Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith
“The Jedi who fall are the most dangerous of all.”
—line from a children’s rhyme
After three arcs of buildup, we finally arrive at the main-event
storyline of this series. Originally pitched as a 12-issue mega-arc but
ultimately split into this mini-series and its follow-up, Dark Lords of the Sith marks Kevin J. Anderson’s entry into Tales of the Jedi.
We open with the story of Naga Sadow in its original telling, which
differs drastically from the fully fleshed-out version we witnessed in The Fall of the Sith Empire.
Sadow’s Jedi heritage was a point of pride for him in KJA’s prequel comics, but here he’s identified as a pure-blooded Sith in rebellion against his Dark Jedi masters. Also, rather than the pink-skinned aliens with mustache-tendrils we’ve come to expect as the original Sith race, Sadow and his followers are basically human in appearance. He isn’t even the Dark Lord of the Sith; instead, Sadow is just a lowly priest, “exiled by his Dark Lord, branded a criminal by the Republic”—although the Republic didn’t even know he existed until he launched a full-scale war against them. (It looks like, as soon as Tom Veitch left the writing team, KJA completely overwrote his former colleague’s work with a new and largely implied back story. This is what happens when you open source ten thousand years of space history.)
Anyway, we pull back to see that all of this is just projected images from a holocron being studied by a young Jedi named Exar Kun. He has more questions to ask it about the history of the Sith, but at that moment his teacher, Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, walks in and catches him in the act. Vodo orders him to turn off the holocron, explaining that this knowledge is meant only for Jedi Masters.
Exar Kun complains that this doesn’t make sense, which is true, because the dude is clearly old enough to be a college graduate and hiding this basic knowledge of history from him is just going to make him want to know it even more. Kun relents, however, and there’s a nice panel of him and Master Vodo silhouetted against the sunrise, traveling side by side in one of their last moments of calm before the coming conflagration.
Meanwhile, in the Empress Teta system, Sith cultists/yuppie scum Satal Keto and his cousin, Aleema, are staging the most effortless coup in history. Using Sith illusions learned from the book they stole in the previous comic, Aleema turns their tutor’s tongue and parents’ guards’ swords into space snakes. Having gained the loyalty of the Tetan military and most of its corporations somewhere off-page, Satal and Aleema kill their parents by dunking them in molten carbonite. “I think you’ve discovered a new use for carbonite, Satal!” Aleema exclaims as they hang their parents’ frozen bodies on the wall, because no one would understand that this is Star Wars without a billion pointless callbacks to the movies.
After these two introductory scenes, it’s time to catch up with Ulic Qel-Droma, Nomi Sunrider, and the rest of the main cast, who after three story arcs are still dicking around on freaking Onderon. Ulic and Nomi’s relationship has progressed off-page to racing flying Dxun beasts together, which is like second base I think. True to character, Master Arca Jeth is here to cancel everyone’s fun with news of the Tetan coup. Since it was caused by Sith knowledge escaping Onderon under the Jedi’s watch, Arca has decided that he, Ulic, Nomi, Cay Qel-Droma, the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta, Oss Wilum, Dace Diath, Shoaneb Culu, Qrrrl Toq, Gho’r-Bon Zhuma, Gloomu Uptu, Klagnon Moogufu, and Mike Wallace are responsible for putting down this uprising.
Ulic and Nomi will have to deal with that on their own, though, because Arca sends the unimportant characters back to the Jedi planet Ossus while Ulic’s brother, Cay, and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta remain with him on Onderon to do nothing. While Arca gives Nomi one last lesson in Battle Meditation before she departs, Ulic heads down to the Jedi storeroom to investigate the late King Ommin’s Sith artifacts. When he touches one of the relics, the spirit of Freedon Nadd appears and warns him not to interfere with the work of the dark side. “You will be one of the great ones,” Nadd promises, “and there is another even greater than you.”
That foreshadowing transitions us to Master Vodo’s training academy
on the planet Dantooine, which you may remember as not the location of
the Rebel base in Episode IV. Under Vodo’s supervision, Exar Kun spars
with one of his fellow apprentices, Crado, whose lover, Sylvar, watches
from the sidelines. Crado and Sylvar are Cathars, one of the EU’s two
billion sentient cat aliens.
