STAR WARS LEGENDS EPIC COLLECTION: THE NEW REPUBLIC VOL. 5 (Star Wars Legends Epic Collection, 5) Paperback – March 9, 2021

Star Wars Dark Empire is the best Star Wars comic ever published. It's is. It truly is.I want you to do this: forget everything you know about Star Wars. Forget any movie you've seen, any book or comic you've read, any game you've played. Forget all of your experiences you've had in your life that involves Star Wars. I know it's impossible, but try. Try hard. Clear your mind. Yeah...become one with the Force.Once you've done the best you can do is forgetting everything you know about Star Wars, watch A New Hope. Don't watch it like you've seen it before. Let it flow over you. Try not to anticipate. Try to watch A New Hope like you've never seen it before. Be a wide-eyed kid, full of wonder and excitement! Gasp when that Star Destroyer starts to float over your head, and be amazed at how long it takes! How big is that thing!Discover Star Wars again.Then, maybe on the next night, do the same thing. Watch The Empire Strikes Back, and in your memory, you only know A New Hope. You don't know of any other Star Wars--just the first movie. Enjoy the movie. Be shocked when Vader cuts off Luke's arm! Let your jaw drop when Vader tells Luke that he's Luke's father! And, don't believe it...yet! Speculate! It can't be!When you're ready. When your breathing has calmed down--maybe on the next night. Watch Return of the Jedi, and watch it the same way that you've watched the other two films of the original trilogy. Bask in them. Enjoy them for what they are. Forget any baggage that has come since in the form of newer movies, books, comics, TV shows, and other media.Just soak up the original trilogy.Because this is what was out when Dark Empire hit the stands. Most people knew only the original trilogy when they picked up the first issue.Sure, Marvel had done the Star Wars comic, which started great and went fairly south after they covered Return of the Jedi. They didn't know were to go.There's Splinter of the Mind's Eye, but that's just one book. And, that was about it as far as Star Wars. Maybe you want to count the Ewok TV specials.Since that time, there has come many excellent sources of Star Wars material. Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy came out just a few months before Dark Empire hit the stands. There was the amazing WEG D6 Star Wars Roleplaying Game (that remains the best Star Wars RPG to this day). There was Shadows of the Empire and the X-Wing series. The Mandalorian. Dark Horses other amazing comic series, Dark Times. Lots of incredible Star Wars stuff.......but not before Dark Empire.Go back to that time. Clear your mind. Watch the original trilogy. Forget everything else. Watch the original trilogy with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. Enjoy the three films like you haven't in years.Then. When you've completed that task. Sit down in your favorite comfy chair, with your favorite coffee, or tea, or wine, and begin to read DARK EMPIRE.It will blow you away.THIS should have been the sequel series. Just Dark Empire. I'm not speaking to DE II or End of Empire.Sure, lots was taken from Dark Empire, even in Episode IX, there are shades of Dark Empire. But, nothing, NOTHING comes close to delivering the amazing, incredible experience that is DARK EMPIRE, especially when you consider that only the original trilogy exists.That's they way it was originally read. That's how it had such an impact on the Star Wars universe. THAT'S how you should read it.Yeah. It will take your breath away. The story. The art. The amazing coloring.No other source has captured the atmosphere and pure adventure of the original films the way this story does.Enjoy!

I was already a big Dark Empire fan, so I already had to get this volume. What surprised me was the quality of the back matter (the contents of which are never detailed in the official product summaries), as the entirety of the highly sought-after Dark Empire endnotes are included. This is the first time they've been reprinted since the second edition Dark Empire TPB in 1995 (they were excluded from all subsequent editions and collections up to this very Epic Collection) and the first time they've been officially available since the Hyperspace fan club website shut down in 2011, so it's wonderful that these essays are now more easily accessible. There are also some nice introductions carried over from the Dark Empire TPBs and a great collection of cover art from across the various issues and editions. Highly recommended and probably one of the finest Star Wars Epic Collections out there.

Havent read the original Dark Horse Comics issues during the 1990s, so this was a terrific surprisingly good Star Wars Epic Collection, featuring top notch stories by Tom Veitch and excellent bonus material. Recomende for Star Wars and Epic Collections fans!

I was happy to finally see the great dark empire stories reprinted. It is worth getting for this reason.Unfortunately the delivery is poor. The paper quality is horribly thin, it will feel like reading on tissue paper. The back up stories they choose seem to have no connection to the main storyline and are of poor quality. Finally after each chapter in the originals comic books there was a few pages of written backup story that added greatly to what you just read. There’s some pages hidden in the very back that I’m not sure where they originally appeared or to what issues they were associated with.Four stars, worth reading and out of print for along time but very poor delivery.

Dark Empire is certainly a wild take on the Star Wars universe, and while the art can be strange and the story very "comic-booky" it is still quite entertaining.On a side note here, my book came warped because the fulfilment center packed the paperback in an envelope. :/ Not happy about that.

Great Graphic Novel. Have been wanting to read this series for a while. Glad to have bought it when I could.

This was Star Wars before Disney took over.

Some of the Best Star Wars stories ever written included in this collection!