Star Wars: Dark Empire No. 1 art by Cam Kennedy, December 1991. Dark Horse.

Star Wars: Dark Empire #4 (Dark Horse Comics; 1992)

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LegendsCon is a fan-run convention celebrating the original Expanded Universe books, comics, games, and other media that are now known as Legends. We seek to create an event that brings together fans in an environment that fosters positivity and inclusivity while we celebrate our love of Legends material. We are an unofficial community organized event, which is not sponsored, run by, or affiliated with Lucasfilm Ltd. All event proceeds will go to a soon to be announced charitable cause.

November 1979. It's hard to know where to start listing the many flaws of the 2018 SOLO movie, but one of the big ones was the casting of the perennially lifeless Emilia Clarke as Han Solo's dull childhood girlfriend Qi'ra, who, aside from being bland as porridge, is also an awful lot whiter than many of Han's past girlfriends in the STAR WARS books and comics.

The earliest example of Han's exes of color, at least in terms of publication history, is Fiolla of Lorrd (shown above and below), the costar of HAN SOLO'S REVENGE, the second Brian Daley Han Solo novel, first released in late 1979. Fiolla (whose full name is Hart-and-Parn Gorra-Fiolla of Lorrd) is a Corporate Sector Authority auditor who crosses paths with Han. Deplorably, fan art of Fiolla, and some more recent book jacket cover art, has tried to make her look white, or at least much lighter-skinned than the text describes her. These illustrations by Mike Vilardi from the 1993 HAN SOLO AND THE CORPORATE SECTOR SOURCEBOOK attempt to follow Daley's description, but only the one below is as dark as Daley says Fiolla is:

Appearing on newsstands just weeks after HAN SOLO'S REVENGE was the first Marvel STAR WARS ANNUAL, written by Chris Claremont, which introduces another of Han's old flames: his former smuggling shipmate Katya M'Buele:

Katya unfortunately meets a bad end at the hands of the old enemy to whom their conversation in the panels above alludes. (Chris Claremont's tendency to introduce Black women into his stories and then use them as punching bags is a whole other conversation.)

While Fiolla would probably regard Han as a dubious flirtation that would never have worked out anyway, and the Claremont story leaves some ambiguity about whether Han and Katya were lovers or just good friends, Salla Zend, introduced by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy in the 1992 DARK EMPIRE miniseries, is unequivocally Han's former girlfriend:

More recently, the 2015 STAR WARS series introduced Sana Starros, who actually introduces herself to Leia (in a story set between STAR WARS and EMPIRE) as Han's wife:

Their marriage is subsequently revealed to have been part of a scam, and Sana's later appearances indicate that she prefers women (meaning that Han has the dubious honor of sharing an ex with everyone's favorite unscrupulous disaster lesbian, Chelli Lona Aphra).

However, all this means that Han's checkered relationship history includes at least four Black women. I'm well aware that the likelihood of this being reflected in a big-budget STAR WARS movie was very low, and the racism of the studio and of fandom would have almost certainly made life hellish for any Black woman cast in the role of Han Solo's first girlfriend. Given how dismissively SOLO kills off the Val character (played by Thandiwe Newton) — a death Newton says originally wasn't supposed to be final — the misogynoir was already pronounced. However, the above prose and comics stories were all approved by Lucasfilm and are, or at least were, as close to canonical as any STAR WARS tie-in ever is.

small drawing as im looking forward to watching tales of the empire tomorrow

Lord Vader

Star Wars takes over the Empire State Building, 2024

Let's go, lesbians !!!

kinda forgot to post sketches but here I’m

Just got to say that I adore your Inquisitor Kanan au :) so hard to find those!

oooo I'm answering this one soo late 🫣 glad you do! It's weird how devoid of dark side Kanan it is out there, glad to be supplying (if with huge gaps in between posting but still pfppvdb)

Honestly the concept is so interesting to me, I was very much looking forward to Tales of the Empire to see if it could clue me in on more Inquisitor stuff - and sorta?

But I'd probably have to look into some comics and books for more, though I have no idea where to start with that 😅 JFO, TOTE and SWR will do rn

ANYWAY, here's some TOTE inspired sketches, Kanan gets the gi <3

When Yoda talks about the dark side 'forever dominating your destiny' once you've used it, I don't think he means that you can never choose differently again, that you can never get back on the path of goodness. I hear him saying that giving into the dark side even once, will have consequences that affect the rest of your life. That it will be harder for you to turn your back on the dark side when it beckons again, and that any actions taken while walking in the dark side will have consequences that affect you for the rest of your life. Using the dark side isn't like smoking a cigarette to see what it's like. It's a smear, a scar on your very soul, it NEEDS to be taken very seriously. The dark side is hunger, lust, greed for more of itself, and the more you feed it, the more it demands. When you feed it, give into it, it takes a part of you, you're feeding it with yourself, and you can never get those parts back, you can never undo anything.

