Top 8 of '08: #8 - Luke Skywalker: Last Hope for the Galaxy

Rancors Love to Read is focused on reading all of the adult novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. However, there is another hugely important and exciting element to reading Star Wars, and that's the comic books. Marvel started publishing Star Wars comics in the late 1970s, meeting with considerable success and rolling out monthly books throughout the run of the Original Trilogy. After Return of the Jedi, the series, which had topped one hundred issues, ceased and Star Wars comics lay fallow for the rest of the 1980s.

In the early 1990s Timothy Zahn kicked the doors of the modern Star Wars Expanded Universe wide open with his acclaimed Thrawn Trilogy. At the same time, Dark Horse comics picked up the Star Wars license, blasting out of the gate with the Dark Empire saga and never looking back. Now, over fifteen years down the road, Dark Horse is still going strong. They have published hundreds of issues, many distinct series, and there are trade paperback graphic novels compiling the vast majority of the content, along with a select few hardcovers.

What we haven't had until 2008 is any sort of truly deluxe, pull-out-all-the-stops hardcover compilation. That all changed last fall with the release of Luke Skywalker: Last Hope for the Galaxy. This massive tome, weighing in at several pounds and a whopping 832 pages, collects various key Luke Skywalker stories from throughout the years, including several entries from the Marvel era. The book is oversized, bringing details to the light that were difficult to discern in earlier releases, and includes some stories that aren't easy to track down, such as "Day after the Death Star" from the Marvel UK comics. Also included is a newly colored rendition of "Luke Skywalker's Walkabout," from the rare Dark Horse Presents Annual 1999. The book comes in a quality slipcover, has a bookmark built in, and simply feels like quality in your hands. Luke is my favorite character from the films and wading through this gigantic book on a beach vacation in November was a delightful journey indeed.

Also notable in 2008 was the continuing success of Dark Horse's ongoing titles. The company currently has four Star wars series running: Knights of the Old Republic, Dark Times, Rebellion, and Legacy. Dark Times and Rebellion took a break in the middle of the year while Dark Horse worked on a new Clone Wars series as part of the big push behind the cartoon, but they will return this year. Legacy and Knights of the Old Republic are two of the best series the company has ever published. Both benefit from featuring non-film characters and utilizing timeframes where we don't already know what's going to happen. I look forward with extreme anticipation to each graphic novel release in these series and have not been disappointed to date.

Speaking of the push for the cartoon, Dark Horse also returned to the Clone Wars era with two new titles. One is a six issue stories written by Henry Gilroy, lead writer for the TV show, telling a tale of Anakin and Ahsoka butting heads with slavers, and the other is a new quarterly digest-size series in the style of the cartoon. It's great seeing Dark Horse return to the Clone Wars era, and even though these offerings have quite a different tone than the excellent 40+ Clone Wars issues that were published between the releases of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, they are a welcome addition to the universe.

For the impressive Luke Skywalker: Last Hope for the Galaxy and the generally high quality of the ongoing comics, Dark Horse earns a berth as my #8 of '08 Star Wars experiences.