Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,231 
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Post by Confessor on Aug 9, 2024 17:55:10 GMT -5
I think Exur Kun is the first time someone dual wields two light sabers? Luke fought Lumiya with two lightsabers in the Marvel comic.  Good catch! I should have remembered that myself. SpikeyTortoise, an animator on YouTube, has been making an animated adaptation of DE using the audio from the audio drama... (At 2:03 in the third episode's a certain alien creature I'm sure Confessor would get a kick out seeing.  ) That's very cool. A lepus carnivorous in the New Republic. I actually didn't mind that cartoon...and I'm not a cartoon fan, generally speaking. The audio drama sounds pretty damn good too. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 9, 2024 23:14:21 GMT -5
I definitely should have remembered that too! I didn't read it that long ago... good catch. I think I'd like the cartoon better without the mouths moving, that part is pretty painful, but it's not terrible. The audio isn't too bad.
Thanks for posting it, that's great!
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Post by swansong on Aug 14, 2024 4:52:36 GMT -5
It's frustrating that in the Star Wars wikis there is a sad lack of real-world "historical" chronology of the introduction of concepts into the mythos. When you look at the Star Trek wiki you always see a) in-universe canon and then also b) sources on when which concept had been appeared in which episode. In Star Wars, that is not the case. They just present "canon". Try to find references like, who first came up with the idea that the Galactic Empire was "racist", who first used a double lightsabre, when was this planet first mentioned, and so on... it's really lacking. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 14, 2024 9:21:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I hear you. I find Wookiepedia is probably the best source, but you definitely have to work to get some of that info, if you can find it at all. I agree its not as good as the Star Trek one.... Memory Alpha I think it is?
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 15, 2024 23:41:41 GMT -5
Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #2  script:: Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson Pencils: : Chris Gossett Inks: : Jordi Ensign Letters: Willie Schubert Colors: Pamela Rambo Cover Art : Hugh Fleming Title: Question for the Sith Date: November 1994 Rating: 6 of 10 Plot Summary: Our three pronged story has dropped down to two, as Exar Kun arrives on Onderon. He poses as an archaeologist asking to see the artifacts recovered during the Freedon Nadd Uprising. Master Arca sees right through him and says no, and calls him out. When Kun tries to explain Vodo Bass doesn't know he was re-assigned, Arca tells him he sees he's lying and the force and will not help.  Kun ends up finding some Naddists he saves from a riot and has them take him to the moon where Nadd's remains are. There is cuts into the tomb and Nadd's ghost gives him some scrolls. He kills the Naddist on the way out (they attempted to stop him from defiling the grave) and goes off to the last outpost of the Sith that the scrolls tell him about. He's VERY interested. Meanwhile, Nomi and Ulic lead a task force to the Empress Teta system to try to free it from the Krath. Nomi is able to break through Aleema's illusions, but the 2nd set (a bunch of fighters) covered the REAL fighters Satal had sent (including mind controlled pilots that were happy to smash into the bigger ships0 and the good guys are forced to retreat to regroup. To be continued! My thoughts: : It seems awfully easy for the bad guys here. Exar Kun presents himself and clearly lies to try to get Dark Side items, and they just let him crash the tomb? Seems like is Master Arca could sense his motivation and dishonesty they could have tried to stop him. He did say 'he's a Jedi and he can choose his path' but that seems a bit weak. Ulic is completely useless in this one... he seems to be in charge, but he falls for the dark side illusions (Nomi saves the day and dispells them) and gets wounded by one of the suicide bombers. The art has some good and bad. I really like the Republic Fleet.. they definitely look like proto-ties and a early Star Destroyer, which is fun. Maybe they should be more different 4000 years in the past, but I like it.  On the bad side, Aleema is really getting Image-ized... I really just don't need that in my Star Wars. The 'Space Grazers' (her first illusion attempt to trick the Jedi) are really poor too.