The Golden Age of the Sith

Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith

Author: Kevin J. Anderson

Artist: Chris Gossett (Issue 0), Dario Carrasco, Jr. (Issues 1-5)

Medium: Comic

Publication Date: July 1996 – February 1997

Timeline Placement: 5,000 BBY

Series: Tales of the Jedi

At this point we jump forward over 20,000 years, a gap more than four times the span of the remaining stories on our timeline. Despite the breadth of established lore that populates these millennia, none of their events have ever appeared in an actual story. Something I don’t think many people realize is the extent of the EU that exists outside the crappy books by hack writers. Like Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, most Star Wars lore has never been depicted on page or screen. Instead, it exists as a surprisingly intricate and complex fictional history gradually pieced together over decades of roleplaying game guidebooks, reference articles in Star Wars periodicals and online, and the Essential Guide series, among others. With the Disney reboot, all of that history and the work that went into weaving it is now gone. Tough break, dorks!

We open with an introduction to one of our four main characters: Odan-Urr, an alien Jedi Knight who looks like a flaccid penis with teeth. Odan-Urr is this nerdy bookworm obsessed with researching ancient Jedi history. Of special interest to him is the history of the Sith, which right off the bat creates a continuity error because at this point in time the Sith are still secluded in their own area of the galaxy that the Republic hasn’t discovered yet, so how the hell do the Jedi know about them?

[Continuity Note: This was eventually retconned in “Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties” (2006), an online reference article that claimed that some of the defeated Dark Jedi exiles returned to the Republic seeking revenge and spilled their guts about the Sith before getting their asses kicked a second time. Similarly contrived explanations for other discrepancies will become a staple of the EU in later works.]

Ooroo, Odan-Urr’s Jedi Master, is a jellyfish who lives inside a crystal filled with fluorescent urine. He tells Odan-Urr that it’s time to stop dicking around with his books and go out into the galaxy and do Jedi stuff. His first assignment is to help Empress Teta defeat a pirate gang to unite the seven worlds of the Koros system. He does this through a long-forgotten Jedi technique called Battle Meditation, which he discovered in some history textbook. Empress Teta and the Jedi are victorious, but in the course of the battle two space pilots, Hok and Timar Daragon, are killed trying to deliver supplies to the empress’s beleaguered troops. Their kids of indeterminate age, Gav and Jori, are supposed to be the main characters, I think, but they kind of end up sharing that position with Odan-Urr and Naga Sadow, whom we have not yet met.

Upon hearing of their parents’ deaths, Gav and Jori resolve to make their dead parents proud by becoming hyperspace navigators and mapping out new spacelanes to unexplored parts of the galaxy for the expanding Republic. The Republic is 20,000 years old at this point, why do they still have mooks like these doing cartography for them? How much more of the galaxy are they going to discover in the 5,000 years left before the movies? Also, everyone dresses like they’re in ancient Egypt and the spaceships look like they’re made out of bundled sticks and mosquito wings. I do not think Kevin J. Anderson had a very good grasp of the Star Wars timescale.

What a piece of junk!

[Continuity Note: The archaic aesthetic of the Republic’s wardrobe in the Tales of the Jedi series was retconned in the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide (2008) to be a retro-fashion trend. It’s described as a “brief revival,” so either the sword-and-sandals look came back into vogue multiple times or clothing styles in Star Wars can last for a thousand years. That they even felt the need to explain the characters’ fashion in this 1990s comic book is kind of dumb, but also kind of hilarious. The EU in a nutshell.]

Brother-and-sister hyperspace explorers Gav and Jori Daragon are Jedi washouts with rudimentary training in the Force, but despite this advantage they suck at their job. Mapping new routes through hyperspace is dangerous work and instead of finding any useful shortcuts, they mostly just end up damaging their ship, the Starbreaker 12, and almost dying. They’ve had to sell their house to pay for the repairs to the ship, so when their latest endeavor turns out to be another failure, starship repairman Aarrba the Hutt refuses to extend them any more credit and confiscates the Starbreaker 12. Now homeless and penniless, the Daragons find themselves beset by hitmen hired by a merchant, who is a giant yellow lizard, because he lost a shipment of cargo using one of their crappy hyperroutes.

