CLASSIC ART: DARK TIMES, 'DARK EMPIRE'!

More powerful in the Force than ever, Leia Organa graces the cover of Dark Empire issue six in spectacular and ominous style, the character now the focal target of an ancient prophecy and the resurrected, power-mad Emperor Palpatine. Terrific art by Dave Dorman for a 1992 comic series that, alongside Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn Trilogy of novels, put the once dormant Star Wars franchise back in the pop culture scene in a big way!

HOW TO KILL A COMIC FRANCHISE THE MARVEL WAY!

This is a classic image showing the later issue look of the post-RETURN OF THE JEDI characters in the monthly STAR WARS comic book then being produced by MARVEL COMICS. I like the image a lot-finally a Jedi, Luke's stance is great and its all nicely composed with friends and enemies old and new. The thing that makes me laugh, though, is that this magazine was a MARVEL COMICS news magazine which was proudly proclaiming the future of STAR WARS in its monthly series, and yet it wasn't long before they actually axed the title (in 1986, with its 107th issue), and the writers and artists working on it were forced to truncate their then current epic storyline (featuring a new regular enemy, the Nagai) into one wrap-up finale issue (which was very disappointing for everyone!). MARVEL cited its reason for the comics culling as being due to lowering readership since the end of the films and the limbo between sagas. And yet, from behind the scenes sources who worked on the title at the time, their consensus to STAR WARS fans was that the comic was actually still garnering consistent figures that were higher than some of MARVEL's very own created titles, which weren't being axed! Talk about one hand at MARVEL not knowing what the other was doing! Go figure!

It may have been a while later, but, with the superb DARK EMPIRE story re-launching STAR WARS as a viable comics franchise, MARVEL's loss was ultimately DARK HORSE's gain!