Crado gets his ass handed to him but can’t stop fanboying about how Exar Kun is so awesome he doesn’t even mind losing to him. Come on, dude, your girlfriend’s sitting right there. Vodo sends Sylvar to test herself against his “greatest student,” and she is eager to avenge her mate. “It’s time you learned that animal Jedi are no match for humans!” taunts Exar Kun. Yeah let’s just make him incongruously racist for no reason, why not? Sylvar fails Master Vodo’s test by striking out in rage and slashing Exar Kun’s face with her claws. Kun is enraged in turn, however, and Sylvar hypocritically claims that he is no Jedi, which prompts Kun to attempt to murder her.
With his wooden staff, imbued with the Force to resist the blade of a lightsaber, Vodo bats Exar Kun’s weapon from his hand, lecturing him on controlling his anger. Kun acknowledges that Vodo is still his master, but claims he doesn’t appreciate the extent of Kun’s abilities. Crado tosses over his own lightsaber, and Exar Kun and Vodo-Siosk Baas duel one another. Vodo easily bests his student, but Kun says that he still underestimates him and summons his original lightsaber back to his hand with the Force. Exar Kun overpowers Master Vodo by dual-wielding and finally cuts his staff in two.
“Hmm . . . A mighty Jedi . . . two lightsabers against my poor stick,” Vodo chastises him. “Exar Kun, you are the most formidable student I have ever had . . . But I sense something is missing in you. —An empty place hidden even from yourself—a place that remains unseen because no light escapes from that region of your heart.”
“Only I know my heart, Master,” Exar Kun replies.
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Hey how did this real art get into this Star Wars comic? |
A month later, Exar Kun shows up on Onderon. Posing as a Jedi archaeologist, he asks Cay Qel-Droma and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta to show him the late King Ommin’s collection of Sith relics. Master Arca sees through this ruse, however, and refuses to help Kun, telling him he is not welcome among them. Kun storms off to find the secrets of the dark side without their help and Arca just lets him go. I can’t see that possibly being a poor decision!
Exar Kun comes across two Naddists, Rask and Nebo, who are preaching the Good Word of Freedon Nadd in the middle of downtown Iziz. They are about to be stoned to death by a mob of irate Onderonians when Exar Kun steps in, because “no Jedi can support the politics of mob rule.”
The Naddists lead Kun to Freedon Nadd’s tomb on the moon of Dxun. It is guarded by wild beasts, which Kun quickly dispatches with his lightsaber, and walls of lightsaber-proof Mandalorian iron, which Kun quickly dispatches with his lightsaber. In the tomb, the ghost of Freedom Nads appears to Exar Kun, revealing two Sith scrolls hidden in a secret compartment of his sarcophagus. Hey, Arca, I told you you should have just shot it into the sun! As Kun exits the tomb, he is betrayed by Rask and Nebo, and quickly dispatches them with his lightsaber.
Elsewhere, in the boring part of the story, Ulic and Nomi lead a Republic fleet against the Ketos’ Krath forces in the Empress Teta system. Aleema uses Sith magic to create an illusory herd of space grazers, giant brain monsters dripping green snot that roamed the starlanes thousands of years ago, eating starships and generally being a nuisance. The Republic fleet is thrown into chaos, but Nomi recognizes this farce for what it is and counterattacks by striking at Aleema’s mind through the Force.
The last of Aleema’s illusions to fade are a flight of “chaos fighters.” Nomi assures the Republic commanders that these ships too are artificial, only to look like an idiot moments later when the real fighters hidden among the illusions kamikaze the fleet. Ulic Qel-Droma is struck by a large piece of shrapnel. As Nomi pulls the jagged metal from his body, she begs him to hold to the light and resist the dark influence of his wound, even though there’s only the most tangential connection between the dark side and his injury. So why is getting hit with a piece of an exploding spaceship the same as being stabbed by a Nazgûl blade?
Meanwhile, the Sith scrolls found by Exar Kun lead him to the planet Korriban, homeworld of the Sith and most evil planet in the galaxy. He sets down in the Valley of the Dark Lords and is promptly attacked by zombies. Freedon Nadd’s disembodied voice bids him to take shelter in a nearby temple. Kun runs inside, only to be sealed in by a rockslide.