Well actually Gav is first accosted alone, then we cut to the lizard merchant hiring the same hitmen we just saw going after Gav, then we cut to the Daragons who are just hanging out being homeless when they’re attacked by those same goddamn hitmen again for the first time in a completely different scene. Was the first attack some kind of glimpse into a parallel world? I have no idea what’s happening.

“Anything for kicks!” says Gav as he kicks one of the assassins. The Daragons run down an alley only to find their way blocked by a brick wall. “Life has been just full of dead ends lately,” says Jori. Fortunately for the Daragons but unfortunately for clever writing, Odan-Urr and his Jedi partner, Memit Nadill, show up and save them. Despite being a huge nerd with an anxiety disorder, or perhaps because of that fact, Odan-Urr brutally murders one of the hitmen after he has already been disarmed, prompting Memit Nadill to gently tell him that in the future he might not want to do that.

[Continuity Note: When the Jedi confront the assassins, we see that the lightsabers of this era are powered by a cord that runs from the bottom of the weapon’s hilt to a power pack on each Jedi’s belt. This is a ridiculous weapon design and I love it. I don’t know if the EU ever set a hard date for when the lightsaber was supposed to have been invented, but Kevin J. Anderson must have thought one of two things: either the Jedi didn’t use their signature weapon for the majority of their history, or they spent 20,000 years using a weapon that was useless without an extension cord.

[The corded lightsaber design, or “protosaber” as Wookieepedia calls it even though it’s called a lightsaber in the comic, becomes even more comical with Dawn of the Jedi’s premature introduction of the Forcesaber. Was it really that hard for the Jedi to take out the Forcesaber’s “dark side-only” switch without having to add a giant external battery? (Even better, players of the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO have the opportunity to travel to Tython and find the first lightsaber ever built, known as the First Blade. It looks like a modern lightsaber.)]

“Not as clumsy or random as a blaster, as long as you charge it in an AC outlet every night.”

Knowing it’s only a matter of time before the murderers strike again, Gav and Jori steal back the Starbreaker 12, determined to try one last hyperspace jump and hope for the best. They randomly spin the dial (why is there a dial?) and end up finding the Sith.

Welcome to Korriban, homeworld of the Sith and most evil planet in the galaxy (later renamed “Moraband” by George Lucas because he was afraid viewers would confuse Korriban with Coruscant, which shows how little he thinks of you). And Jesus, speaking of things looking like ancient Egypt, it’s shocking the Sith don’t pass a Great Sphinx or Abu Simbel on their way to entomb the body of Marka Ragnos, their dear departed Dark Lord, in the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Ragnos has two potential successors vying for his throne: Ludo “Bagman” Kressh, politically conservative isolationist, and Naga Sadow, incautious expansionist. Sadow is the central villain of this story but we spend so much time with him, watching him put one over on the other Sith Lords as well as our heroes, that he’s pretty much a protagonist in his own right. Not that that really means anything since all four main characters are just handfuls of barely fleshed-out traits and goals, but at the very least Naga Sadow is a slightly more interesting character than Gav frigging Daragon.

Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow confront one another on the steps of Marka Ragnos’s tomb, their Sith swords pulsing with purple lightning for . . . some reason. (Why does Ludo Kressh look like Dr. Zaius?) But just then the ghost of Marka Ragnos manifests before them, briefly recapping Sith history for new readers and warning that the Sith Empire’s golden age is at risk if his successor is unworthy. He then fades back into the Netherworld of the Force. Thanks for nothing, Marky Mark!

“Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil’s pawn.”

It is at this moment that the Starbreaker 12 lands on the planet. Gav and Jori Daragon disembark with huge smiles and bid this unknown tribe of sinister-looking primitives greetings from the Republic. They are immediately taken prisoner. Ludo Kressh claims that this is a sure sign the Republic is going to invade them and they should execute the Daragons immediately because that will help them somehow.

Naga Sadow sees the strangers as an opportunity to seize power, however, and makes a rousing speech about how this is a chance for the Sith to expand their territory and conquer the entire galaxy. Since Kevin J. Anderson doesn’t know how to write rousing speeches, however, all we see are several panels of Naga Sadow waving his hand in the air while the other Sith Lords look on pensively, then he concludes, “And that is our destiny!”

