Reviews

Dark Empire I, by Tom Veitch, Cam Kennedy

messyshelves's review against another edition

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4.0

I decided to read this after watching The Rise of Skywalker - which honestly, I didn't like. Maybe that's why I gave this such a high rating or maybe it really was that good. I loved the interaction between our three heroes - especially everything with Han and Leia because I will go down with that ship no matter what Disney does to it.

Are spoilers still a thing for a comic that's nearly 30 years old? Whatever I'm doing a spoiler cut anyways.
SpoilerEven here as much as I enjoyed this comic I'm not into the whole Palpatine clone thing. While this was much better than what was done in The Rise of Skywalker it still cheapens Vader's sacrifice and I'm not into that.

I did like Luke struggling with the Dark Side and I do wish we got to see a bit more of that. I also loved how powerful Leia was in this and I want to see more of it.

And that's it really. I may end up changing my review to a 3/5 at some point cause I'm definitely just riding the wave of disappointment so...

auroralee1013's review against another edition

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2.0

I'm not really a comic expert but...
I love the story.
The art is horrible (or, at least, not to my liking).
The writing is... not great, except for Han. (Has the writer seen Star Wars at all, or maybe just skipped to the Han scenes?)

matttibby's review

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3.0

I was not too impressed. Interesting story, but man, will this writer stop recycling lines from the movie! It feels like every other line was a direct quote from the original trilogy. Was he forced to use those same lines over and over again?

pnknrrd85's review

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2.0

I've never been less excited to read a Star Wars tie-in graphic novel. The art didn't look anything like the characters, the coloring was unnatural and off-putting, and the novel just didn't translate well. This was just, bad.

peregrineace's review

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3.0

This story fills in the gap between the birth of the Solo twins and their younger brother. Elements of this story are interspersed in other SW EU novels. A good comic collection; recommended to SW fans.

rabbithero's review

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3.0

Technically 2 stars, but I'll give it 3 for bias. Thing is, I'm just so sick of Star Wars. But when I *first* read this series, as back issues at my local comic shortly after their release, there was next to nothing. No novels, no self-serious cartoons, no comics and endless spin-offs. Just the three movies and an assortment of unsuccessful novelties (like the underrated Droids cartoon), that were exceedingly hard to track down.

And then *THIS* arrives, and while now I can see how derivative it is, it felt for the first time like immediately accessible "MORE STAR WARS!", which made it great.

But reading it now, it's not super great. All the characters are flat and cold. Leia seems wildly out of character. Luke and Han are good, but there's still a lot of unnecessary vagueness in Luke's behavior. The plot is sort of all over the place while taking place over the course of a single battle, which makes all the stakes seem both protracted and glossed over. The color palette is great, and the way the characters are stylized rather than being slavish recreations of Fisher et al is appreciated, but all the characters look pretty much the same. Plus, its hurt by the fact that now Star Wars is overdone, its fanbase has shown itself to be hateful and petty (speaking generally), and its constant needs to give us all "MORE STAR WARS!" has made everyone and everything connected to the franchise poorer by extension.

Except for Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda is perfect.

Some of this still holds up. But mostly, its damaged by baggage it accrued through no fault of it's own. It's less inspired to the modern eye than it was to my teenaged eyes, discovering it in that irreplaceable vacuum that was the early 90s, but it wasn't really that inspired to begin with.

booknooknoggin's review

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3.0

I can see how long time fans would think this was great if there was nothing following the Return of the Jedi film, but this wasn't really that good. It was an okay read. The art was kinda wonky and psychedelic looking at times with the strange color use.

messyshelves's review

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4.0

I decided to read this after watching The Rise of Skywalker - which honestly, I didn't like. Maybe that's why I gave this such a high rating or maybe it really was that good. I loved the interaction between our three heroes - especially everything with Han and Leia because I will go down with that ship no matter what Disney does to it.

Are spoilers still a thing for a comic that's nearly 30 years old? Whatever I'm doing a spoiler cut anyways.
SpoilerEven here as much as I enjoyed this comic I'm not into the whole Palpatine clone thing. While this was much better than what was done in The Rise of Skywalker it still cheapens Vader's sacrifice and I'm not into that.

I did like Luke struggling with the Dark Side and I do wish we got to see a bit more of that. I also loved how powerful Leia was in this and I want to see more of it.

And that's it really. I may end up changing my review to a 3/5 at some point cause I'm definitely just riding the wave of disappointment so...
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