Kun presses onward into the temple and comes across a giant crystal filled with the tormented souls of vanquished Jedi who “opposed the ancient Sith and lost.” I’m assuming this is something that happened when the Jedi exterminated the Sith species after the Great Hyperspace War, because no Jedi even set foot on Korriban in The Fall of the Sith Empire, let alone die there and get their spirits imprisoned in any crystals. Either that or KJA just forgot.
“Perhaps they have suffered enough—,” muses the shade of Freedon Nadd, materializing beside his reluctant pupil, “—perhaps it is time for us to liberate these long-dead Jedi. Perhaps it is time to liberate you, Exar Kun.” Nadd triggers another cave-in, destroying the Jedi spirits in the crystal and shattering Exar Kun’s skeleton in a hundred places. Kun’s broken body lies in the rubble, unable to move. He begs for Nadd to help him, but Nadd sneers and tells him that if he wants to live he must call on the power of the dark side to save himself.
Kun cries out for Master Vodo, and on the other side of the galaxy, Vodo senses his student’s despair. “Oh, Exar . . . Exar! It is as I predicted! Darkness has found you!” he laments. Vodo enters a meditation trance to attempt to draw the light side around Exar Kun in a protective cocoon, but Freedon Nadd appears and lashes out at him with the dark side, preventing him from reaching his apprentice. This marks Vodo-Siosk Baas as the only character who makes any attempt to prevent Exar or Ulic from falling to the dark side in these comics. Great Jediing, guys!
Vodo, Sylvar, and Crado are on their way to a great Jedi convocation on the planet Deneba. Every Jedi in the galaxy has gathered here to discuss the threat posed by teenage hooligans Satal and Aleema Keto. Damn, guys, let’s work on our proportional response here. The assemblage is chaired by Odan-Urr, our old friend from the first two stories in this era. One thousand years later and he’s still trucking.
“The dark siders act in complete secrecy, until the leaders of society have fallen to their evil seductions. Then they strike with great suddenness, bringing down civilizations it took aeons to build,” cautions some old dude named Shayoto, foreshadowing Revenge of the Sith. Ulic, whose sucking chest wound still hasn’t healed, addresses the Jedi. To avoid all-out war, he proposes infiltrating the Krath, learning their secrets, and destroying them from the inside. The other Jedi vehemently reject this plan, with Master Arca claiming it will lead Ulic only to destruction.
At the same time, Exar Kun is wrestling with his own destruction. The sun slowly sinks in the sky as Kun lies dying, constantly badgered by Freedon Nadd to surrender to the dark side and save himself. He rejects Nadd’s offer at first, then eventually starts bargaining, promising that he will turn to the dark side without really meaning it. Finally, after a series of time-elapse panels achingly effective at depicting his slow slide into despair, he gives in. Instantly, his skeleton knits itself back together and he rises to his feet with a wordless howl.
Across the galaxy, the Jedi on Deneba hear his cry through the Force. “A sound . . . like a man being eaten alive . . . or is it the wind?” muses Ulic. Everyone pauses while they digest how profoundly dissimilar these two sounds are, then they are attacked by droids.
A bunch of Krath war droids (whose design would later inspire that of General Grievous, somehow) rain down from an enemy ship in orbit while the Jedi’s own droid slaves turn on them. Master Arca shows off a technique he developed during the Great Droid Revolution of short-circuiting droids through the Force. “Just be careful!” he chastises Ulic. “A Jedi is as fallible as any man . . . You must learn to sense even the threats you can’t see! A Jedi never knows wh—unh . . . UNNH!” Then he gets shot in the back and dies.
Meanwhile, Exar Kun gets attacked by Sith dogs and has to use the dark side to reach his lightsaber because Freedon Nadd somehow blocks him from using regular telekinesis. Whenever anyone in the movies talked about being seduced by the dark side, I somehow never took that to mean repeatedly being put in impossible situations that literally forced you to either use the dark side or die horribly. That seems less like seduction than accumulating enough dark side points to shift your morality alignment.