I guess that was completely pointless though because we immediately cut to the Daragons in prison and Lord Simus comes to tell them the Sith voted to execute them anyway. Off-handedly introduced in a narration box a few pages earlier, Simus, one of the most revered of the Sith Lords, is a severed head in a jar. He was decapitated in a duel with Marka Ragnos centuries earlier but used the Force to keep his head alive. Now some guy has to carry it around everywhere because he doesn’t have legs. Because he’s a head.

Fuck Star Wars.

Naga Sadow comes up with a cockamamie scheme to win the other Sith over to his side. Stealing blasters from the Starbreaker 12, he and his followers storm the prison to free the Daragons, murdering all the guards they come across and leaving the blasters behind to make it look like a Republic invasion. On the way out they come across Simus, who I guess just likes hanging out in jails all day. Simus is like “OMG Naga Sadow my best friend! What’s going on! Are you okay!” and Naga Sadow just shoots him.

In the head.

The Sith Lords convene another meeting and Naga Sadow convinces them that they must strike back at the Republic and elect him as the new Dark Lord to do it. The Sith are like
“Sure, I guess that makes sense” and they put little scorpions on Naga Sadow’s face that tattoo his forehead with a little symbol and then he’s the new Dark Lord. Meanwhile Jori Daragon is like, “Naga Sadow, where’s my brother? You split us up after you rescued us and haven’t allowed us to see one another at all since then. You’re acting . . . kind of suspicious!” But Naga Sadow is like, “No, it’s cool, I’m the good guy, trust me” and Jori’s like, “Okay.”

But Ludo Kressh is having none of this crap and launches an attack on Naga Sadow’s fortress on the planet Khar Delba. Naga Sadow gives Jori back the Starbreaker 12 and tells her she must escape back to the Republic. She refuses to leave without her brother but Naga Sadow tells her she has to so se does.

Ludo Kressh is all, “Naga Sadow, I will trounce you!” but Naga Sadow is like, “You fool! You’ve attacked my decoy fortress! My real fortress is in another castle!” and he has a bunch of ships fly out from behind the moon and they blow up Ludo Kressh’s fleet. Naga Sadow has always treated the Sith warrior caste with kindness or something (he’s a real man of the people) so the crewmen of several of Kressh’s ships assassinate their Sith Lord masters and bring their ships over to Naga Sadow’s side. Now secure in his rule over the Sith Empire, Naga Sadow readies his forces to follow Jori back to Republic space, using the tracking device he planted on Starbreaker 12 that looks like a frog for no reason.

Sadow and Kressh, looking way more badass than they do at any point in this stupid comic.

Also somewhere in all of this Odan-Urr had a dream that the Sith were returning and tried to warn the Republic but no one would believe him except Empress Teta and Memit Nadill, and then that was the end of that subplot. Anyway, THE END according to the last page of the comic, even though the cliffhanger clearly means it’s TO BE CONTINUED.

Meditations

This story arc and its immediate follow-up, The Fall of the Sith Empire, are actually prequels to the original run of Tales of the Jedi comics. And in proud Star Wars prequel tradition, they completely ignore or contradict certain key elements of the original stories. Chief among these is the nature of the Sith Empire and its history with the Republic, but that history has been written and rewritten so many times it’s hard to care.

Chris Gossett’s art in the first (or zeroth, if you want to acknowledge its comic-book gimmickry) issue is pretty terrible, but once Dario Carrasco takes over it improves dramatically. It might even be the best artwork we’ve seen so far, but it’s spoiled by an uninspired coloring job. Carrasco’s panels contain a fair amount of detailing, but at some point in the production process somebody got lazy and thought it would be easier to just click the “Fill With Color” button on a bunch of background stuff in Microsoft Paint.

As a result you end up with ships, buildings, planets, and creatures that are each only one or two shades of single color, creating a monochromatic vibe that infects the whole comic. The color palette is dominated by golds and browns and beiges, and even the more vibrant colors that appear in clothing and skin tones have a bleached, sickly look. On top of their ridiculous tentacle mustaches, the Sith appear even less threatening here when their skin color shifts from the lobster-red we saw in Dawn of the Jedi to a uniform pale pink. This is the closest we’ll ever get to an origin story for the ultimate evil in the old EU and they just look comical.

