Cryostar

I don't think they're so weird. If you've played some of the starship games, they're just variations of the existing models in those games. Plus, I like ships that look like they're meant for space. It's obvious these ships could never make planet fall.

Alexander

Jerry, thanks for the link for DT5. I downloaded it and will check it out either this weekend or monday (I've got work Fri-Sun)

Alex

Cryostar

Dood...it's a shocking ending. I completely didn't expect it at all.

Alexander

You know, as soon as they showed the guy and he said "dinner" was excellent, I actually had a feeling that Ressa was "dinner".

I am glad that Jennir shot the guy, but I would have preferred a clean lightsaber decaputation instead! I know, what's gotten into me, I've become so "bloody minded", but hey, I'm seeing Jennir as a version of Quinlan Vos, and that is my favorite kind of Jedi to read about. The reluctant hero who does it his own way.

I know next series Jennir doesn't show up, but I am really going to miss that character.

The bits with Vader and Sidious were pretty cool to read, I hope they show more of Vader in the upcoming issues.

BehrItAll

As soon as I catch up on he books, after I read the X-Wing books and before NJO I;ma going to catch up on the comic TPB I have and then get Legacy and KOTOR.
Dark Times TPB isn't out yet, right?

So much to read, so little time...

Cryostar

You'll have to give up watching TV Steph.

I'm actually happy that he didn't use the lightsaber. He doesn't consider himself a jedi....so why use it. I like how dark the series has gotten...really good stuff.

Alexander

Parallels Part I is out today, or tomorrow, right? We are supposed to get serveral SW comics later this month, including another KOTOR and Legacy?

Cryostar

I think so, yeah. Legacy I think is next week, and KOTOR the week after maybe.....

this was up at newsorama...

CROSSING IT OVER: STAR WARS VECTOR I: RANDY STRADLEY
________________________________________
by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

There are whispers across the galaxy that the guys at the Skywalker Ranch, the workplace of legendary film director and producer George Lucas, are very pleased with Dark Horse Comics and its treatment of the Expanded Universe of Lucas’ epic space opera franchise and fictional universe initially developed in the 1970s.

The Expanded Universe was generally considered to have begun with Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye in February 1978, though purists would argue that it actually started with Star Wars #7 in January 1978 following Marvel Comics’ adaptation of the first Star Wars film, and the EU encompasses all of the officially licensed materials that expands and continues the stories told in the six feature films.

Dark Horse acquired the license in the early 1990s and published Dark Empire, with Lucas himself praising the initial six-issue mini-series and saying that it was the closest thing to his idea of a sequel to his Original Trilogy of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

From there, Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics covered the era of the Old Republic right through to the Legacy era, with stories spanning from 25,000 years before the infamous Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope to 140 years after that in series and projects such as Tales of the Jedi, Republic, Clone Wars Adventures, Empire, Crimson Empire. There’s also the Classic Star Wars collections which reprint the newspaper strips by Russ Manning, Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson, and the A Long Time Ago… trade paperbacks collecting the original 107 issues plus three Annuals from the Marvel run from 1977 to 1986. Other notable mentions include the adaptations of Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Steve Perry’s Shadows of the Empire, and Timothy Zahn’s The Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command).

Elements of the EU have been adopted by Lucas in the films such as the Twi’lek Jedi Aayla Secura’s appearance in Episode II and Episode III offered a rare example of an EU character becoming part of film canon. Similarly, a background character in Episode I was further developed, christened Quinlan Vos and ultimately became an important character in the Star Wars comics covering the Rise of the Empire era.

Last year, the line was relaunched with Knights of the Old Republic, Dark Times, Rebellion, and Legacy, with stories covering the Old Republic, post-Episode III, post-Episode IV, and the Legacy years, respectively.

At the recent Diamond Retailer Summit in Baltimore in September, Dark Horse officially announced its first, yearlong line-wide Star Wars crossover entitled Vector, which kicks off with issue #25 of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in January.

We caught up with Randy Stradley, Vice-President of Publishing at Dark Horse and Star Wars Senior Editor, to find out more about the soon-to-be galaxy-spanning epic that promises repercussions for every era and every hero in the Star Wars galaxy.

Newsarama: First off Randy, how did the idea to do a yearlong event come about, and who came up with Vector in the first place?

Randy Stradley: It was my idea -- at least to attempt the crossover. I was thinking about the crossovers that are rolled out by Marvel and DC every few years, and how they’re usually well-accepted by retailers and fans alike. Some are received better than others, but the “crossover event” clearly generates a lot of interest. I thought that if we could do one with Star Wars -- a story that legitimately spans the many eras in which our series take place, and one which truly affects the characters in each era -- we could please our current readers and attract new readers, as well.

NRAMA: Okay, the Original Trilogy and the Prequels are one huge event by itself, and there've been other events like New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force. Heck, some even consider the Marvel Comics era as classic. So, how did you manage to convince the Lucas guys to agree to Vector?

RS: It was really no different than pitching any other story -- we just had to make sure that nothing we wanted to do collided with any established continuity, and that the story actually matters to the larger Star Wars mythos and the characters who populate it.

NRAMA: Dark Horse itself has compared Vector to Marvel's Civil War and some online fans are calling it Dark Horse's 52, although it’s not weekly but rather a monthly event, right? So, will there be issues leading to Vector?

RS: Well, two handbooks we have coming out soon -- the Knights of the Old Republic Handbook and Legacy #0 ½ (an updated edition of Legacy #0) -- and both will provide some hints or previews of Vector. Also, foundations for certain aspects of Vector have already been established in Dark Times (planted from the very beginning of the series), and John Ostrander and Jan Duursema have been subtly preparing the groundwork for Vector in Legacy since planning on the crossover began. We’re pretty devious. And we’ve been working on the idea for Vector for over a year now.