Ulic vows to avenge his master by going through with his plan to infiltrate the Krath. Odan-Urr and Ood Bnar, the Jedi who is also a tree, try to talk him out of it but he blows them off so they, like everyone else, wash their hands of his destruction. Nomi tries to convince him to stay, then to let her go with him, but he won’t be swayed from his path. He kisses her on the landing pad and leaves her in tears.
On Empress Teta, Ulic finds himself at a public execution of rebellious carbonite miners overseen by Aleema and Satal. A group of assassins leaps from the crowd, attempting to overthrow the Krath, but Ulic sees this as a good chance to ingratiate himself with the Ketos and ruthlessly murders the heroic rebels for resisting tyranny. He rationalizes it to himself with the knowledge that the miners are doomed to fail anyway . . . even though the dude literally has his hands on Aleema’s throat and is just about to kill her. Our tragic hero!
What Ulic doesn’t know is that Aleema and Satal knew he was on the planet the whole time and set the whole thing up to . . . see what he would do, I guess? Hey, nice evil plan, idiots. You almost died!
While this stupidity happens, Exar Kun is finally making his way to Yavin 4, the final resting place of another stupid villain. He steps out onto the jungle moon’s surface, wearing only a green spandex bodysuit for some reason, and immediately finds that he has pissed off the locals. Naga Sadow’s retinue of Massassi warriors has devolved and mutated over the intervening millennium into savage lobster-people. They knock him unconscious with Frisbees and tie him to a Celtic cross in their temple.
The Massassi priest, Zythmnr, affixes an ancient Sith amulet to a statue and invokes some incantation, summoning a massive Sith wyrm from the basement. Exar Kun falls off the cross and the wyrm starts squeezing him to death with its tendrils. Freedon Nadd’s disembodied voice warns that this creature is no mere test, but death itself—unlike the time every bone in Kun’s body was shattered or the time he was attacked by demonic hounds. Those were just tests.
[Continuity Note: Years later, the Sith wyrm from this comic would be identified in Wizards of the Coast’s The Dark Side Sourcebook as a baby space slug that had attached itself to Naga Sadow’s spaceship as he fled to Yavin 4 a millennium earlier. Unable to tame the creature, Sadow used alchemy to mutate it into a colossal snake monster with no resemblance to a space slug, because why not?]
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This image of a Sith wyrm from a reference book also bears no resemblance to the one in the comic, so… |
“Naga Sadow knew the prophecies . . . he hated the Dark Lords! He feared your coming! He spawned monsters with his alchemy to destroy you!” Nadd explains. Maybe I’ve just forgotten what’s happening in this comic but that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Anyway, this is the tipping point for Exar Kun and he decides to turn his back on the pathetic Jedi forever. “Naaadd! I hate you!” he screams, adding, “Yxxngth bnrrrw kkl! Nkrttw flgkllm shprrlt mdnnq!” as he summons the Sith amulet to his hand. It is kind of cool that he can spontaneously speak the Sith language upon finally turning to the dark side, and kind of less so that the Sith language is just someone mashing consonants on a keyboard.
The amulet amplifies Kun’s rage “a hundred thousand times,” channeling it into an energy blast that comes out of his hand and goes into the monster’s face. Freedon Nadd is delighted. His ghost appears and begins instructing Exar Kun in the alchemical process necessary to restore him to life. Because of course that was his plan this whole time. Exar Kun tells Nadd to piss off, but Nadd is too excited by the prospect of reacquiring his long-lost power.
“Power? Yes . . . there is power . . .” muses Kun, then turns the amulet against his mentor, destroying the specter. As he dies for the second time, Nadd appears to Satal and Aleema Keto and warns them about Exar Kun. Then he turns into a ghost skeleton.
Aleema’s like “Well that was weird” then goes back to whatever she was doing.
Satal Keto is still suspicious of Ulic and has decided to repay him for his valor by sending him to the torture chamber. Ulic claims that he is no longer a Jedi and wishes to learn the ways of the dark side, but Satal doesn’t believe him and sticks a giant needle of Sith poison into his abdomen.