Of course there is hope. Of course when one makes a choice, one can make a different choice next time, later. You can find your way back to the good path, there can be forgiveness and hope and new growth.

Because Luke immediately asks, "So is the dark side stronger, then?"

And Yoda replies, "No. No. No." Three times. Big emphasis. But then he says the dark is easier. 'More seductive'. That choosing the good requires discipline.

That's why Jedi have such high standards, need that discipline. If one is developing one's powers, one needs checks and balances to keep that power in line.

"With great power, comes great responsibility," in the words of Uncle Ben.

Particularly with Luke, who is the second or third most Force-sensitive ever, Yoda’s trying to drill in the awareness of what the boy’s getting himself into. Luke not developing his power is fine, he's a solid kid. But if he just jumps in to find out how powerful he is, without understanding the need for boundaries and a moral compass that match his strength with the Force, he could run off the rails in the blink of an eye. Because the dark side is Easy Street.

So yeah. I don't hear Yoda saying, "There's no hope of coming back from using the dark side", I hear, "Using the dark side is an incredibly serious and terrible thing, once you've done it, it is very hard to leave that path, and the repercussions will be felt for the rest of your life. So it's much better to never do it at all."

Star Wars: X-Wing - Rogue Squadron #32 (Mandatory Retirement #1 of 4) Cover Art by John Nadeau

Star Wars: Dark Empire No. 1 art by Cam Kennedy, December 1991. Dark Horse.

I’m gonna be honest. The more I think about it, the more I’m believing that the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy could’ve been better than the Original Trilogy if the script was tighter (a lot tighter). But George needed to let other people handle the script and he needed way more help with bringing his vision to life.

I mean, just think about it. The OG trilogy was a fairly straightforward, good vs evil storyline. Jedi and Rebels good, Emperor and Sith bad. Amazing storyline, but fairly simple. In comparison, the Prequel trilogy is far more complex in terms of what it was trying to achieve. If you look past the shitty dialogue and questionable storyline choices, the story that George came up with deals with:

1) Duty vs. Desire (Anakin trying to remain a Jedi but wanting to pursue Padme)

2) Questioning the Jedi Code instead of just blindly accepting it as gospel. Because despite how much Anakin was struggling with his complicated emotions, the Order doesn’t notice. In fact, the Order encouraged him to bury his emotions, which we see led to disaster since that led him right to the Dark Side.

3) An actual attempt at more complex politics rather than just evil empire versus good resistance. For example, it’s a meme that Anakin made an argument in favor of fascism, but in the hands of a better writer, that could’ve been a really good moment. We get an idea of why the Empire would have its supporters, despite being the obvious bad guys. It humanizes the Empire in a way that it doesn’t make you sympathize with them, but makes you understand how someone could end up on that path. That’s more true to life than just evil people being evil. (Andor is probably the one Star Wars media that understood this, which is partly why it’s one of the best Star Wars content out there)

4) The hero is genuinely a tragic character. He’s a child prodigy who was freed from slavery with the promise of a better life. But as he grows up, he becomes frustrated with how his life is turning out. He’s powerful, but not powerful enough to save his mom. He falls in love, but can’t be with Padme since it’s against the Jedi Code. Obi-Wan looks over him, but Anakin doesn’t feel he’s respected. The Order assigns him dangerous mission after dangerous mission, but he doesn’t get the rank of master. Anakin’s arc is about a man who feels like he’s not in control of his life (which is doubly sad when you remember he grew up in slavery) and, in his lowest moment, turns to a man who claims to be able to give Anakin everything he’s ever wanted. And that becomes his downfall since he ends up losing way more than he gained.

I’m sorry, but, that storyline is way more interesting than Luke and Leia’s story. No offense to Luke and Leia, but their dad’s story sounds like a Shakespearean tragedy. What messed it up was that George Lucas needed someone else to write the script.

p01 & p02

So last night I finished reading Rise of the Red Blade for TotE Vibes Research purposes and the two Inquisitor characters in it really illustrate exactly why I think Barriss is going to survive and escape them.

