Star Wars Legacy 01. Broken.: Legacy: Broken: Broken v. 1 [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Where have you seen this before?

The Sith hold the reigns of empire, the Jedi have been massacred and the few survivors are in hiding, and the only hope for peace in the galaxy lies with a young blond-haired lad named Skywalker.

From Dark Horse's veteran Star Wars creative team comes Legacy, a new series set approximately 135 years following the Battle of Endor. For the contemporary reader just coming in off Revenge of the Sith, the story picks up with right where Revenge ended, a century later, with the bad guys ascendant and the good guys on the lam. Luke Skywalker's republic has crumbled, and his descendant (perhaps grandson or great grandson) doesn't appear able or willing to ride to the rescue. The new Star Wars anti-hero, Cade Skywalker is a surly, drug-addicted bounty hunter with only the smallest scrap of concern for anything but himself.

For fans of Republic, Dark Horse's long-running series featuring writer John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema's Quinlan Vos, Legacy will feel in many ways familiar. The plot is deliciously complex, motivations are conflicted, and the scripting is tight, with very few wasted words. Page layout and composition helps move the reader through the story, there are more than a few hyperkinetic splash panels of Jedi/Sith lightsaber duels, and the coloring is suitably dark and menacing. It's unfortunate, though, that Ostrander has Cade Skywalker teamed up with two bounty hunters (one male, one female), just as he had two opportunistic ne'er-do-wells (one male, one female) riding shotgun with Vos, and that Duursema has drawn one of them to look suspiciously like Quinlan. (See the attached image, Quin or Syn?, and judge for yourself.)

While cannibalizing elements from the films and from their own work, Ostrander and Duursema manage to make this series stand out from another comic book hatchet job by cleverly rearranging some of the traditional elements and by adding a few of their own. This time around the Sith have usurped the authority of the Imperial Remnant, but in failing to eliminate the Emperor leave behind an embittered enemy, one who forges an alliance with the Jedi. Now the red-robed Imperial Royal Guard are the force-using, lightsaber-wielding Imperial Knights, a unisex outfit clad in shiny red armor (at least one of whom, for unexplained reasons, speaks in pseudo Old English: "I am Ganner Krieg, Knight of the Empire. You have ... struck down she I have sworn my life to protect!"; "The Jedi are more skilled than we...."). Doing away with the Rule of Two, Ostrander has populated the Legacy universe with a cadre of Sith acolytes and assassins. They are ruled over by the mysterious Krayt, a hulking humanoid covered in bio armor, armor from New Jedi Order villains the Yuuzhan Vong, armor that may have kept Krayt alive for a century or more, armor that is slowly and painfully consuming him. Like Palpatine and other Sith Lords before him, Krayt seeks the means to thwart biological inevitability, a search that will lead him to Cade Skywalker.

While hardly original in overall conception, the attention to detail in both the story and the art makes this a book worth checking out.

Broken reprints issues #'s1,2,3,5,6,7 of the monthly Legacy comic magazine. Issue #4 was a one-off story that does not fit into the continuity of Broken and is likely to be reprinted in book form at a later date.

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The "Legacy" series begins 125 years after Luke Skywalker defeated the Emperor at Endor. At first the plot may sound familiar--the Empire is back, the Sith are back and the Jedi Order is again under siege---but there are plenty of interesting twists that make the story seem fresh.

"Broken" is an apt title for the first installment in the series as it presents broken alliances, broken government, broken friendships and the emotional brokenness of Cade Skywalker.

John Ostrander and Jan Duursema have created a complex and compelling protagonist for their series. Cade may be a Skywalker, but he's a scruffy-looking scoundrel in the best Han Solo tradition. Having forsaken his Jedi heritage, he's an amoral bounty hunter who is not averse to turning Jedi over to the Sith---provided the price is right.

The script is well written and the artwork is lovely, conveying a wonderful range of character emotion. Don't care much for the cover art though---it makes Cade and his crew look like teenagers desperately trying to be cool.

I had been anticipating this much-hyped series for several months and it really did deliver. I look forward to the next volume.

"Star Wars Legacy" is a comic-book series beginning 125 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. Cade Skywalker is a Jedi in training, but the elite order of peacekeepers is once again beset by dark forces -- a resurgence of the Sith on one side, no longer restricted only to two, and a growing new Empire on the other.

After Cade sees his father slain in a Sith attack, he foresakes the Jedi and, as he grows older, becomes an aggressive and highly successful bounty hunter. But it's hard to ignore your destiny, particularly when your most famous ancestor has learned how to return from beyond and dispense advice as a glowing spirit.

"Broken," the first volume in the new series, has plenty of action and has built the framework for an interesting storyline. It hasn't grabbed me yet, but I hope to see it develop into something exciting.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(n e t) editor