An indeterminate length of time later (this whole series takes place over an indeterminate length of time), Ulic’s friends decide that he’s in over his head and Nomi, Cay, and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta arrive in the Empress Teta system to save him. Nomi infiltrates the city of Cinnagar and reveals herself as a Jedi to the Krath guards, allowing herself to be captured.
Ulic is busy updating the Krath’s air-to-ground defenses with lasers when Satal Keto informs him of Nomi’s capture and has her dragged in. Ulic suggests she be taken to the dungeon for interrogation but Satal insists she is too dangerous and should be killed immediately. Forced to choose between his girlfriend and his absurd scheme, Ulic compromises by announcing that he will personally execute her the following morning. For some reason Satal is okay with this and has her locked up instead of forcing Ulic to kill her right there. Ulic looks at her as she is dragged away and “the accusation in the eyes of Nomi Sunrider will stay with him for the rest of his life.”
Later, Ulic records a message to Nomi and conceals it in a maintenance droid, telling her that he will attempt to rescue her but if she can escape on her own she should go for it. Aleema comes in and Ulic sends the droid on its way as they pork, but it is intercepted by Satal, who sends his guards to kill Nomi and an assassin to kill Ulic. This is not a very suspenseful twist however because within three pages Ulic has effortlessly disposed of the assassin and Nomi has used Battle Meditation against her captors and escaped.
Cay and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta finally show up to help and Ulic denounces Satal to the other Jedi as the man who killed Arca Jeth. Ulic strikes down Satal Keto out of hate, but Satal dies laughing, revealing that the Sith poison he injected into Ulic is ignited by anger. Ulic’s friends attempt to convince him to leave, but he flings them away from him in his poison-induced rage. Nomi refuses to abandon Ulic but Cay and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta pull her away, promising they will return later with “about a thousand Jedi” to save Ulic and end the threat of the Krath (spoilers: they won’t).
As they escape into hyperspace, Nomi reflects on how her heart has been broken yet again, and admits to herself that Ulic has betrayed them all and is lost to them forever. I don’t know, lady, did you like not hear the dying evil guy? They kind of got your boyfriend hooked on drugs, it’s not really all his fault.
At this point Art Wetherell takes over pencils and the art becomes a cartoony mess, ruining the best thing this book had going for it. Nomi, Cay, and the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta prepare for their return to Empress Teta. Instead of the thousand Jedi they promised, they have instead recruited Dace Diath, Shoaneb Culu, Qrrrl Toq, and ’80s hair metal band Oron Kira and the Beast-Riders.
Before leaving, the Scooby Gang has to get the blessing of the senior Jedi, including Odan-Urr, Ood Bnar, Thon, Vodo-Siosk Baas, and some other guys who are just there to fill chairs. The Jedi elders are in favor of hanging Ulic out to dry, even after Cay explains that he’s been subjected to mind-altering poison. They were so concerned about the Krath that they convened this massive council to decide how to handle them, yet they have no problem with one of their own apparently defecting to the enemy. Strategy!
The Jedi Masters reluctantly allow the mission, but command that if Ulic has chosen the dark side, he must be left to experience the full consequences of his actions. “That is the Jedi way,” Thon explains. “Once the choice is made, the way is through, not back,” Vodo adds. “If Qel-Droma is destroyed, others will not perform the destruction. He will destroy himself.”
The Jedi are not the best support system a conflicted twenty-something could ask for.
Meanwhile, Exar Kun has discovered the ancient warship that brought Naga Sadow to Yavin 4. He escapes the moon and arrives in Cinnagar with a coterie of Massassi bodyguards, pledged to his service after he killed the Sith wyrm. As he uses the Force to track down the remaining students of Freedon Nadd, the amulet on his hand begins to glow.
Inside the royal palace, Aleema is giving Ulic the Sith amulet she and Satal got from King Ommin in the previous book. “I am enjoying our contest . . . but I’m winning too easily,” she explains. “Perhaps I want you to be stronger. Perhaps I’d like to be conquered.” Unfortunately, that’s as Fifty Shades as things get before the Jedi suddenly begin attacking the city.
