Star Wars, Star Wars Dark Empire

Top 5: Star Wars Graphic Novels

Top 5
For over 20 years, Dark Horse Comics has been producing Star Wars comics.  That massive body of work was excommunicated from the official “canon” with the elimination of the Extended Universe, and the license to publish Star Wars comics will soon revert back to Disney-owned Marvel Comics.  That doesn’t mean there still aren’t a wealth of great stories.  These are my favorite five.
1. The Clone Wars Saga
19428
Collected over nine trades or three omnibus collections, this is the story of The Clone Wars we wanted to see onscreen. From the Battle of Geonosis to the rise of Darth Vader, this chronicles the whole war and allows you to get to know in-depth the characters we only got surface contact with in the prequel trilogy.

2. Dark Empire
Star Wars, Star Wars Dark Empire
Seven years after Return of the Jedi, the Emperor is reborn and Luke falls to the Dark Side! This one is so good that many speculated that it might be the basis for the sequel trilogy before the Extended Universe’s reboot.


3. Darth Maul
Star Wars, Darth Maul
In the days just before The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul is sent to deal with Black Sun, one of the galaxy’s most notorious criminal organizations, whose dealings are interfering with Palpatine’s machinations.

4. Crimson Empire Saga
swCrimsonEmpireSagaHC
This three-volume saga tells the story of the last surviving member of Emperor Palpatine’s Royal Guard, Kir Kanos. I always thought the Royal Guard was one of the best designs of any Star Wars character and they had an aura of mystery about them that this epic explores.


5. Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison
Darth Vader, Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison
Taking place soon after Episode III, this finds the Dark Lord in search of the Jedi’s secret Ghost Prison where prisoners of war from The Clone Wars were sent.  Anakin Skywalker arrested more than any other Jedi and now he wants to know where they went so he can….chat with them.

5 thoughts on “Top 5: Star Wars Graphic Novels”

  1. I would have to add Star Wars Infinities to the list. I read a bunch of SW graphic novels from January to June (including Dark Empire and Crimson Empire) and as good as they were, I have to say I enjoyed the dark and weirdly alternate Infinities the most 🙂

    Like

  2. I know a lot of people hold much of the EU close to their hearts, and I hope I am not offending anyone here, but I am happy the EU is falling by the wayside. The EU had become messy, the continuity a nightmare. And it was always going to be discarded anyway, if the sequels ever got made.


    Like

    1. Well, you’re right, it did become a mess because, unlike the new EU, no one source was controlling it. Coordinating all future books and comics with the movies and TV shows will give the stories more importance and weight. There’s some fantastic stuff in the EU and I’d love to see them utilitze some of the best ideas and characters in future work, but it did have to go if the movies were going to advance. It was the only way to deal with it.

      Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:


Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s