(the pink blob there on the top left)  Continuity Notes : About a month has passed, according to the first page. Not sure if travel takes that long, or Ulic and Nomi took some time to gather their forces. Makes reasonable sense. One thing that bugs me is they make it a point to say the Tetans like to fight the old fashioned way (with swords and things) yet the guy on the cover has a blaster, and even in the splash of the fight their vechiles are shooting lasers and blowing up whole rows of troops. If that's really how they do it they are not going to last long against the Republic, that's for sure. Its also not clear why Nomi couldn't tell some of the ships were real and some were fake, other than plot wise to have an excuse for the Jedi to lose... it seems she had everything else figured out... perhaps she just didn't think about it too much. I guess I can give it a pass, but it annoys me. It was nice to see that Satal DOES actually do something but be creepy around his sister... it was feeling like a pretty unequal partnership to this point. It is mentioned the '1000 year tomb' is made of Mandalorian Iron (as before)... the weird part was Exar Kun couldn't scratch it at first, then 'turned his lightsaber's intensity all the way up' to bust through. I don't think that's ever been a thing? It is portrays as normal lightsaber behavior. No letters again.. just house ads.. mostly the same ones as last issue, but with one for some sort of Tarzan Card set.. also the Droids one was replaced with a general one for all of Dark Horse's licenses.
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 17, 2024 14:01:54 GMT -5
It's frustrating that in the Star Wars wikis there is a sad lack of real-world "historical" chronology of the introduction of concepts into the mythos. When you look at the Star Trek wiki you always see a) in-universe canon and then also b) sources on when which concept had been appeared in which episode. In Star Wars, that is not the case. They just present "canon". Try to find references like, who first came up with the idea that the Galactic Empire was "racist", who first used a double lightsabre, when was this planet first mentioned, and so on... it's really lacking. Yeah. Years ago, when I began doing research to reconstruct the pre-1999 EU's version of the prequel era, I found Wookieepedia nearly useless as a resource. Most of the information I sought I had to find on obscure websites, forums, and in old reference books. |
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 17, 2024 14:10:13 GMT -5
It is mentioned the '1000 year tomb' is made of Mandalorian Iron (as before)... the weird part was Exar Kun couldn't scratch it at first, then 'turned his lightsaber's intensity all the way up' to bust through. I don't think that's ever been a thing? It is portrays as normal lightsaber behavior. I don't know where or when it first entered the lore, but it continued to be a thing in the EU going forward. It makes perfect sense that lightsabers would have different intensity settings. Chances are high that a novice with a lightsaber would end up maiming/killing themselves or others if it was permanently set on "effortlessly slice through stuff". |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 22, 2024 22:54:49 GMT -5
Sorry I was a bit getting to this next one... I different Galaxy got my obsessive attention for a few days (X-Com to be exact  ) Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #3  script:: Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson Pencils: : Chris Gossett Inks: : Jordi Ensign Letters: Willie Schubert Colors: Pamela Rambo Cover Art : Hugh Fleming Title: Decent to the Dark Side Date: December 1994 Rating: 8 of 10 Plot Summary: Following the task force failure to defeat the Krath, the Jedi meet up on Deneba for a council to determine their next move. All of the Jedi we've met in the various locales are there, as well as a few new ones, including another non-human one. I don't love Chris Gossett's art (his faces are very different in this one.. not sure if its better or worse but still not great), but I do love his designs for ships and aliens. Clearly I'm not the only one, because every issue seems to have a splash of just lots of ships.  The general consensus is to just send a massive force to Empress Teta and destroy the Krath once and for all, but Ulic proposes instead to infiltrate the Krath and learn these secrets to prevent a big war. Just as the various masters are tell him what a terrible idea that is, the Krath attack with a bunch of war droids. Master Arca saves Ulic at the last second from one droid, only to be struck down by another while he was tell Ulic to be more mindful (which was some hilarious irony).  