Star Wars Legacy Vol. 1: Broken

Written by John Ostrander
Art by Jan Duursema and Dan Parsons

I've avoided Star Wars comics since about the second Dark Horse series, as I'm not usually a fan of licensed comics, except where the original creators are involved (ie. Farscape, Firefly/Serenity).  Recently though, this comic was featured in Brian Cronin's A Year of Cool Comics column at the Comics Should Be Good blog, and it piqued my interest.  I saw this first volume (I believe there are eight so far) on Ebay, and quickly made the purchase.

I should have expected I'd enjoy it - John Ostrander is one of my favorite comics writers, with his Suicide Squad being one of the best superhero (okay, villain) comics I've ever read.  I also really liked his runs on Firestorm and The Spectre.  Duursema has always been a capable artist as well, so I wasn't too worried diving in to this.

And the book is really quite good.  The story is set about 125 years after the original Star Wars movies, and the Empire has returned, although just as it begins to consolidate power across the galaxy and wipe out the Jedi, the new Emperor is betrayed by his Sith allies (shocking, I know), and they take control of things.  During the final battle between the Empire and the Jedi, before they are betrayed, we are introduced to young Cade Skywalker, the descendant of Luke, who is still a Padawan.  He watches his father get killed, taps into the Force to revive his own master, and then appears to sacrifice himself so his friends can escape.

Of course, Cade is not dead, he just spends the next seven years getting increasingly bitter and working as a bounty hunter. When we rejoin our cast of characters, we find Cade hunting down scum with a couple of semi-trusted allies.  We also find Darth Krayt, the Sith Lord, still hunting for the former Emperor, Roan Fel, and Sazen, Cade's old Master, is looking for him.  It doesn't take long for them to all meet, along with Marasiah, the Imperial princess, and some Imperial Guards, as well as a small squad of Sith lords who are heavily tattooed.

This volume is all about the set-up, so it's no surprise that a lot of time is spent on fleshing out some characters and their relationships to one another, although there were a few particular items that needed further explaining I felt, such as why Imperial Guards appear to have Jedi powers and lightsabers, but are not Jedi.  Maybe this has been explained somewhere else in the Dark Horse Star Wars books, I don't know.

Ostrander has set up his cast along the usually accepted Star Wars lines: Cade is an interesting mix of both the Luke Skywalker and Han Solo archetypes, while Marasiah is clearly filling in for Leia (ie., needing to be rescued a lot).  Thankfully, there are no annoying droids or furry creatures yet, so my annoyance level is kept to a minimum.  There are a lot of characters with tentacles coming out of their heads though - I don't understand why.

I will definitely be hunting down the rest of the trades for this series.