That said, I could overlook the lackluster color scheme if the writing were up to snuff, but lol no. I haven’t taken the time to count his writer credits but Kevin J. Anderson may well be the most prolific author in the Expanded Universe. He is also one of the worst. His work in comics isn’t as dire as some of the prose stories we’ll eventually get to, probably because all he has to worry about is dialogue while the art carries the thrust of the story, but the writing in this comic really has nothing to recommend it. It’s simplistic and functional and the personality it does inject into the characters’ voices often feels silly or stylized after the fashion of an unambitious children’s cartoon. Wait why am I acting surprised that a mid-’90s Star Wars comic book reads like it was written for children? One of the characters is a talking severed head in a jar. Fuck this comic, fuck Star Wars, fuck everything.

2/5 Death Stars. Still more fun than the last Dawn of the Jedi arc.

Force War

Dawn of the Jedi: Force War

Author: John Ostrander

Artist: Jan Duursema

Medium: Comic

Publication Date: November 2013 – March 2014

Timeline Placement: 25,792 BBY

Series: Dawn of the Jedi

We jump forward in time one year to find the Tythan system under siege by the Rakatan fleet and their foot soldiers, mutated Rakatan warriors called Flesh Raiders, a name that sounds like it could also be any number of other perverse things. Daegen Lok, the completely insane slavemaster visionquest psycho from the last book, has been released from the Evil Moon of Bogan and put in charge of the Je’daii armies for some reason, while Master Ravioli, a bald and somewhat boring monk, commands the combined forces of Tython and the non-Je’daii worlds. Despite this he still contributes nothing to the plot. Xesh, emodouche protagonist, has taught the Je’daii how to manufacture Forcesabers, which have become their primary melee weapon against the similarly armed Flesh Raiders.

Redheaded love interest Shae Koda (and presumably Sek’nos Rath, Shae’s (best? I don’t even know) friend, as well but I don’t think it’s ever clarified) has been promoted from Je’daii Journeyer to Je’daii Ranger, a meaningless distinction with no bearing on the text. I guess Sek’nos and Trill, the Force-hunting double-agent sent by Predor Skal’nas the Big Evil Space Guy, are dating now, because sure, whatever. Poor, neglected Tasha Ryo, one of three equally prominent protagonists in the first volume, is marginalized even more in the finale. Since she sucks at fighting, she’s become a Je’daii “seer” and now just sits around with other seers, all of whom are nameless, trying to divine the future and see where the Rakata will strike next. She does nothing of consequence for the entire book until the end, where she dies. Spoiler alert!

We open with all our main characters (except Tasha, because she’s not even a main character anymore) engaged in battle on Shikaakwa. They kill a bunch of Flesh Raiders and beat back the Rakata forces with their armada of monsters (including Butch, the flying rancor-dragon!). You would think that these creatures wouldn’t be much use against the Rakata’s advanced technology and starships, but fortunately the Rakata’s Force Hounds apparently have their own beast-mounted air cavalry for some reason, and the Je’daii kick their ass. Also apparently Xesh’s armor-and-helmet look from the first volume wasn’t unique to him but was the generic Force Hound uniform, which makes his co-Hound Trill’s red bustier and leather pants even more ridiculous.

Some Flesh Raiders in action.

The allied Je’daii and non-Je’daii forces beat back the Rakata’s advance, and Sub-Predor Ceh’let, a female Rakata (which you can tell because she has a ponytail), is none too happy with how things are going. She confronts warlord Skal’nas about how much he sucks at winning wars and demands to know why he is so obsessed with capturing Tython. Skal’nas explains that the Rakata are slowly losing their connection to the Force.

[Continuity Note: All of the Rakata’s technology is powered through the Force, including their starship hyperdrives and navigation. In the videogame Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the player rediscovers the remnants of the long-forgotten Infinite Empire and learns that the Rakata were ultimately destroyed by a plague that cut them off from the Force. Unable to use their weapons or technology, the Rakata fell prey to mass slave revolts and lost control of their empire. By the time the game takes place, only a few tribes of Rakatan primitives remain on their lost homeworld, Rakata Prime (later retroactively renamed Lehon because continuity). What we are seeing in Dawn of the Jedi is the beginning of their downfall.]