Ulic blames himself, of course, and vows to pursue his plan to infiltrate the Krath whether the massed Jedi agree or not. Nomi tries to talk him out of it, but not all that hard. Meanwhile, Exur Kun arrives at Korriban, an ancient seat of Sith power. He finds a temple where several trapped souls of Jedi Masters, and the remains of Sith Lords. Freedon Nadd is with him, and his spirit eggs him own, despite is doubts, and leads him into a trap. Nadd drops the temple on Kun, and forces him to choose to either accept the Dark Side and be healed, or die. Kun resists for a while, but of course give in at the end.  Nadd then tests him with some sub human creatures to channel his anger, which Kun does. The spirits of the past Dark Lords approve, and, though Kun is still denying it, he seems to have been accepted as a Sith. His next stop for more secrets... Yavin Four. My Thoughts : While this is still setting things up, as Jim Ross would say 'business is about to pick up'. The two parts of the story where intertwined in the issue (I summarized one then the other just for my own ease of writing)... it's really an interesting parallel with two very different paths leading to the same place with Ulic and Exar Kun. Nomi is not portrayed well, though. During the fight she loses his daughter, Vodo Bass' apprentice Sylvar (looking much more Image-y and much less cat-like) has to come save her. Other than that, she just worries about Ulic.. there's an implied relationship but they only call each other 'friends' which is interesting. While the art is still pretty meh this issue has a lot of forward momentum and I definitely want to get to the next one! Speaking of, so far Hugh Fleming's covers have paled in comparsion to Dave Dorman, but this one is awesome... I'll even forgive him for forgetting Ulic's arm is in a sling for its poignancy. Continuity Notes: It's not clear how much time has passed.. on the one hand, one would think it would take a few weeks (even a month or two) to set up a meeting of thousands of Jedi, but, on the other hand, Ulic's arm is still in a sling. No Jedi healers in this time? I feel like they fact that they wanted to visually remind the readers feels wrong. Deneba is mentioned a couple other times by Kevin Anderson, and is used as a smuggling outpost in one of the Disney era Solo prequels outside this story. Looking that up made me have to remember about Kyp Durran and Anderson's horrid Jedi Academy Trilogy (which was coming out at the same time as this series.. the 3rd book came out right around when this comic did). Korriban as ancient Sith stronghold makes it into the next set of Sith Tales (the prequel series to this story) as as as some of the Knight of the Old Republic stuff. Apparently, George Lucas liked the name 'Moraband' better, but its intended to be the same place (which is what it referred to in a Clone Wars episode) My favorite though, was Freedon Nadd telling the story of Naga Sadow (We saw that earlier in the series) escaping to Yavin Four, but 'his followers devolved into primitives' That totally made me think of the Ewoks being dark force minions until my brain unwound from really enjoying that idea to realize Yavin Four is not Endor, but it made me smile for a bit. The ads were similar, but I did have a thought... the magazine being advertised now is 'Star Wars insider', which was printed by Titan, instead of 'Star Wars Galaxy', where Dark Horse (I think) is still printing 8 page comics. (they seem to put them all in regular comics, but the first release is the magazine). I wonder what the business story is there. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 27, 2024 8:24:22 GMT -5
Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #4  script:: Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson Pencils: : Chris Gossett Inks: : Jordi Ensign Letters: Willie Schubert Colors: Pamela Rambo Cover Art : Hugh Fleming Title: Death of a Dark Jedi Date: January 1995 Rating: 3 of 10 Plot Summary : Exur Kun arrives at Yavin Four, where he finds the Massassi, who defeat him and tie him up in their temple to feed to the big monster on the cover. Freedon Nadd's ghost keeps exhorting Kun to use the Dark Side amulet as he gets his butt kicked... he finally does and kills the monster, unleashing just raw dark force at him I guess (it's not totally clear). The Massassi are happy and are ready to serve their new master. Nadd tells his protege to get to the lab to build him a new body, but Kun refuses and instead turns the amulet on him killing him... again? More? Not sure what you call it when you kill a dead force ghost.  