[Continuity Note: According to the official Star Wars timeline, Dark Lords of the Sith takes place three years after Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon, but a text box in this scene states that Oron Kira kidnapped Princess Galia from Iziz only “months ago.” The shorter timeframe makes sense of why the Jedi were on Onderon for so long, so I’m not sure when or why it was decided that each story arc spanned a year.
[As if stretching out the short buildup arcs across four years wasn’t enough, the massive galactic war, when it finally comes, feels like it can’t take more than a few weeks. The scope of the war was expanded in later sources, beginning with the 2002 GameCube game The Clone Wars (no relation to the 2008 animated series The Clone Wars, the 2003 animated series Clone Wars, the 1996 animated series Beast Wars, or the 1997 Disney film spinoff Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show).
[Basically, the timeline of this entire series doesn’t quite work. The text itself gives only a few vague suggestions of how much time has passed, with events that logically should be spaced out, like Exar Kun’s fall to the dark side, feeling cramped and stacked one on top of the other due to the rotating mini-series format. The official timeline goes too far the other way, with the Jedi apparently hanging out on Onderon long after the crisis there has been resolved. What was supposed to be one of the biggest wars in galactic history is then wrapped up in a single story arc with only a few small-scale battles shown. Thanks, Oboma!]
The Jedi invade the palace and Nomi dispels Aleema’s dark-side illusions with her Battle Meditation. Aleema runs to Ulic for help, and Ulic asks Nomi why she came back after he explicitly told her not to, prompting her to finally admit that she loves him. Ulic apparently has no reaction worth seeing because we abruptly cut to the battle outside for one page. Oss Wilum sees Exar Kun walking around and says to himself, “I have a strange feeling . . . that I am going to know that Jedi . . . and learn from him.” Tom Veitch, Kevin J. Anderson, whichever one of you wrote that line (I have a sneaking suspicion it was KJA) needs to go back to comic school and learn how to do foreshadowing.
Cay and Nomi tell Ulic that he’s being controlled by the Sith poison and his own anger and he needs to come back to the light and leave with them, but he resents being manipulated by Nomi’s Battle Meditation and zaps her with his amulet. Cay and Qrrrl Toq wrestle him to the ground and are dragging him back to their ship when Nomi’s suddenly like “nvm” and decides they should leave him after all. Although Ulic clearly isn’t in his right mind, and in fact looks like a junkie in withdrawal, Nomi says that it has to be his own choice to come back and Qrrrl Toq instantly agrees.
“Ulic . . . I don’t regret coming back here,” she says. “I’ve learned something I should have known before. Some things are not resolved by force or struggle . . . or even by love. If a Jedi chooses the dark side, he must be allowed to reap the consequences of his choice. I’m in charge of this mission . . . We will leave without you.”
Only Cay seems to realize how badly they’re screwing over their friend, but his dissent is overruled and the Jedi withdraw from the planet. Notice how Nomi followed Ulic to Empress Teta after he told her not to, came back after he told her to leave, and even tried to use the Force to make him change his mind. At no point did she have any concern for what Ulic wanted until after she expressed her feelings for him and he forcibly rejected her, even though his mental state was impaired. Then all of a sudden she became this big stickler for “the Jedi way.”
Nomi Sunrider is kind of a bitch.
Wounded by black magic (apparently), wracked with grief and guilt over the death of his master, drugged by Aleema, tortured by droids, and infected with Sith poison, Ulic Qel-Droma doesn’t so much fall to the dark side as he is pushed into it bodily while all his friends stand around posting gifs of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.
“Something is over between Ulic and Nomi . . .” reads the following text box. “A choice has been made . . . a path taken . . . Bright possibilities are closed off . . . forever.”
Aleema admits that she has known all along that Ulic’s plan was to infiltrate the Krath and destroy them from within, but she’s glad that Ulic picked her over Nomi. They go back to making out, but Ulic is cockblocked yet again when Exar Kun bursts through the door and blasts Aleema with his mind-laser.
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“Ow, my uterus!” |
Kun and Ulic begin to duel but they are evenly matched as swordsmen. As they fight, the Sith amulets worn by each of them begin to glow, and suddenly they are enveloped in a vision from a thousand years ago, when the Sith were being driven to extinction by the Republic. You know, the awesome part from The Fall of the Sith Empire that wasn’t actually in The Fall of the Sith Empire.
