Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: A Spark Remains by Randy Stradley and Douglas Wheatley

Comic trade paperback, 118 pages
Published 2014 (contents: 2013)
Acquired October 2014
Read February 2019

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume Seven: A Spark Remains

Script: Randy Stradley

Art: Douglas Wheatley

Colors: Dan Jackson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

This volume draws some of the threads of Dark Times together as the series comes to an end. Finally reunited with the Uhumele, Dass Jennir plots an ambush for the mysterious Darth Vader. There's even a callback to the original story in Clone Wars, Volume 9 from which Dark Times sprang.

It's fine. I liked the resolution to what was going on with the Verpine Jedi, and Wheatley's art is good, even though it's not as good as it was. Darth Vader and the Empire aren't quite the inevitable force they ought to be, but I think my biggest issue is less with something Dark Times did and more with something it didn't.

The earlier volumes, I think, were pointing at something unique, asking what it means to be a Jedi in dark times? The answer A Spark Remains gives us is that it's not all that different. Which is a good message, one supposes, but maybe too pat. I also think Bomo Greenbark and the Uhumele crew ultimately ended up squandered; after volume 3, they didn't contribute very much to the main thrust of the series any more. Greenbark was originally an ordinary guy crushed by war and spat out, and I liked that. But here's, he's just another guy on the ship. I wish his character had ended up being as important to the series as Jennir's, which is what the earlier volumes had implied would be the case.

All in all, I enjoyed Dark Times. It's no Knights of the Old Republic or Legacy, but it is a valuable reminder of the kind of interesting smaller-scale side stories about "ordinary" people in the Star Wars universe that Dark Horse was good at.

Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: Fire Carrier by Randy Stradley and Gabriel Guzman

Comic trade paperback, 118 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 2013)
Acquired May 2014
Read January 2019

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume Six: Fire Carrier

Script: Randy Stradley

Art: Gabriel Guzman

Colors: Garry Henderson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

I don't know if Dark Times was intended to end in its seventh volume, or if Dark Horse losing the Star Wars license brought it to a premature end, but this volume makes me think it was intentionally winding down. Fire Carrier picks up a thread abandoned since volume two, as we revisit the Jedi younglings hiding from the Purge with Master K'Kruhk. This seems like the kind of thing you make sure to tie off when you know you're running out of time, but maybe a side story is the kind of thing you do when you want Doug Wheatley to draw your main arcs but know he can only draw six issues every two years.

In any case, misleadingly Darth Vader-focused cover aside, this is one of the best Dark Times stories, and probably the one that most feels like the series was mean to be-- the last couple Jennir-focused volumes made it more Jedi-centric. But here, like in some of the early Uhumele-focused stories like Parallels and Vector, it's about decent people trying to hang on in a universe arrayed against the very concept of decency. And not just K'Kruhk and his Jedi charges, but also ordinary Imperial officers. There's a whole sideplot about Imperial officers, who were quite recently Republic officers, and how they're trying to make the new government live up to their expectations. The Empire was supposed to be something and it's not, but they want it to anyway.

I enjoyed it a lot. The kind of story that makes you think it could go anywhere (and it does go some dark places), and is all the better for it. There's even a nice tie-in to Legacy, connecting two of Dark Horse's better Star Wars ongoings together.

Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: Out of the Wilderness by Randy Stradley and Douglas Wheatley

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2011 (contents: 2011-12)
Acquired April 2014
Read January 2019

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume Five: Out of the Wilderness

Script: Randy Stradley

Art: Douglas Wheatley

Colors: Dan Jackson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

Darth Vader has been a background presence throughout Dark Times, rarely directly interacting with Our Heroes, but lurking off somewhere else, sometimes as frustrated as they are with the new state of the galaxy. In this volume, Dass Jennir sets off to return Ember, the brothel manager he met in the last volume, to her home planet, only to end up crash-landing. The two must work together to survive while being hunted by a bounty hunter, and while the Uhumele crew searches for Jennir with the aid of a Verpine Jedi. It's not the best volume of Dark Times, but it is enjoyable enough.

I'm not entirely convinced by the Jennir/Ember romance, which mostly seems to be based on her being female and willing and him being lonely and needy, but the basic premise of the story is sound. I like Jennir's pretty consistent "hero" moments; it's a good demonstration of the constant commitment to goodness in difficult circumstances that the Jedi life requires, and for Jennir, the Dark Times seem to be providing some clarity that his earlier life lacked. The galaxy might be worse off, but he seems to be more himself than he ever was. There's a good twist as regards the bounty hunter, too. I do wish it didn't seem like Bomo Greenbark was fading into the background, though; his ordinariness was one of the original drivers of the series, but he's just kind of becoming yet another member of the Uhumele crew.

I like Wheatley's artwork, but I liked his art better in the earlier volumes of this series. It was more rounded and 3-D then, to good effect.

Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: Blue Harvest by Randy Stradley and Douglas Wheatley

Comic trade paperback, 134 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009-10)
Acquired November 2012
Read January 2019

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume Four: Blue Harvest

Script: Mick Harrison

Art: Douglas Wheatley

Colors: Dave McCaig, Chris Chuckry, Dan Jackson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

With this volume of Dark Times, I hit the point where I fell behind as the series was coming out, so everything from here onwards is new to me. Blue Harvest shifts the focus away from the crew of the Uhumele and Darth Vader (who both appear for just a couple pages), back to ex-Jedi Dass Jennir, who we last saw in volume one. It's okay stuff, but predictable, reminding me a little bit of a western, a little bit of noir.

