Customer Reviews

Star Wars: Dark Lords of Sith Pb

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After reading most of the reviews here I was rather skeptical about purchasing this series. I was fortunate enough to find the comic books and have not read the TPB version of this series. This comic pleasantly surprised me. I've read some really awful stuff by Dark Horse "Infinity's End" for example, but this is not like that in any way. In the context of the grand Star Wars universe this fits in very nicely and addresses many things not mentioned anywhere else such as: who were the Sith, pre-lightsaber era, discovery of hyperspace routes and a bit more. The Jedi are portrayed much as they were in The Phantom Menace as ambassadors and peacemakers not as "wimpy whiners" as was mentioned in another review. The artwork is easy to quibble about and the starships look like something an Ewok would have designed, but it was nice to see Korriban, and get the back-story on Naga Sadow, and to see a developing Coruscant. All in all a very good read worthy of purchase.

I purchased and read this book today and was rather diappointed. It lacked the action and plot of the other books in the series. I chose this one over another in the series(not enough money to buy both) and if I had to do it again, I'd buy the other. The plot was weak as there were only two fight scenes. The poor artistry left you wondering where you were supposed to be reading on the page. The characters lacked development and the ones that they did develop, well, they turned out so horribly that they shouldn't have bothered. The main redeeming factors in this book are the few places where something important happens. The primary important incident is a brother and sister stumbling across the Sith Empire and reestablishing connections, and war, between the Sith and Republic. It's interesting to get a peek at the Sith Empire and see how their social structure is set up and how Naga Sadow came to power. If you want a good read though, try the Sith War or another title in the series. This one isn't worth the money.

'Golden Age of the Sith', as the other Tales of the Jedi books, is a bit of a hard sell for fans and non fans. Fans of Star Wars will buy this book to complete their collections, and just might enjoy it for it's historic tale set in the far past of the Star Wars continuity. However, the tale is so bizarre that it bears almost no resemblance to the current Star Wars universe. For some it might be a drawing point, but I think others will be turned off by this. Non fans will turn away, as the story isn't particularly intriguing and the art is sub-par. The rest of the 'Tales of the jedi' stories are much better.

This book is really only worth one star, but it got two only due to the fact that it is so much better than its sequel. The art is very cluttered and drab, the script horrible, corny and with many grammatical mistakes. The artists seemed to have a lot of trouble drawing the Odan-Urr character. The plot is stupid and pointless, the characters uninteresting, and too much time is wasted on plot points which really have no consequence. The Jedi are kinda wimpy whiners, and their lightsaber external power supplies were silly. The Sith were a bunch of stupid, bickering idiots, as were Jori and Gav, who desperately need to get a life.

This is one of the very worst SW comics available on the market, and I recommend that you stay away from it.

I found this to be a mixed package. Once again, I state that I've never been a Kevin J. Anderson fan. His earlier novels and comics were pretty good, but after his first few the quality virtually vanished.

The story of Gav and Jori is a bit of a bore, and even though you're supposed to feel sympathetic toward these two, I just didn't feel it. The Sith, meanwhile, turn out to be a bunch of squabling fools. The only character who is really worth a dime is Naga Shadow.

The art by Carrasco was good, though. His art style is well-fitted for the ancient 'Tales of the Jedi' series. (Any attempts to transplant him into 'modern' Star Wars, though, don't prove very fortunate, as 'Leviathan' proved.) The Sith architecture and garb is well-done, with beautiful vistas and the Egyptian-style tombs and architecture. Even the warships have a certain flair to them.

Overall, the art's about as good as the story is lackluster. Insight into the ancient Sith is unfortunately little. Flip through it, take a look at the nice, old-style art, and then I reccomend putting it back on the shelf.

This Comic can be found listed 3 ways. I am reviewing the first of the 3 that is called: Tales of the Jedi - The Sith War written by Kevin J Anderson and published July, 1996 with ISBN 1569711739. This is a dark Horse TPB comic covering issues 1 through 6 of STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI - THE SITH WAR. Other editions with the same title and cover art are: Titan ISBN 1840231300 published April, 2000 and TALES OF THE JEDI 3 - THE SITH WAR published by McMillan march, 1997 under ASIN: 075220369X.

I have assigned the timeline year of -3996 before NH to this comic. As did Exar Kun before him and Luke skywalker 4,000 years later, Jedi hero Ulic Qel-Droma is tempted by the dark side following the murder of master Arca. Before there was Darth Vader, Dark lord of the Sith, there was Ulic Qel-Droma, Dark lord of the Sith.

This comic written by KJA who did much of the Old Republic Comics. He also did The JEDI ACADEMY trilogy, one of my favorites. Since Kevin also did the SW Essential Chronology we find few continuity problems here. The art and coloring is a "C" grade, though some pages are stunningly awesome. The action is tremendous. The story is a little hard to follow. Ulic is in the Empress Teta system (not on the galaxy maps produced in the NJO). Ulic is seduced by the Dark side and by Aleema. At about 150 pages long, the story twists and turns and is generally as unpredictable as an episode of LAW AND ORDER.

