^ I loved the first Dark Empire series ,and for the way they handled the Emperors return ,it worked for me better than TROS .It certainly had a surreal touch to it in the artwork ,from the color palette to the recursive imagery of the star destroyers surrounding the planet Byss . ( which was picked up on in TROS ) .I remember being in a comic shop about a year before the first issue came out and seeing The Light And Darkness War and thinking this creative team would be great doing a Star Wars book …in fact , I mistook it FOR Star Wars at first glance .As a huge fan of the original Marvel Star Wars comic ,which was in publication before all of the over explained EU stuff , I was bummed when they stopped publishing it . When the first Dark Empire issue came out , I was ecstatic and bought it on the spot .I would now be getting my monthly Star Wars comic fix after 5 long years ! That first series felt very cinematic to me and indeed it felt like the possibilities of where they could go were limitless .I liked the Tales Of The Jedi comics for that reason as well .Dark Empire 2 and Empires End were a letdown to me though as they got too formulaic and I could accept the Emperor coming back once , but it was overkill after that and he just came off as another carton villain .Then there was the whole matter of these stories later tying in with the Kevin J. Anderson novels …while they had some cool concepts ,the execution was clunky . I was glad that the novel I,Jedi summarized those events more coherently and kept the cooler aspects in without going overboard .I also liked the audio drama of Dark Empire as well as Tales Of The Jedi and Crimson Empire .