Rakatan legend tells of a world so rich in the Force that it can renew the Rakata’s failed connection to it. This world also contains a Prime Gate, the greatest of the Kwa Infinity Gates. Unlike other Infinity Gates, which linked only to a sister gate on a single other world, the Prime Gate can instantly take you anywhere in the galaxy. Skal’nas plans to use this gate to make the Infinite Empire infinite in fact as well as in name. Ceh’let is flattered to be told all this and asks if Skal’nas plans for her to be his queen when he becomes Over-Predor of the empire. Skal’nas says, “No, I just wanted you to understand the prize you were losing out on before you died,” and vaporizes her with Force lightning.

Meanwhile, Xesh continues to be angsty. He has a nightmare wherein twisted Rakatan visages tell him he can never escape the darkness inside himself and wakes up screaming. Shae runs into his tent and confesses that she loves him and Xesh is like “. . . uhhhhhhh . . .” Shae turns to go but Xesh tries to make up for his comical awkwardness by telling her something about himself that no one else knows. “Xesh” is his slave name, but he has secretly renamed himself “Tau,” the only word from his native language that he remembers. It means “soul.” It is a stupid name.

I just threw up in my own mouth.

That said, this may explain why Sek’nos didn’t make anything out of Xesh and Trill both being named after Aurebesh letters, something I wondered about in the previous review. The implication, then, would seem to be that Aurebesh, the most commonly used alphabet in the Star Wars galaxy at the time of the films, originated as the Rakatan alphabet. So basically the Rakata are responsible for everything in Star Wars: the alphabet, the lightsaber, the hyperdrive, the Sith name “Darth,” spreading humans across the galaxy, turning Tatooine and Korriban into deserts, hyper-accelerating the foliage growth on Kashyyyk, creating the Twi’lek and Zabrak species, giving pyramidal holocron technology to the Sith, and forcibly driving the Celestials from the galactic stage (prior to the invention of the Rakata, the Celestials were the EU’s go-to ancient advanced civilization for explaining lingering cosmic mysteries). I love the Rakata but it’s a bit much, isn’t it?

Anyway, then Xesh and Shae fuck.

The next afternoon, Xesh, Daegen Lok, Ravioli, and for some reason Tasha Ryo convene a council of war in Hawk Ryo’s brother’s fortress, because they are friends with him now. Xesh says that this is the first time the Rakata have ever faced defeat (which is untrue, because they were driven out by the Sith species when they tried to annex their territory a few thousand years earlier, but John Ostrander probably didn’t read that obscure online reference article), and if they kill Predor Skal’nas, the Rakatan sub-predors will destroy themselves fighting for command. Daegen Lok helpfully adds that Xesh must have come up with that strategy by studying how Lok won the Despot War by killing Queen Hadiya.

I hate to admit it but I’m starting to get over Daegen Lok. His badass bearded crazy-person look from Prisoner of Bogan is gone; now he just has long greasy hair with a scruffy little goatee and wears sleeveless body armor and looks like a douchebag. Now that he’s got what he wanted, fulfilling his vision and becoming the commander of the Je’daii, he’s not that interesting or fun to read about anymore.

The Je’daii formulate a plan to attack the Rakatan base on Ska Gora and kill the predor. Trill informs her master, however, allowing him to set a trap. Many Je’daii are captured in the attack, including Xesh, Sek’nos, and Daegen Lok, and Trill deserts the Je’daii and returns to her master. Sek’nos is turned into a Force-battery to power a Rakatan ship, while Predor Skal’nas removes the memory block he placed on Xesh. Xesh remembers what happened aboard the Rakatan scout ship he arrived on. He had sent his “Force shadow” out to investigate Tython, and what Shae, Sek’nos, Tasha, and Lok (and presumably Lanoree Brock, although she isn’t mentioned) saw back in Force Storm was this shade, not a true vision from the Force. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be some “gotcha” plot twist because it means nothing and changes nothing, but there it is.

On secret orders from Predor Skal’nas, Xesh murdered his former master and all the Rakata on the ship so that Skal’nas could claim Tython for himself. He then intentionally crashed the ship, killing thousands of slaves on board. Xesh now remembers all the atrocities he has committed at the behest of the Rakata, killing innocents and enslaving planets for them (including the Sith planet, judging by the accompanying collage, but the timing on that doesn’t fit with established lore).