The reigning Dark Lord addresses the two fallen Jedi, somehow using the amulets to communicate with them across time: “Exar Kun, because of you, the Sith will never die . . . You have rightly earned the title of—Dark Lord of the Sith!” He pronounces Ulic to be Kun’s first and foremost apprentice and burns symbols of lordship into their foreheads, explaining that by reuniting the amulets they have become part of the Sith’s Grand Design to secure their future even in an age where they succumb to extinction.
[Continuity Note: This Sith Lord goes unnamed in the comic, saying only, “It matters not who I am. My power is all that concerns you.” He was identified years later in Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Characters (2002) as Marka Ragnos, the Dark Lord who preceded Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow in The Golden Age of the Sith. Presumably the author made this connection based solely on their similar hats, because there are some problems with it. First of all, Ragnos was dead before the Republic even knew that the Sith Empire existed. Literally the first time we ever see the Sith is during his funeral procession. But somehow he’s supposed to be leading the Sith again years after his death and his successor’s exile. Secondly, there is another Sith in an identical hat standing right next to the one who speaks to Exar and Ulic. He must be Marka Ragnos too!]
“Let it be so, Qel-Droma . . . The ancient Sith have spoken,” says Exar Kun, as they sanctify their union with a manly bro-shake. “Together we will bring down the galaxy!”
“Yes,” Ulic agrees. “Let it be so.”
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| “The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?” |
Meditations
Okay, so despite its many shortcomings, Dark Lords of the Sith is easily the best Tales of the Jedi installment so far and, for a Star Wars comic, fairly good in its own right. The art is the standout factor here, at least for the first five issues. I don’t know enough about drawing to talk like I know a lot about drawing, but the drawing here is the best drawing yet! Nomi actually looks like a normal human woman. It’s kind of shocking after so much of this:
Exar Kun is an interesting character, though the things that make him interesting—his scholarly appetite, his fall to the dark side through curiosity, his relationship with Master Vodo and that relationship’s usurpation by Freedon Nadd—are unfortunately abbreviated due to his entire character arc needing to be set up and completed within six issues. Ideally, Kun would have had his own introductory arc alongside Ulic and Nomi, but he was created by Kevin Anderson for his Jedi Academy novels and wasn’t part of Tom Veitch’s plans when he began the comic.
The other characters are much less memorable, including the ones we’ve been following from the start of this series. Ulic’s fall to the dark side, the moment his whole character arc has been building to, could have been handled much better and wasn’t very believable as such. Also consider that when Tom Veitch was developing the story, he didn’t intend for Ulic ever to be redeemed. Maybe it’s just me, but I see the potential for far more emotional resonance in a Jedi going bad for good reasons than in a Jedi going bad because he was all but forced into it by external influences and his friends being dicks.
Speaking of the Jedi, a common criticism of George Lucas’s prequels is that they depicted the Jedi Council as a bunch of stuck-up jerks who were practically asking for Anakin Skywalker to turn on them. That may be true, but apparently Lucas wasn’t the only writer who envisioned the senior Jedi leadership as not lifting a finger to help out one of their own undergoing a spiritual crisis, even in the face of impending galactic war.
The TotJ Jedi are actually less likable in this regard, as Lucas’s prequel Jedi are mostly just too out of touch to recognize the danger. Here they’ve got an Anakin Skywalker surrogate announcing his intention to infiltrate the dark side and blatantly going over to help the enemy in a time when they all sense impending darkness and destruction, and they’re still so ridiculously laissez-faire about it. “Whatever, let’s just see how this plays out.” Smooth move, idiots!
The biggest drawback, however, is the writing, and I don’t even mean the oftentimes underwhelming dialogue. Maybe it was just the style of comics at the time, but every other page is accompanied by a text box explaining the scene we just read or describing how the characters feel or narrating events that would have been much more effectively conveyed through the visuals alone.
Still, there’s enough going on here to elevate Dark Lords of the Sith above most of the rest of this series. The introduction of Exar Kun and Ulic’s initiation into the Sith give Tales of the Jedi the much-needed adrenaline boost it’s been missing, and the death of Arca Jeth is a welcome change-up in the cast. It’s great following Exar Kun around the galaxy in his search for dark-side knowledge, visiting sites of great power and watching as he slides down the nonsensical slope into evil. The Krath stuff is pretty dull, but what else is new?
