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So I’ve been thinking about what a series of comic fan-edits might look like. What if all the EU comics material was pooled together, and recreated into a definitive series. Stories would be edited, emphasis might be shifted perhaps away from the core film storylines, and the core character base may expand.
I’ve recently returned to Star Wars comics after not touching them for over 15 years. The EU, and the comics especially, really lost some of its excitement and energy for me at the time when the PT was released, as it greatly contradicted my own vision of those events. The EU product line really seemed to explode and it became more and more difficult to maintain interest.
The transition of much of the EU material to LEGENDS, seemed to end much of what had been grown over the decades, so it seems more finite and complete. With this in hand, I have returned to reading much of that material that I had previously dismissed, and some of it is really great. I have amassed decades of comics now, and find the volume and scope of what has been produced both overwhelming and exciting.
What strikes me is how much of a mixed bag it is. Awesome and awful, original and cliched. There are numerous contradictions and repetitive storylines. Jedi-turns to the dark side repeats over and over again, as well as the references to pre-ANH events which clearly happen differently after 1998.
Where much of it fails, is how exciting events happen within the stories (for instance Shadows of the Empire) that never get a mention in the films (and by extension the comic adaptations of the films) - which limit the believability greatly. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker meet and interact so much within the earlier comics - so the emphasis and drama of both ESB and ROTJ are somewhat lessened.
If EU comics was to be considered as a whole narrative - and entirely separate from the other EU materials, and the core trilogies, what would that narrative be? What would you edit out/change/ignore or emphasise? Would the events of core films play out differently to compensate for other storylines? Could edit other EU comics to retell the PT perhaps?
What do people think?