Honestly I had no idea that he had forgotten this much of his history; it was never made clear in the text. I’m not even sure what the point of Skal’nas hiding it from him was. Blocking Xesh’s memory of his mission to infiltrate the Je’daii and intentionally crashing his ship makes sense, so the Je’daii don’t sense any deception in him, but he remembers everything else about the Rakata and tries to kill the Je’daii when he first meets them anyway, so why erase the extent of his evil? If he doesn’t even know what a bad person he is in the previous two volumes, his paper-thin character arc becomes transparent. This plot is kind of dumb.

But now that he remembers that he has done a lot of bad things, Xesh willingly rejoins the Rakata and submits to being Skal’nas’s slave, because that’s totally what it makes sense for him to do and isn’t at all contrived, right? After interrogating Daegen Lok, Skal’nas believes that the Prime Gate is hidden at the bottom of the Chasm, the seemingly bottomless pit on Tython where Lok had his vision. The defenses protecting it are what drives Je’daii mad when they venture too deep into the Chasm. Lok says that he misjudged Xesh and never realized how much darker and more cunning he was than Lok himself. Because I guess we’re still supposed to buy Lok McCrazy VisionQuest as this super-evil psychotic mastermind despite him failing at basically everything he tries to do in this book.

Skal’nas intends to stop the Je’daii from learning his plan to take the Prime Gate by neutralizing the seers. Using Xesh and Trill as conduits to boost his power, he sends out their Force shadows just as Tasha and the other seers are having a vision of Tython being attacked. Xesh suddenly appears in their vision and somehow blinds them, physically and to the Force. So for the rest of the book Tasha goes around with her eyes all white and charred lol. The seers have bought the Je’daii just enough time to begin preparations for the Rakatan assault, although they do not know its true target.

So the Rakata attack Tython and Xesh and Skal’nas take Lok down to the Chasm to find the Prime Gate. Xesh says that the only way to pass the barrier in the Chasm without going mad is to have nothing by the spoked-wheel symbol of the Tho Yor in your mind when you go through. I’ll take your word for it, buddy. They descend into the Chasm on jetpacks, leaving Daegen Lok chained to a rock for the Flesh Raiders to eat. I have no idea why they even brought him to the planet with them in the first place. He didn’t have any more information to give them; just kill him on the ship. But since they didn’t do that, we get a scene where Lok wrestles a Forcesaber away from a Flesh Raider and cuts himself free, shouting, “This is what I saw in my vision! This is who I am! Invincible! Unstoppable! Come to me, fools, and die!” Then he gets knocked down and begs for mercy.

Forunately, Sek’nos Rath escapes from the Rakata and arrives just in time to save him, having been drawn to the Chasm by sensing Xesh in the Force. Shae arrives shortly thereafter, riding Butch (!) and followed by Fake Morpheus, her Je’daii Master who was briefly important way back in the first volume. I think Hawk Ryo and Jane Krakowski do literally nothing in this story arc. Lok implants the Tho Yor symbol in Shae’s mind and Butch carries them both into the Chasm.

Okay, his real name is Quan-Jang, but does it really matter?

Trill shows up and makes fun of Sek’nos for his “balance” being so weak compared to the dark side, but his rage gives him the power to overcome her. He declares that he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, just so long as he gets to kill her. “No, Sek’nos! Don’t let the darkness consume you! Do not become them! You are Je’daii!” cries Morpheus. Having knocked out Trill, Sek’nos is convinced by this rousing speech to spare her life at the last second. “YAAAAAARGH!” he shouts, then slings her unconscious body over his shoulder and walks out of the story forever. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to infer he does with her afterward but the options are not looking good.

Not that Trill was a great character or anything, but I like how she didn’t even fight Xesh in this final story arc, let alone resolve the weird grudge she bore against him for “betraying” their friendship. It was pretty obvious to me in the previous arc that they were setting up for Xesh to reveal that the reason he suggested she be given to Predor Skal’nas after kicking her ass wasn’t to diss her but so he wouldn’t have to kill her. But no, I guess her pseudo-romance plot with Sek’nos was a way more appropriate note for that character to end on.