As for the long term, since the events in Vector will be shaking up each of the series -- and the changes wrought by Vector will continue to affect our characters long after Vector has ended. We won’t need any special issues or follow-up mini-series to spotlight those changes, as they’ll come about organically and flow naturally from what has gone before -- the best kind of storytelling.

As I mentioned, we’ve been working on the story for over a year, with input from every writer (and from several of the artists), culminating in a story conference with John Ostrander, John Jackson Miller, editor Jeremy Barlow, assistant Dave Marshall, and myself here at Dark Horse at the beginning of August. The folks at Lucasfilm signed off on the concept early on, and vetted our final details after our conference. But all along the way, each writer has been thinking about how Vector will affect their casts of characters, and how they can subtly adjust current storylines to create “space” for Vector.

NRAMA: Vector essentially begins in Knights of the Old Republic #25-#28, jumps to Dark Times #11-#12 after that, then Rebellion #15-#16, before finally wrapping up in Legacy #29-#32. Does this mean that this crossover will be told one issue a month from January till December?

RS: Right. Though we would love it if readers decided to read every issue of each of our series, we wanted to make sure that nobody felt obligated to break their comics budget each month. The idea is to make this a treat for readers, not an ordeal.

Also, let’s face it, it’d be a strain on our writers trying to figure out how each of their issues over the course of a year would inter-mesh with three other series each taking place decades or even centuries before or after their series!

NRAMA: Can you timeline things for our readers? How many years are you looking at from KotOR #25 to Legacy #32?

RS: By my count, 4,100 years. Give or take a month or two.

NRAMA: An event like Vector promises to be a jumping on point for new readers as well as returning ones, right?

RS: Absolutely. I’ve been stressing a point with all of our writers: treat Vector like it ‘s all new material. Don’t assume that readers know who your long-time characters are, or that they have knowledge of the characters’ histories or current situations. Each new “chapter” of Vector (where the story jumps from one series to another) will be provide great entry point for new readers. Obviously, the most satisfying read will come if readers begin with Knights of the Old Republic #25, but jumping on with Dark Times #11, Rebellion #15, or even Legacy #29 will still give them a smooth entry into the story.

NRAMA: With regards to the creative teams, John Jackson Miller and John Ostrander are setting the story direction, and they're writing the KotOR and Legacy series, respectively, with Jan Duursema illustrating all the Legacy issues. Who are the creative teams on board for Dark Times and Rebellion? And who’s drawing the KotOR issues?

RS: New artist Scott Hepburn is drawing the KotOR segment. Writer Mick Harrison and artist Doug Wheatley are on Dark Times, and writer Rob Williams and artist Colin Wilson team on Rebellion.

NRAMA: Looking at the solicitations for Jan '08, there's also an issue of Legacy, which kicks off a two-part story with #20. Does this mean that while Vector is being told and chronicled monthly, there are plans for the other series to continue telling their own stories? For instance, there is still one part of the five-issue "Parallels" to wrap up in Dark Times and four issues of “Small Victories" in Rebellion as we head into the new year...

RS: Right. We still have stories to tell in our non-Vector issues!

NRAMA: From KotOR, it then spins off to the various SW series. Will there be a uniform design that makes the issues reader-friendly for them to follow?

RS: Yeah. I working with designer Josh Elliot right now to come up with a special Vector cover treatment, as well as a design for the inside front covers that will provide “The story thus far” information, and so on. We’re doing everything we can to make the books easy to identify and reader-friendly.

NRAMA: Wrapping things up, while we'll go into greater details with the guiding forces on Vector in the next round, how will the event impact the Star Wars universe as a whole, in particular DH's version of the Expanded Universe? What sort of direction do you hope Vector would present to the Star Wars mythology?

RS: The events in Vector will, obviously, have the biggest affect on Legacy -- because that’s an area where continuity is the most open. We can’t drop some galaxy-changing event on Luke Skywalker in the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, for instance, without creating a giant rip in existing continuity. But we can have things happen which will change certain characters -- propel them to more heroic roles, send them onto darker paths, change their allegiances, etc. The best stories are always about characters, rather than events, and the events in Vector are not only driven by the choices made by certain characters, but those events will force other characters to make decisions they’d rather avoid.

Where readers will see the biggest changes to each of our series will be in the lives and the attitudes of the characters from those series. Some will change -- and not always for the better. Some won’t survive the events in Vector, but more importantly, some will.

NRAMA: Finally, Randy, has it come full circle for you? Is Vector your alternative to Invasion, your and Mike Richardson’s originally proposed intergalactic invasion storyline which you’d discussed about in greater detail on the DH message boards (here and here)?

RS: Nope, not a bit. Invasion was its own thing, and really more of Mike Richardson’s brainchild than mine. The way the New Jedi Order came about precluded the Invasion storyline, but that’s life. Vector is in no way related to Invasion, nor is it a replacement for it. Invasion was then, Vector is now. Well, and then. And tomorrow… [whew!]

Alexander

Thanks for the info Jerry. I look forward to those issues, I may actually have to purchase them. Unless you think they will have a "Vector" paperback eventually? What do you think?

Cryostar

I'm sure they'll collect them in the future and put them as a TPB....it's the nature of the beast after all.

Cryostar

Alexander

Good pics from Dark Times. I am glad that Jennir didn't ditch his lightsaber

BehrItAll

Nice images

Alexander

Steph, are you going to purchase the Dark Times Vol 1 paperback next year when it comes out?

BehrItAll

I will. I'm interested in the story.
Esp what Vader's character is like between III and IV