In the aftermath of the release of the Hand of Thrawn duology, a comic book series was released detailing part of the past of Mara Jade, the titular Emperor's Hand. Written by Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole, the five issue miniseries shows Mara immediately before and after the Emperor's death and his last command to her as she flees imprisonment from Director Isard and attempts to finish her final assignment for the Empire.
Due to the timeline, tropes from the short comic Mara Jade: A Night on the Town are included.
The series contains the following tropes:
- Action Prologue: The series starts with an Issue 0, set 4 years before the rest of the comic as Mara infiltrates one of Tarkin's parties.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Mara Jade goes to an Imperial governor and demands that he helps her and that instructions would be in his desk safe. This is after she broke into his office and placed said orders in there.
- Distant Prologue: The prologue takes place 4-5 years before the rest of the comic series.
- Iconic Item: Mara's violet-bladed lightsaber is introduced in this book. It's a safe observation that as much, if not more, fan-art of Mara shows her with this lightsaber, even though she canonically uses Anakin's after Luke gives it to her at the conclusion of the Thrawn Trilogy. It even turns up at times in official works (such as Star Wars: Union) that are set after she receives Anakin's iconic blade.
- The Mole: Strok, the Imperial officer that is assigned to help Mara take out the crime boss Dequc is actually on the crime boss's payroll.
- Secret Test of Character: As Mara is expected of the Emperor to be neither fully light nor dark, one of the guards who attempts to subdue her in the prologue is a real human. Mara senses this and doesn't kill him.
