skyjedi2005 said:

That few if any of the EU books, comics or games capture the adventure and excitement and fun of the first film from 1977.

And that's the thing, on face value, you would think it would be easier. I'm sure if the movie had have come out about eight years earlier (and was just as big of a smash hit) and had a series of books been commissioned fairly early on, we'd would have had a much more entertaining set of books.

As it is, the marvel comics were winging it, and, perhaps, Marvel wasn't the best outlet for SW by that stage. Conversely; perhaps the darker world of almost a quarter of a century on (and further) is not conducive to good Star Wars. There's too much time to stew things over and second guess what you think would happen or what you think would make for interesting reading - Star Wars had become too big (which is a different point to the 'small universe' issue). And of course, by the late 90s, 'darkness' was all the rage.