Jennir is asked by a woman to help clear her town of gangs; of course it's a set-up (though not one I entirely understood), but also of course he manages it anyway. It doesn't have the painful darkness that made some of the earlier volumes of Dark Times work. You don't feel that Jennir is being pushed to the limit of his morality as he has been in the past. Still, I enjoyed it; it has nice touches, like Jennir inheriting the droid of a man he killed, so the droid is always grumbling at him about it, and the local fisherman named simply "Fish" who loyally aids Jennir. I'm over halfway through Dark Times now, so hopefully the series ends on a high note.

However: is it called "Blue Harvest" just because Jennir meets two different groups of blue aliens? And what's the "harvest"? That's a pretty far reach for a reference.

Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: Parallels by Randy Stradley, Dave Ross, and Luis Antonio

Comic trade paperback, 118 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007-08)
Acquired August 2008
Previously read September 2008
Reread December 2018

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume Two: Parallels

Script: Mick Harrison

Art: Dave Ross, Luis Antonio

Colors: Alex Wald
Lettering: Michael Heisler

Here's my original review of this volume from October 2008:

After reading the first volume of Dark Times, I was a little tepid-- another Jedi on the run dealing with the Dark Side? Quinlan Vos, Ferus Olin, and many others have been there and done that. Fortunately, the second volume has confounded my expectations-- said Jedi is not even a character even more! Instead we get Bomo Greenbark and the crew of the Uhumele, just trying to make their way in the strange new world that is the Galactic Empire. The best thing about this book is the sense that somewhere, somehow the world has gone horribly wrong, and our poor heroes can't do a thing about it but try to make it until the next day. Greenbark rocks, and the rest of the Uhumele's crew is growing on me, especially Crys and Ratty. (The ship has a few too many crewmembers, but Harrison seems to have recognized that, as this story kills several of them off!) There's also a side story about K'Kruhk. It's always nice to see his sweet hat, but it's otherwise pretty forgettable.

This is not too dissimilar from my thoughts on rereading. I perhaps liked it slightly less than my old review indicates, as the story is more action-y and less atmospheric than would be optimal. Probably this is partially due to the replacement of Douglas Wheatley on art by Dave Ross and Luis Antonio. I don't know which of the two draw which parts, but one of them is more cheesecake-y when it comes to the main cast's lone human woman. On the other hand, I liked the K'Kruhk side story more; it felt tense in that I genuinely didn't know (and didn't remember) if the kids he was trying to protect would survive. (The previous volume had a kid get eaten, and in Revenge of the Sith kids get murdered, so clearly nothing is off limits for Star Wars at this point.) I do like Bomo a lot.

Review: Star Wars: Dark Times: The Path to Nowhere by Randy Stradley and Douglas Wheatley

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2008 (contents: 2006-07)
Acquired and previously read January 2008
Reread November 2018

Star Wars: Dark Times, Volume One: The Path to Nowhere

Story: Welles Hartley
Script: Mick Harrison

Art: Douglas Wheatley

Colors: Ronda Pattison
Lettering: Michael David Thomas, Michael Heisler

I read the first three volumes of Dark Times-- which chronicles the separate adventures of a couple Jedi, a group of smugglers, and Darth Vader in the months after Revenge of the Sith-- as they came out in the late 2000s, but fell behind after that; the series lasted four more. I finally got to reading volume four, but decided I ought to reread the earlier volumes so I would have some context. (First, I actually reread a two-issue story in Clone Wars, Volume 9 that some of the Dark Times characters debuted in.) First, here's my original review of volume one from February 2008:

I expected to like this new series a lot, spinning off as it did from the very good last volume of the Clone Wars comics, Endgame. Unfortunately, this volume never clicked with me for some reason. There's nothing I can point to, really, but there is a feeling of seen-it-before, with a Jedi on the run in a rag-tag ship, in danger of falling to the dark side-- it's Knights of the Old Republic mixed with Quinlan Vos's arc in Clone Wars, except not as good as either. One review I read online said that the story Endgame set up-- a Jedi leading an army of former Separatists against the Empire-- was more interesting than the one we actually got, and I agree. Still, the art is very, very nice, and the twilight gloom that arrives with the coming of the Empire is well portrayed. I think I'll pick up the second volume and see how I like it then.

On reread, I actually liked it more than the above indicates, maybe because I knew to not have those expectations based on Endgame anymore, and maybe also because since I read it right after Endgame, the continuity of Dass Jennir's character arc was more obvious. Jennir isn't in danger of falling to the Dark Side, as I said above; it's more than in the era of the Empire, the ideals that sustained his entire life just ceased to be applicable. He's not choosing evil, but moving into a world where there is no opportunity to choose good. This is a very dark comic book (slavery and cannibalism are key features!), but it takes good advantage of its setting to tell a unique kind of Star Wars story, and it does so very well, in large part thanks to Douglas Wheatley's exceptional artwork.

(Since the original comic came out, it's been revealed that "Welles Hartley," credited writer of Endgame, and "Mick Harrison," credited writer of volumes 2-4 of Dark Times, are in fact both pen names for editor Randy Stradley, used I guess to disguise how much of Dark Horse's Star Wars output he wrote himself. But for some reason this book credits the story to one of those pseudonyms and the script to the other! In this interview from 2007, artist Wheatley even keeps up the subterfuge by saying it's the first project he's ever worked on with two writers, and it makes for lively conference calls. This has bothered me ever since the Hartley/Harrison revelation, and I want to know why it was done this way.)