Back in the good guy half of our story, Ulic is still set on going, but we get another 8 pages or so of people trying to convince him not to, including a new ancient master with a Sith Holocron that shows how terrible it worked out last time, Cay telling him he had a premonition he'd never see him again, and Nomi finally getting to desperate girlfriend stage. Ulic goes anyway... The Krath scope him out right away, but Aleema wants to see if they can get him to help their cause. They let an uprising at a public execution happen, and Ulic saves Aleema from a miner, to prove his value. The last panel (after we see Ulic leaving with Aleema after the crushed rebellion), Ulic is a drugged captive.. Katal assumes he's a spy, but Aleema wants to try to use him anyway. Then Freedon Nadd (I guess his last dying action is teleporting across the Galaxy) turns up and warns them Exar Kun is their biggest threat, and Ulic will be a great Sith. My Thoughts: UGH. After a great 3rd issue, we get... issue 3 again for 2/3 of the issue. Exar Kun's side of the plot is literally a repeat of last issue. Go to Sith Temple. Get ambushed. Be evil to win. The small difference here is apparently Kun's Jedi powers are gone, now he can only use the Dark Side. That doesn't seem to be how it usually works, but it is here. (More on that later). Otherwise it's just a re-run. Ulic's part is ½ re-run, then we get a small bit of movement as he actually gets to the Empress Teta system, where its quickly pointed out to us how dumb his plan is... it really makes Ulic look like a chump, IMO. Literally every Jedi he knows tells him not to do it, he does it anyway, and it immediately goes badly. Maybe they can bring it back next issue, but it feels like it's getting more Kevin Anderson-y by the page. I do like Ulic's new look for his evil era though, even if it is very 90s image (he just has bracers instead of pouches)  Continuity Notes : I was a bit confused about the whole 'Exur Kun can only use the Dark side' thing. That makes it seem like the force is like two separate pools of power (like in Wheel of Time).. not just what binds all things together. Last issue, Kun still fought normally.. he used his light saber and such, and it seemed logical. This time, he literally does nothing until Nadd convincing him to use the amulet.. then he just blasts the thing with force-ness, I guess? That should not be how it works... it wasn't Force Lightning like we've seem before.. he didn't use his Light Saber, or crush the monsters insides with a gesture like Vader would do... he pretty much just did a Dark side Kamehameha. Not cool. Also, if the scary monster is a dark side creature, wouldn't it LIKE getting blasted by the dark side? Or mutate? Then there's Ulic... lets put aside his dumb idea, and that he thought only he was brave enough to do it. As soon as he has the chance, he does something evil... he saves Aleema from a peasant miner. While it's not clear if the miner dies or not (seems likely, but doesn't explicitly say), It DOES say the rebelling miners all died after the brief battle..so that makes Ulic at the very least complicit in a bunch of murders, but that's not his dark side moment? They also show Vima on panel for the first time in a while... she's now blonde and looks older (pretty sure wasn't blonde before). They've given up again on Nomi having an 'alien' hairline, she looks like a standard human again.
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Post by lordyam on Aug 27, 2024 11:42:13 GMT -5
Anderson had interesting ideas and Ulic doing something reckless like infiltrate the Krath isn’t a bad idea
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 27, 2024 20:41:55 GMT -5
Anderson had interesting ideas and Ulic doing something reckless like infiltrate the Krath isn’t a bad idea I don't know... it seems like a pretty bad idea . I think maybe if a non jedi James Bond type tried to get in there in a non-descript roll, maybe. But Ulic was the commanding general against them... selling them he's having a change of heart and not REALLY having one seems far fetched. |
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Post by lordyam on Aug 28, 2024 18:40:52 GMT -5
Oh as an idea it's bad, but Ulic doing something reckless and stupid out of grief is entirely plausible. People don't always behave rationally.