Because the thing is that there are two kinds of Inquisitors! The ones who volunteered, and the ones who...didn’t. Iskat (RotRB’s focus character) perfectly exemplifies the first type: she had some traumatizing experiences at a young age, fell through a number of institutional cracks in the Order, had a really terrible master (meet me in the pit, Sember Vey), everyone was too busy to give her the follow-up they would under normal circumstances, Palpatine had an agent actively gathering information about her and pushing her to become Worse—she was a pre-selected candidate who was offered the choice to come quietly when Order 66 hit, and she took it. By that point all of her issues and doubts had been exacerbated to the point where it wasn’t hard for her to make herself hate the Jedi, and then she rationalized her way through any indication that her freedom was a lie and doubled her way down right into hell.

By contrast: Tualon, Iskat’s crechemate situationship guy. He had some issues but was not someone on Palpatine’s radar; Iskat left him to die in Order 66 and he survived getting shot by darksiding out about her betrayal. Because of that he was taken alive and they did some shit to him. When Iskat runs into him at the Inquisitor HQ after he’s freshly-inducted he can barely remember why he hates her, or anything else from before he was taken. He woke up in the room where you fight Trilla and they fully shattered him and glued a semblance of a person back together out of the wreckage, just COMPLETELY Winter Soldiered the guy, and the only way he had to cope with it is to lean into a weird codependent situationship with Iskat.

And that distinction’s always been there with the Inquisitors; you have the true believers who ended up hating the Jedi or wanted to go on a power trip (or had the kind of revenge plan only a 12 year old could come up with and then stick to for a decade, in one case) and didn’t need any additional coercion to volunteer, and you have the ones that they broke. In the former group you’ve got the Grand Inquisitor, Reva/Third, Lyn/Fourth*, Fifth, and Iskat/Thirteenth. For the most part they’re certified freaks, but they came by it naturally. (Reva’s a different flavor.) In the latter, you’ve got Trilla/Second, Seventh, Masana/Ninth, Tualon, and probably most of the others. They all got disassembled and reassembled without much care given to the process and are all Coping with it badly in different ways, whether by deciding it’s Empowering, Actually (Trilla & Seventh) or by becoming completely jaded about everything (Masana & Tualon).

(*We obviously don’t know a lot about Fourth yet, but the fact that she shows up to recruit Barriss while rocking yellow dark side eyes before ROTS is even over tells me she’s definitely a volunteer.)

All this is to say: The Grand Inquisitor is making a colossal mistake with Barriss from the drop, and it’s why I think she’s going to win their battle of wits and escape. Because he is treating her like she is an Iskat and she could not be any farther from it.

He sends Lyn to get her to come quietly! They actively withhold information from her about what happened to the Jedi and what her expected role in it is! That’s not how they recruit the ones they think will be a problem; if that were the case she would have been stunned out of hand and woken up on a rack.

Instead, he’s giving her special attention,, he’s training her—he doesn’t think they need to break her. She’s just got a few...pesky hang-ups from her time as a Jedi that need ironing out**. He’s projecting on her; he doesn’t just want an empty shell holding a lightsaber—he wants Barriss Offee, loyally kneeling at his side, fully believing in their mission. She’s his favorite.

(**That “mercy only breeds defeat” line isn’t just a generic darksidism; I’m pretty sure he’s directly critiquing how Barriss got caught because she showed mercy to Asajj Ventress.)

And surely that's something he can turn her into, right? Because she hates the Jedi, right? She attacked them, she outsmarted them, obviously she’d be down for wanting to wipe them out! He was there when she confessed and, like pretty much everyone else in the room save for Ahsoka, he didn’t hear a single word that she said—just what he wanted her to be saying. He’s got a deeply incorrect idea of her, and that idea is “she’s just like me for real.”

And he’s wrong, because the Inquisitorius is everything she feared the Jedi Order was becoming—literally, an army fighting for the dark side—and the Empire is everything she knew the Republic was becoming. She might be prone to despairing, it might in some hypothetical be possible to get her into the same resigned despair trap as Anakin, but she would never actually want to serve the Empire, and they don't think they'll have to try hard to convince her to.

She loves the Jedi, she loved being a Jedi, she wanted to save them. She wants to be one again more than anything even though right now she thinks she doesn’t deserve it, thinks that she’s already too broken to reclaim what she was. But I think being surrounded by actual fallen Jedi and being told over and over again that she’s like them is, in the end, going to be what reminds her that she never stopped being a Jedi in the first place.

And as long as she can make sure her captors don't realize that's true until it's too late, she'll be home free.