Legacy Vol.1: Broken TPB Text: John Ostrander Art: Jan Duursema, Dan Parsons, Brad Anderson Cover: Adam Hughes Released: 05/02/2007 Reviewed by: Stephen (06/10/2007) SUMMARY (from DarkHorse.com): The future of Star Wars is here in an all-new adventure set more than a century after Return of the Jedi and the New Jedi Order! The Jedi Temple is attacked, an Emperor is betrayed, and the Sith are born anew! A lot can happen in a hundred years, but that's just the beginning of the story! Not since Luke Skywalker first stepped aboard the Millennium Falcon has the galaxy seemed like such a vast, exciting, dangerous place! Readers will meet a host of new characters, see fleets of new spaceships, and visit scores of exotic locations-some new and some familiar. This is a perfect jumping-on point for any reader.

THE STORY

Broken as a storyline works perfectly well. Since it is the opening story arc for the comic series Star Wars Legacy. Legacy is set around 125 years after Return of the Jedi. It was written by John Ostrander and the artist was Jan Duursema.

The blurb on Dark horse's website describes it as ?a perfect jumping-on point for any reader?, and pne thing is for certain, this is a perfect jumping-on point for any reader that is new to the Star Wars expanded universe. It's a brand-spanking new era, so we have new characters out the yin-yang and none of the overhead of the Saga timeframe. Like any first story-arc it is responsible for introducing the major players of the comic. In this case those major players are Cade Skywalker, pirate, bounty-hunter and great grandson of Luke Skywalker, or maybe great-great grandson they're not really clear on that, the Force-sensitive Imperial Princess Sia Fel, who is somehow related to Soontir Fel, and Darth Krayt the resident Sith Lord.

Cade is an interesting character. He's darker than the usual Star Wars hero, more Quinlan Vos than Luke Skywalker. Of course, that darkness tends to be par for the course for Star Wars these days, and I'm not 100% certain that it's the proper way to push forward the franchise. Unfortunately I'm not in charge of directing such things so we're kind of stuck with that darkness.

The female lead is Sia Fel, princess of the Empire and somewhat obnoxious here. It's still to early to get a good read on her character, but she reminds me a whole bunch of Jaina. Very serious, very duty-bound. There's a lot of theories that the Fels here are direct descendants of Jaina and Jagged. Myself? I'm not 100% certain that's the case, but I can see why it's thought that way. Hopefully, Jan and John have a good plot for this.

Krayt is a very interesting character. He thinks a lot like Jacen in LotF and was supposedly alive during the NJO. Exactly who he is isn't said, but it has been said that who he is is not as important as why he is, and that's a question that's not been answered here. Krayt has done away with the Rule of Two and gives us a whole host of Sith to play with. This is good for the comic series as it allows for constant introduction of new bad guys.

There's a handful of other characters introduced as well here. The Imperials and the Imperial Knights, a group of Jedi-like people who work for the Empire. Then there's the Jedi. Most of them have been slaughtered by the Sith, but there's still a number out there, working on the fringes of society. Finally, we have the smugglers, included in this group are Cade's crew. Hopefully these secondary characters will get fleshed out better in later issues, as they're still largely ciphers here.

The plot here is fairly complex. I'm not entirely certain how to describe it, but I guess the prime thing here is just Cade being outed as a former Jedi. Nothing really gets resolved, we're just given more questions while each individual issue has a thin plot-line to drive those questions. Yet despite that, the story works well here.

Art wise, I love Jan's work. She's got a very clean, concise style which easily allows the reader to keep track of what's happening.

Overall, we have pretty much a standard first story arc here. We're given a lot of questions which the reader wants answered and we're given beautiful pencils to look at while asking those questions. The major characters are fairly complex, and even the most important of the secondary characters have the potential to be complex and well formed characters. In the end, I liked it. Cade was a tad darker of a character than I tend to prefer, especially for a Star Wars novel, and I have serious reservations on whether or not he meets the requirements for what I view as a STAR WARS HERO. Yet all that aside, it is still a fun comic series, and I for one, can't wait for the second TPB to be released.

Rating: In the end, I give it a 3 out of 4.