At the bottom of the Chasm, Skal’nas and Xesh have found the Prime Gate. While Shae tries to talk Xesh out of being evil again, Lok battles Sek’nos. He tries to use his signature “Mind Twist” trick on the predor, but like what happened with Xesh, the Rakata’s mind is too dark for him to endure. Lok starts freaking out and Skal’nas runs him through with a Forcesaber. Really, dude, that trick of yours kind of sucks.

Meanwhile, Tasha Ryo and a cardboard cutout called Ters Sendon are trying to consult with A’nang’s holocron for help. For reasons never explained, Tasha is still the only one ever able to activate the device, so Ters Sendon cheats the plot and channels the Force through Tasha into the holocron. A’nang’s avatar appears and Tasha tells him that the Rakata are invading Tython. A’nang tells her that he can return the Force to her so that she can awaken the Tho Yor to defend the planet, something only a Je’daii seer can do (good thing she got that job!), but it will kill her. Ters Sendon says, “Stop, don’t, come back.”

Tasha takes the holocron to some giant pit filled with light in the Je’daii temple above the Chasm. She levitates into the column of light, which heals her eyes because, duh, why wouldn’t it. “I now understand who created the Tho Yor . . . and why . . .” she says. Is it just me or was this already fairly obvious? The Kwa created the Tho Yor to defend Tython after they failed to stop the Rakata the first time. We never find out what exactly was revealed to her, however, because she explodes.

In the Chasm, the Prime Gate opens at Skal’nas’s touch, becoming a window onto a multitude of worlds. Shae continues pleading with Xesh to no effect; he still goes to stand with Skal’nas, but offers her the chance to go with them. She refuses and starts talking about love and forgiveness or something, but Skal’nas is like “Jesus, will you shut up already?” and blasts her with Force lightning. Skal’nas claims that love is a lie, power is everything, and with the Prime Gate, he is power. “You are meat,” Xesh corrects him, and attacks. So really the power of love did nothing to dissuade him, it was just some guy messing with his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Tasha’s death activates the Tho Yor and they start shooting lasers everywhere and blowing up the Rakatan ships. The pillar of light that annihilated Tasha blasts into the Chasm, destroying the Prime Gate (pssst, nobody tell Skal’nas that there’s a Gree hypergate he could use to do the same thing, it’s right next-door, nobody say anything and maybe he won’t notice). “Betrayer!” Skal’nas shouts as he crosses blades with Xesh. “This is not betrayal,” says Xesh. “This is rebellion.” Just like in Star Wars! He disembowels the predor.

Famous Last Words: “GYAAAAH!” – Predor Skal’nas

For some reason, Shae and Lok are both still alive. They don’t have enough jetpacks to get back to the surface before the Chasm collapses, but just then the true hero of the story returns to save the day. Butch the flying rancor bravely risks her life by coming back to get them and carries them to safety. “I am not your hound. I am not your slave. I am not Xesh,” Xesh says to Skal’nas’s dissolving bones. “I am Tau.”

Everyone’s always in favor of saving Hitler’s brain, but when you put it in the body of a flying rancor, suddenly you’ve gone too far.

Some time later, the rest of the Rakatan fleet has been destroyed by either the Tho Yor, infighting among the various sub-predors, or the remaining ships of the Tythan worlds. The Je’daii decide to renounce their Forcesabers and go back to using regular swords, because constantly drawing on the dark side to power the weapons has put the order in peril. Daegen Lok refuses to give up his weapon, however, and claims that those who follow him won’t do so either. The Je’daii threaten to send him back to Bogan, but he says he’ll never let them put him there again: “It’s no place for a hero.” Well, at least he got a little of his coolness back at the very end.

Elsewhere, Xesh and Shae make out, then walk off to go backpacking across Tython. THE END!

Meditations

Frankly this last Dawn of the Jedi arc kind of sucked, and I can’t help feeling that the series as a whole ended up a failure. The setting and premise had a ton of potential, but very little of it made it into the plot or the characters. I don’t doubt that a lot of that is due to the license transfer to Marvel Comics killing the series prematurely, but even before this truncated conclusion, the story wasn’t being told in the best way it could have been. Xesh is a boring, lifeless character and a weak protagonist, and this setting was already rich and detailed enough to sustain a story without immediately introducing a brooding emo doofus from the outside galaxy.