If you have started reading these Old Republic comic and liked them, you'll like this one.

Welcome to what is at this writing still the earliest chapter in the history of the Star Wars universe, a tale set 5000 years before the adventures of the film series.

CAVEAT ONE
Before you consider buying this, be aware that this volume is but one half of the story and that the conclusion is available in The Fall of the Sith Empire. This review covers both volumes.

CAVEAT TWO
If you're a pathological Star Wars collector, you'll buy this book regardless of its contents. If you're a Star Wars fan who wants to catch up on your history, save your money and read a summary of the events at Wookieepedia. If you're a discerning comics fan, then you must have found your way here by mistake. If so, don't stop. Keep moving. Everyone else, step right this way.

Despite a title that suggests something we never see, namely the glory days of the Sith Empire, author Kevin J Anderson came up with a promising premise. At opposite ends of the universe, the Sith Empire and the fledgling Republic seek to chart new futures, the Republic to end years of civil war and forge a new era of political and economic stability and growth, the Sith to revitalize their moribund Empire by throwing off their isolation and launching a new era of growth through conquest. In between are the innocents through which we view these events, a scholarly Jedi called to arms and a pair of young space navigators, brother and sister who through their explorations inadvertently open the hyperspace route across which the Sith reach to shake the foundations of the newly emergent Republic.

With a setting so far back in the past, Anderson has a wonderful opportunity to develop a good part of the Star Wars backstory. We find, for example, that the Sith were a separate species living on their own world in a relatively undeveloped culture that was then hijacked by a group of exiled Jedi who enslaved the Sith and built a new culture based on veneration of the Dark Force. Over the years these Jedi interbred with the Sith and a number of them left to conquer nearby worlds and create a system-wide Empire ruled by an all-powerful Dark Lord. The Jedi themselves are scholar-warriors closely aligned with political forces preserving civilization, pretty much the same as we have always known them, with one discernable difference - they don't carry lightsabers. And neither do the Sith.

They carry swords instead; swords made of steel. They also wear sandals, toga-like garments, and capes. They fly in spaceships that have sails, and the slavers have spaceships with oars. The Sith world of Korriban looks like it was cribbed from photos of Abu Simbel, with towering Pharaonic deities ensconced on thrones overlooking wide valleys and surrounded by sphinx-like guardians. In fact much of the costume and character design, from the scarab-like symbol of the Sith ruler to the elongated chins and goatees of the Sith, evokes Egypt in very obvious ways.

The artwork, provided across both volumes by Filipino Dario Carrasco, Jr., is not terribly remarkable. It's at best serviceable, in a style reminiscent of John Buscema, one of the iron men of the comic book industry who must have drawn tens of thousands of pages for Marvel for three decades beginning in the 60's. Carrasco, Jr.'s work benefits from a change in inkers and colorist in The Fall of the Sith Empire, where the lines become a little cleaner and the colors a bit more vibrant, but still it's not work that will ever be remembered or about which anyone has ever written more than a few sentences.

The same pedestrian touch is obvious in the writing. Kevin J Anderson wrote a few Star Wars novels in the 1990's and several of those books can regularly be found in "Worst SW Novels" lists. In this particular series Anderson has no protagonist, so he needs to develop his supporting players in order to give us more than just plot. Instead we get characters that are little more than props and literary devices. The Jedi scholar is the narrative frame, the brother-sister navigators the point-of-view characters and the vector of conflict, the Republic Queen and the Sith Lord wrestling opponents wearing good-guy / bad-guy personas. No one has any particular motivation except to get us to the next scene. There's nothing suspenseful or funny or touching or wondrous; it's storytelling about as developed and predictable as painting by numbers.

And with so many other comic books out there to read, you can surely find something more engaging, more worth you time and your money than this underdeveloped Star Wars adventure.

Happy hunting.

The Golden Age of the Sith was an OK book. The artwork was functional and the storyline was interesting. Also, the information on the Sith Empire makes it a good read. However, it does suffer from a few problems, mainly that the two main characters needed to be more involved in the story. As it is, they were just kind of "there," stumbling into major events at random. Other than that, this is book was pretty good, but there are better ones in the series.

Well, I liked it because in Dark Lords of the Sith, it tells about Exar Kun finding and finishing Naga Sadow's work. This tells about Sadow, about his ambitions, and I also like info about the unification about the Emprise Teta Systum. I'm into haveing background information on things I read about, and this gives more background than I could have hoped for The events in Dark Lords of the Sith and Naga Sadow himself

Golden Age of the Sith is not the best Star Wars comic I have read. I recomend it to any Star Wars fan who wants to learn more about the Sith.