Customer Reviews

Broken (Star Wars: Legacy, Vol. 1) (v. 1)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

Over a century after Return of the Jedi, The New Republic is no more. The Jedi Knights are hunted by what appears to be a new Sith empire, and the Galactic Alliance has been decimated by war. The heroes of old that might have made things right are long dead, and the Jedi need an ally - have they found it in the massive Imperial Remnant that was also betrayed by the Sith? Or will these two previous enemies be unable to solve their differences, destroying each-other in the process...

"Broken" is dark, and seems to be inspired more by _The Empire Strikes Back_ than any of the other movies. The main characters may be fighting each-other, but the most important battles are taking place INSIDE of them (one former Jedi must try to overcome his perceived failures or fall into oblivion; a Sith battles the teachings of his order in the hopes of gaining more power). While many familiar aspects do exist in the series (Imperial Stormtroopers, lightsabers, Jedi, etc...), they work to support the new story ideas rather than dominate them.

Star Wars: Legacy Volume 1 collects the six issues from the series' "Broken" story arc (issues #1-3 and 5-7) and puts them into a single paperback volume. For those looking for an entry point into this aspect of the Star Wars universe, this is the graphic novel to buy.

I was pleasantly surprised when I read this book. Despite introducing all new star wars characters I think that the storyline is appealing and innovative in certain way. I also appreciate that the sith dogma of there only being a master and an apprentice is not kept in legacy. This allows there to have more lightsaber fights between jedi and sith lords which are illustrated in great detail. Anybody who is a star wars fan will probably enjoy this book

It goes without saying that I am a huge fan of the classic Star Wars trilogy. But the movies alone didn't satisfy my appetite; I wanted to experience even more of that Galaxy Far, Far Away. And in the earlier years of the Expanded Universe, that was satisfied by three major influences: the Star Wars RPG books published under license by West End Games, the novels published under Bantam Spectra, and of course, Dark Horse's line of comics.

In recent years (and in light of the prequels) I've felt like the Star Wars universe has become watered-down; too much of the same. There were a few stand-outs; the New Jedi Order series attempted to pass the torch and steer the EU in a new direction, but was often met with disgust and sometimes outright contempt (I suppose killing off Chewbacca and Anakin Solo had a lot to do with it). One of the other stand-outs was the Star Wars: Republic comic line, much of it penned by writer John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema, which took the ho-hum aftermath of Episode II and built up the Clone Wars era into an intruiging and satisfying series.

I've wanted a new and fresh approach to the EU, something with the classic formula of Star Wars, but with a different twist. And here it is: Star Wars Legacy!

The first volume introduces us into a galaxy gone mad, 137 years after the Battle of Yavin. The Galactic Alliance fell seven years prior after a brutal war with a rebuilt Galactic Empire under the rule of Emperor Roan Fel the Third. With the aid of the Yuuzhan Vong-twisted Darth Krayt and his One Sith, the Empire defeated the New Jedi Order and scattered the survivors across the galaxy, actively hunting down the remnants. But Emperor Fel is betrayed by the Sith, and Darth Krayt takes control of the Empire, along with the majority of the galaxy.

The heir to the Skywalker lineage, Cade Skywalker, survived the Battle of Ossus, but over the past seven years, has become a death-stick addicted pirate, struggling to forget both his past and the death of his father Kol. Accompanied by the lovely mechanic/love interest Deliah Blue and Jedi-loathing mercenary Jariah Syn, Cade and his crew ply the space-lanes as bounty hunters, looking to cash in on wanted beings, including Jedi.

Later installments focus on the various factions of the galaxy, be they Imperial Knights (the Empire's equivalent of the Jedi), squads of stormtroopers, individual Sith, and the Galactic Alliance (the Legacy Era Rogue Squadron makes appearances), which all come full circle to the main storyline; the struggle over the future of the galaxy, with Cade and crew caught in the middle.

All in all, I give this series 4.5 out of 5 stars. It's rich and dynamic, with memorable characters, great story-lines and plot developments, intruiging locales, while blending with the elements that made me fall in love with the franchise in the first place. I highly recommend it!

I will admit it, when I first heard about this comic I was very skeptical. Then again I am skeptical of most expanded universe items. But I was on vacation recently and decided to give volume 1 a go. In general I was pleasantly surprised about what I read.

Yes the plot does seem at least partially recycled from the first three movies. Universe taken over by the Sith again, Jedi almost hunted out again, what are the odds? Add to that the jee-golly cool elements in the setting. Like wouldn't it be cool if the Skywalker was a bounty hunter!

But where the setting and the story shines is in the characters and the dialogue, and honestly some of my favorite story points have more to do with the side characters than the main ones. It gets off to a shaky start but by the end of the first volume the story has proven very interesting.

While later volumes do seem to lag a bit introducing more and more side characters to tell more and more side stories. Overall it is a very nice read, with a healthy dose of Star Wars magic, and enough story differences that you don't really know what is going to happen next. Furthermore while it doesn't hit you over the head with expanded universe information (which I know next to nothing of), somebody who has quite a bit of that knowledge gets to see where the kids of there favorite characters ended up.

In any event what I'm here to tell you is this, I didn't have faith in this comic. Now I'm reading through volume 4. Give it a try, I was glad I did.

This is the Return of the star wars i know and love. Adventure. Good vs evil. with a bit of the heroes self doubt and darkness thrown in for good measure.

Cade Skywalker the scion of the Skywalker Legacy faces off against an Ascendant sith Empire Reborn.

There are Sith Knights, Jedi Knights, and Imperial Knights is this series Three factions of force wielding. lightsaber swinging Good and Evil Characters as well as those we would call grey like cade.

This is a really fantastic book! It's like all of the factions and rules in the star wars canon were mixed up in a salad, and then reassembled. You will definitely be surprised at how things have ended up. The line between good and evil is blurred. This allows Ostrander and Duursema to create some very interesting flaws in character development. Also, the Rule of Two is broken in this era which allow the creative team to come up with some very varied Sith!

Anyone who is a fan of Knights of the Old Republic (games) will really enjoy this book.

One of the best Star Wars comics to come along in years. Recaptures the spirit of the original trilogy very successfully without rehashing the plotline and proves that the series doesn't really need the movie characters to tell stories well (hear that, Del Rey?). Some of what makes it so fun is the way it stirs up the combinations of the archetypes the reader is already familiar with such as Imperial, Rebel, smuggler, Jedi, Sith and puts them together in all-new permutations.