Star Wars Rediscovered: Empire's End Review

"You deny me this? You are long dead...but it is I who rule the galaxy...forever!"

Welcome to Star Wars Rediscovered and my review of Empire's End. Read on after the jump to find out whether it lives up to the previous two series. 

Writer: Tom Veitch

Artist: Jim Baikie

Letters: Lois Bubalis

Cover Artist: Dave Dorman

Cover Art

The cover art is another good piece from Dorman. We have the well drawn figures of Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and some sort of rocket or ship blasting above them. Both Han and Leia look very worried and Luke is ready to attack with his lightsaber drawn and ready. Every character is drawn fantastically well and is easily recognisable. Another great cover by Dorman. 
Issue #2's cover art by Dorman of the Emperor wielding blue Force Lightning is fantastic. I love the anger on his face and the guards lined loyally behind him. 

Plot

Issue #1 deals with the determination of both the Emperor and the Rebels to destroy each other. The Emperor has a powerful weapon at his disposal called the Galaxy Gun. He used this to destroy the Rebel base but due to a fault they managed to escape before they were all killed. Thanks to Imperial spies he learns of their new location and sends another missile to destroy them but this one turns out also to be faulty and so does not immediately explode giving them time to evacuate. The Emperor meanwhile is in his last clone body which due to a genetic fault is aging rapidly, his advisors tell him he needs strong Jedi blood to keep him alive and so he decides to try and kidnap Han & Leia's son and also some of the inhabitants of the planet Ossus due to their Jedi past.
Issue #2 starts with Luke and Kam rushing to Bast Castle to rescue the Ysanna who have been

kidnapped. They defeat the Dark Side agents but discover that the Ysanna have been covered in Carbonite. They return to the base and learn that the Emperor has discovered Leia's location and is on his way to take her child. Half of our heroes rush to protect Leia while the others go to sabotage the Emperors ship. Luke arrives in Leia's quarters just in time as the Emperor is about to take Anakin and Han shoots him to stop him, this forces the Emperor who is now nearly dead to transfer his life force to Anakin and possess him. He nearly succeeds if not for the robotic Jedi Brand who comes between the Emperor's life force and the child and manages to contain him within himself, this is the end of the Emperor but also Brand. Meanwhile Chewie and the other Rebels successfully sabotage the Emperor's ship so that it jumps through hyperspace to the gravity gun. This causes those controlling the gun to panic and fire it, destroying both the ship and the dark side planet Byss. 

Interior Artwork

The interior artwork is of a generally high standard. I thought the focus on a rainbow of colours for the first few scenes was really interesting and gave it a mystical, almost dream like quality to it. Some of my favourite panels include
The close up on one of the Ysanna elder's faces when he realises that the Emperor is about to kill one hundred thousand Rebels. The use of colours really helps to highlight the anguish in his face.
The panel of all of the Rebel ships emerging together from hyperspace looks great.I love the use of muted colours.
I love the panel of the dead Sith Lords talking with the Emperor. The use of green really highlights the skeletal features of the corpses face. 

Conclusion & Rating

To conclude I felt this was a good end to the Dark Empire series but felt a little short. The highlight of these two issues was definitely seeing how desperate the crazed dying Emperor was and how fearful he was of dying. Another highlight was the fantastic cover art by Dorman.

Rating: 7/10 - Death Star

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