4/5 Death Stars.
Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith, the Official Audio Drama
I’m not sure what the story is behind the two Tales of the Jedi audio adaptations, who decided that this story needed to be dramatized this way or why they never finished adapting the series. The Old Republic era is my personal favorite section of EU lore, and prior to beginning this project I didn’t even know that these adaptations existed. Having now listened to both of them, I’m still not really sure they exist.
Dark Lords of the Sith is a much more faithful adaptation than its predecessor. Unlike the dramatization of the first three TotJ arcs, it contains no major additional scenes or subplots absent from the comics. The fact that it adheres so strictly to the comics’ original structure, however, just makes it that much less interesting to listen to. While Tales of the Jedi occasionally veered into so-bad-it’s-good territory, Dark Lords of the Sith remains firmly in the realm of so-boring-it’s-boring. The only standout voice performances are those of the actors playing Exar Kun and Vodo-Siosk Baas, though fans of Dragon Age: Origins may get a kick out of how uncannily similar Freedon Nadd sounds to DLC golem companion Shale.
The most notable alterations include the Twi’lek Jedi Tott Doneeta being nearly completely excised (demonstrating what a superfluous character he is) and Nomi Sunrider almost getting gang raped by prison guards (because it wouldn’t be Star Wars if the lead female character weren’t in some way objectified or threatened with sexual assault). “Lord Satal wishes to have words with you,” a Krath guard informs her as he retrieves her from the dungeon. “Then we’ll have more of you than that!” another adds, to a chorus of laughter from his friends.
(Nomi gets the last word, though: “Poor brutes. Don’t you know you should be interested in a girl for her mind . . . and what she can do with it?” she asks as she uses Battle Meditation to make them all murder each other. Then later on she punches out Aleema for stealing her man. You go, girl!)
There’s also a short additional scene when Exar Kun arrives in Cinnagar to hunt down his rivals. After completely wiping out the docking bay where he lands his ship, Kun confronts the last surviving attendant, begging for help amidst the smoking rubble. “No one will help you. No one even knows,” he says, sounding almost remorseful. He explains that he used the dark side to blind every scanning technician in the city, allowing him to approach the planet and destroy the docking bay completely unnoticed. This is the most impressive use of the Force he’s demonstrated thus far that doesn’t involve shooting lasers out of a magic amulet, and Kun’s characterization in the comic could have benefited from a similar depiction.
“Who are you?” the attendant wonders, coughing on smoke and blood. “I?” Exar Kun repeats, as if asking the question of himself. “Soon I shall be the man who conquered this planet. The man who rules the galaxy. But for the moment, I am the man who murdered you.”
Vodo-Siosk Baas, one of the few sympathetic Jedi characters in the comic, is actually improved by this adaptation. Following the death of Master Arca, he becomes Ulic’s new mentor and joins his friends in trying to dissuade him from his plan to infiltrate the Krath. Not only does this give one of the book’s more interesting characters more to do, it also integrates him more firmly into the main plot. Vodo becomes a bridge between the parallel story arcs of Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma, which run almost completely separate until the end of the comic.
I also like the unspoken way this added character relationship plays into a line of dialogue Exar Kun has at the very end of the audio version that was not in the comic: “Let it be so, Ulic Qel-Droma. We were brothers as Jedi, now let us be brothers as Dark Jedi.” Of course they were brothers; they even had the same father figure for a while, even if neither of them knows it.
This audio drama might be worth listening to if one were to edit it down to just the parts relevant to Exar Kun’s story arc. His interactions with Master Vodo and the corrupting shade of Freedon Nadd are genuinely enjoyable, and the actors playing these three characters are the only ones who attempt to put any energy or emotion into their performances. The rest of the play, which mostly revolves around Ulic, Nomi, and the Ketos, is horrifically dull and can be cut out completely.
All in all, I don’t feel right calling it terrible, because there was clearly effort put into this production . . . but to what end?
To what end?
1.5/5 Death Stars.