Kevin J Anderson has interesting ideas (the Maw Installation is cool, and a lot of the basic ideas are interesting) but his execution is mixed
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 28, 2024 21:45:01 GMT -5
I was a bit confused about the whole 'Exur Kun can only use the Dark side' thing. That makes it seem like the force is like two separate pools of power (like in Wheel of Time).. not just what binds all things together. Last issue, Kun still fought normally.. he used his light saber and such, and it seemed logical. This time, he literally does nothing until Nadd convincing him to use the amulet Not a big fan of this take on the Force myself. And I can't recall an instance of this happening to any other characters in other EU stories, so it's just a one-time ass pull done for reasons. This doesn't bother me too much. I just see it as a different manifestation of dark side power. Perhaps it makes Force abilities too much like superpowers, though. Dark Jedi and Sith aren't immune to dark side attacks, so I don't understand why it should be any different in this case. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 30, 2024 7:04:27 GMT -5
They implied heavily that the Dark Side had changed them into their current state... they referred to the Massassi as 'devolved by the Dark Side' and it was implies the big monster was created somehow. Made me feel like an attack that seemed to just be a blast of energy wouldn't work.
That's definitely more a superhero trope though (Like the electricity villain not being able to be hit with electricity, until they decide to try to overload him), and goes back to you saying they were going there, which I don't love either.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 7, 2024 23:37:57 GMT -5
Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #6 script:: Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson Pencils: : Art Wetherell Inks: : Jordi Ensign Letters: Willie Schubert Colors: Pamela Rambo Cover Art : Hugh Fleming Title: Jedi Assault Date: Mar 1995 Rating: 2 of 10 Plot : Back on Ossus, the Jedi are testing some new fighters for the coming assault on Cinnagar.. it doesn't go very well, but Dace Diath decides to use one anyway (I think he was in the background previously). The Masters again tell Nomi, Cay and company that if Ulic wants to go down the dark path, that's his choice, but they go to try to convince him otherwise anyway. There's a short fight when they get there, with Nomi overcoming Aleema's Sith magic rather easily, but Ulic doesn't want to leave. They are about to force him when Nomi decides the masters are right, and they let him go and go home. Exar Kun has arrived at about the same time, and attacks Ulic and Aleema as well... when they're just getting started when the Sith amulets they have get close (or maybe they touch? Not clear) and the ghost of Naga Sadow appears, stops the fight, and orders the to work together to conquer the galaxy for the Sith. They get tattoos on their foreheads to show their new Sith-Bro status... the end!  My thoughts: Oh boy.. so this is a series that exists. It sure took a long away around to do nothing but set up the next series. We got very little character development, only a small bit of forward motion in the plot, and a terrible fill in artist for the finale of the series.  At least the cover is cool! (though completely unrelated to the story). I wish I had more to say about this one, but it's just bad. I was wrong that this should have been 5 issues... 4 at most. Continuity Notes: : The 'star saber' ship they test looks a heck of a lot like an X-wing, only with 2 wings instead of 4. The fill in draws all the Jedi in different fighters when they get to Cinnagar.. one is clearly an X-Wing. This is a bit odd, not just because one is an X-Wing, but because they talked about using the new ship replacing old ones, as if they all had the same ones.  Then there's the fact that last battle was massive, with rival FLEETS.. this time one capital ship and a few jedi attack and manage to swoop in no problem. The worst part though, is some of them are riding beasts from Onderon.. how the heck did that happen? Do the ships have stables on them? Are they REALLY Dragons from Pern, and teleport through time and space? So silly. As far as Jedi powers, go, they are still just using energy blasts... Kun has red ones, Aleema had a green one, and Ulic's was sort of purple. I still hate that. The did a bit of foreshadowing that Oss Willum would turn to follow Exar Kun.... not sure if that happens or not, I guess we'll see. Speaking of... Kun just sort of strolls through the fight to turn up and duel Ulic after the Jedi leave.. nice of him to be patient and wait his turn... maybe he's not so bad after all!
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