seem like the most efficient way of doing that, considering the first piece of knowledge it imparts is "Don't trust people like Palpatine."
"Tempting her with knowledge only he can provide" seems to be the answer. He clearly wasn't expecting her to just grab it and bolt. As to why he wasn't expecting something that obvious... blame the fact that he's dying, maybe? *shrugs*
I've noticed they're leaning heavily on "Leia the Jedi" in this story, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except most other parts of her seem to have fallen off in favor of it. Where's "Leia the Senator," or "Leia the Diplomat," or "Leia the Spy," or "Leia the Soldier?" Most other expanded universe stories preserved those aspects of her character quite well, but I'm not seeing much of them here. Although, in my opinion, most other expanded universe stories also don't use "Leia the Jedi" nearly enough. Seems like in a lot of stories, even a lot of the good ones, she doesn't think of herself as a Jedi at all, and barely uses the Force at all, which I think is a waste. It's important to preserve the core of the character, but it's also important not to deny the character the chance to go in exciting new directions.
TBH, I think a lot of this is early-installment weirdness; keeping in mind that this story would've been outlined even before the Thrawn books got properly underway, it seems like Veitch assumed that Leia would throw herself wholeheartedly into being a Jedi in a way that most other EU authors, from Zahn onwards, did not. And yeah, for most of the Bantam era and the NJO, it was pretty clear that Leia was a rather indifferent Jedi at best (not from lack of interest so much as because she just had a lot on her plate between all the other hats she was also wearing). IIRC, it wasn't until the Dark Nest books that she actually took the time to commit to formally wrapping up her training and gaining full Knight status (though I remember it being somewhat controversial because Troy Denning was writing and he picked one of his pet characters, Saba Sebatyne, as Leia's master for the last leg of her training despite Saba being mostly a background character when everyone else was writing and had never been portrayed as having much of a relationship with Leia).
Which "father" is she talking about, there? It's true for both, but which one she means seems relevant to this story's interpretation of her character.
I think Anakin, who is more relevant in this particular context, but yes, it would apply to Bail just as well.
Knowing the Dark Side is a bad thing! That was kind of the point of the movies!
Frankly, I'm not even sure what point Luke is trying to make here at all, or even what sort of knowledge he's referring to (it's not like you need the dark side to telekinetically shove a guy into a wall).
Do they ever use the word "Sith," here? That was another funny aspect of the early expanded universe; while they do use the word in the movies, and I think it was always supposed to mean, roughly, "evil Jedi," they never actually explain that in the movies, and I don't think they explained it to the early authors, either. Hence, misunderstandings like Timothy Zahn initially wanting to call the Noghri the "Sith."
No, I don't think the Dark Empire (at least the first arc; I'm not very far into Dark Empire II at the moment) ever calls Palpatine a Sith or uses the term at all. I do know that DEII introduces some lore that would later be elaborated on in the Tales of the Jedi comics that would relate to the Sith, and the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which introduced Exar Kun and firmly established him as a Sith, came out between the two arcs. IIRC, most of the novels and comics between the Thrawn Trilogy and the prequels followed Zahn's lead and used "Dark Jedi" as the generic term for evil Force users, even those who hadn't actually been Jedi.