Like I’ve said before, I love the Rakata and I loved seeing them at the height of their power in this series, but the story may have been better served by slowly building up the Tythan worlds and all the characters and factions that inhabit them over several issues or arcs before bringing in the Rakata. Of course, for that to happen the series would have had to run longer than 15 issues, and even before losing the Star Wars license Dark Horse Comics was notorious for canceling some of their most promising or creative titles when they were barely off the ground. Chalk it up to the hazards of the medium’s market.

I’m not sure why but I also enjoyed the art a lot less as the series went on. I won’t say it got worse, exactly, but there was so much screaming and snarling and spitting that characters were drawn a lot uglier and became less pleasant to look at. Lok’s, Xesh’s, Shae’s, and even Tasha’s character designs lost a lot of their uniqueness after their first appearances, their clothes and hair becoming more homogeneous and bland, less visually arresting. I don’t know much about comic books but that’s probably the last thing you want to happen in yours.

To discuss this volume in particular, though, it feels like watching a TV show that was canceled unexpectedly so the writers threw together one last episode to try to wrap everything up. I don’t know what John Ostrander and Jan Duursema’s (despite Ostrander being the sole writer, they both collaborated on the story) original plans were if the series had been allowed to continue unmolested, but presumably we wouldn’t have immediately jumped a year into the Rakatan invasion.

I suspect that that story arc would have ended much the same, however: with the Rakata’s defeat only marking the beginning of the Force Wars (plural), which according to previous lore were supposed to last ten years and involve the followers of the light and dark sides fighting one another with Force-imbued swords. The next arc probably would have seen the Je’daii, now wielding metal swords again, swaying from their ridiculous “balance” philosophy to the Force’s light side in order to combat Daegen Lok and his dark-side devotees. Because for a series called Dawn of the Jedi, these three arcs were really about anything but.

Speaking of balance, one thing that came up throughout Force War that I didn’t mention in the summary because it affected nothing was the idea that the war against the Rakata was seriously impeding the Je’daii’s ability to maintain their internal balance between the light and the dark. Well no shit, you idiots; you’re exclusively using weapons that only work if you give in to the dark side. That’s stupid. It’s never even adequately explained why the Je’daii need the Forcesabers at all. The Flesh Raiders wield them, and it was shown earlier that Forcesabers cut through Je’daii swords, but later on the timeline both the Jedi and Sith will wield metal swords made lightsaber-proof through the Force. Why didn’t the Je’daii just do that? Did they just not think of it?

The Je’daii most shown to be struggling with the dark side throughout this series is Shae Koda, the first Je’daii able to activate a Forcesaber. In this arc, there are several scenes of her giving in to her anger while battling the Rakatan forces, while Master Morpheus cautions her to control her feelings and stay in balance. This ultimately has nothing to do with anything; even after Xesh betrays her and rejoins the Rakata, she still forgives him and tries to save him despite him showing no signs of repentance. Why even bother stressing her anger issues so much in the final arc if they don’t factor at all into the climax or endgame?

Tasha Ryo may have been seriously shafted in terms of page-time, but at least she got to do something that mattered at the end. Shae doesn’t even get that. Nothing she does matters, only what’s done to her; it’s Skal’nas’s attack that prompts Xesh to action, not Shae’s words. From “Love Interest” to “Damsel in Distress” to “Plot Device,” the character arc of Shae Koda must be one of the least rewarding of any major character in the saga (I should probably cross my fingers when I say that).

Overall, okay first arc, pretty good second, fairly dismal third, although not entirely by the fault of the writers. I could say more about Sek’nos randomly dragging off Trill like a caveman, or the retired war criminals from the previous volume never being seen or mentioned again, or Hawk Ryo being completely marginalized after finally becoming interesting and losing a foot, or Daegen Lok becoming a huge pussy, but . . . nah. It’s disappointing, but I’m glad to be done with this series, and this era as a whole. It hasn’t been a promising start to our journey through the EU, and given that we’re about to encounter our first run of Kevin J. Anderson stories, it doesn’t look to be getting better any time soon.

2/5 Death Stars.