I grew up a Star Wars fan, but never really followed much of the expanded universe stuff. I did read the three Timothy Zahn books back in the 90s, when I was an undergrad and looking for a fun distraction. Now that my children are showing a real interested in the Star Wars films, I've been keeping my eye out for affordable comics books to give them when they reach the appropriate age. I had never read any of the comic adaptations of the Zahn trilogy, so I was happy to find these at less than a buck a book. The story remains quite strong, and I think Mike Baron's script gives it room to breathe. There are a lot of characters and subplots to fit in, and I think he did an admirable job. What really blew my mind, though, was the artwork by Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard. It is highly stylish and incredibly dynamic. Good stuff all around. Dark Horse was obviously very concerned into getting a high quality product into the hands of highly demanding readers.Tuesday, September 20, 2011
I Loves Me Some: Star Wars - Heir to the Empire
I grew up a Star Wars fan, but never really followed much of the expanded universe stuff. I did read the three Timothy Zahn books back in the 90s, when I was an undergrad and looking for a fun distraction. Now that my children are showing a real interested in the Star Wars films, I've been keeping my eye out for affordable comics books to give them when they reach the appropriate age. I had never read any of the comic adaptations of the Zahn trilogy, so I was happy to find these at less than a buck a book. The story remains quite strong, and I think Mike Baron's script gives it room to breathe. There are a lot of characters and subplots to fit in, and I think he did an admirable job. What really blew my mind, though, was the artwork by Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard. It is highly stylish and incredibly dynamic. Good stuff all around. Dark Horse was obviously very concerned into getting a high quality product into the hands of highly demanding readers.
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3 comments:
I remember this series when it came out...great art and story...one of the best Star wars in comics!
To me, the "real" Star Wars comics were the Marvel ones; much like what happened later with Conan, the Dark Horse version struck me as slicker but somewhat less relevant additions to the mythos. I haste to say that this is solely due to my first reading the Marvel versions; it has nothing to do with the intrinsic quality of the Dark Horse books. (I even suspect that Dark Horse's Star Wars avoided most of the silliness that popped up from time to time in the Marvel incarnation -Giant Green Rabbits!!! although it probably lacked the urgency associated with being published in between movies).
The Thrawn trilogy had one great thing that Marvel eschewed: the continuous threat of the empire, despite the Emperor's and Vader's passing. That threat had so much more potential than some generic alien invasion!
HIGHLY recommend DH's "Infinities" stories, from late '90s, if you can find them used, floppies or trades.
Ep's 4-6, each retold with one thing going off-story, then telling how the story would have gone from there. (Ex. Luke dies on Hoth at start of EMPIRE.)
My kids, 4 + 7, reread them all the time.
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