Trivia / Dark Empire

• Approval of God: To an extent. While the series met a mixed response from both fans and Star Wars authors, George Lucas himself praised the artwork of Dark Empire. Despite coming to dislike the concept of Palpatine's return after creating Anakin's Chosen One destiny as a plot point in the prequels, Lucas bought 14 of the 16 original artworks and gave signed collected editions as Christmas gifts to Lucasfilm employees.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The Galaxy Gun was always called the Galaxy Weapon, at least in its original appearances. Which might still not have been enough to save it from the scrappy heap, but this does sound somewhat more dignified than the moniker it was subsequently saddled with in the fluff.
• Duelling Works: A rare intra-franchise example between Tom Veitch's Dark Empire comic and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy novels. Both series were conceived as immediate sequels to the Original Trilogy, and their first instalments were even released in the same year. Zahn was purportedly dismissive of Dark Empire and refused to incorporate elements of the storyline into his Thrawn books, but since both series were set in the same universe, Veitch's comic had to be pushed forward six years in the in-universe timeline to accommodate the events of Zahn's novels. The fact that both Veitch and Zahn had many of the same basic ideas caused some incongruities. For example, both authors wanted to write a major plot point of Han and Leia having Force-sensitive children, but the twins Jaina and Jacen are nowhere to be seen in Dark Empire (though they edited in some references to Leia's children, plural). Ultimately, while Dark Empire made a big splash initially due to its great artwork and crowd-pleasing elements, Heir to the Empire, with its fresh direction and compelling new characters, was much more warmly received by both fans and critics, leading to a successful trilogy of books that laid the foundations for countless other Expanded Universe works. All that said, Dark Empire has the honour of heavily inspiring the final chapter of Disney's Sequel Trilogy, so its influence is still felt to this day.
• Executive Meddling: The series was originally supposed to take place immediately after the events of Return of the Jedi, as that would pick up where the Marvel Comics left off. However, Timothy Zahn, when writing The Thrawn Trilogy, was asked to put in references to Dark Empire since the trilogy was planned to take place afterward, but he refused (unsurprisingly, as previously mentioned above). Because of this, they had to move it, and even rewrite various panels to omit any references to the original placement as a result.
• Flip-Flop of God: Despite Tom Veitch claiming that George Lucas praised the series, an interview with Lucy Autrey Wilson revealed that Lucas was not fond of bringing back the Emperor. He did, however, praise the artwork of Cam Kennedy.
• Lying Creator: While Emperor Palpatine mentions that his death during Return of the Jedi wasn't his first one and that he had started transferring his soul to cloned bodies before that, Holocron continuity database keeper Leland Chee replied in 2005 that Palpatine was lying to Luke about having died before and that his death during the Battle of Endor had been his first one, clarifying that no clone of Palpatine was present in the prequels nor in the original films. Whether Tom Veitch knew that Palpatine's claims were lies when he wrote the series or had other plans is beyond anyone's speculation.
• Refitted for Sequel: Mark Hamill reportedly first proposed to George Lucas the idea of Luke Skywalker journeying into the dark side of the Force back in the mid-1980s. Hamill himself mentioned in 2018 that when filming Return of the Jedi, he believed that Luke would fall to the dark side due to his black clothes. While Luke felt tempted but desisted from joining the dark side of the Force in the finished film, Dark Empire shows him falling to the dark side and joining Emperor Palpatine as his apprentice before getting back to the light side.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When George Lucas contacted Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy to make a Star Wars comic book, Tom Veitch's initial idea for a Star Wars comic book was doing a series called The Jedi Chronicles, delving into the history of the Jedi Knights, but Lucas told him he preferred for them to make a story set immediately after Return of the Jedi (yet the finished version starts six years after it due some squabbles). It's likely that Veitch's original proposal ended up taking the form of Tales of the Jedi. (The change in date explains some of the oddities of the comic, such as the Imperials being in control of Coruscant and the Star Destroyers captured at Endor being treated like recent accomplishments.)
  • It was originally intended that, instead of reviving Palpatine as a clone, the storyline would have involved the Galactic Empire hiring someone to wear a replica of Darth Vader's suit or the original one to keep fear in the galaxy, but Lucas vetoed that option. Veitch was then allowed to resurrect the Emperor, which Lucas approved (although there are conflicting accounts whether it was Lucas or Veitch the one who suggested the idea in the first place).
  • The series was originally going to be published by Marvel Comics, but was moved to Dark Horse since very few people at Marvel thought that there would be any real interest left in the franchise after the release of the third movie.
  • There was supposed to have been an original graphic novel set between Dark Empire and Dark Empire II called Lightsider, which would have properly introduced Kam Solusar. While most people on Lucasfilm and George Lucas himself loved the graphic novel, it was cancelled when Lucas discovered that he had approved a novel without a contract. This is why Kam suddenly appears out of nowhere at the start of Dark Empire II. The battle between Kam Solusar and Luke Skywalker is in the audio drama of Dark Empire II, however.
  • Originally, Lucasfilm asked Bantam Books to do a novelization of Dark Empire, but they instead opted to hire one of their novelists to write an original Star Wars story. And that novelist was Timothy Zahn, who wrote The Thrawn Trilogy...
• Word of Saint Paul: According to Tom Veitch himself, one of the reasons for which Emperor Palpatine came to the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi was that he was ready to make to transfer his soul to a young cloned body, asking Luke Skywalker to strike him to accomplish both Luke's fall to the dark and his transition to a new body, with Veitch adding that the blue flashes that marked Palpatine's death represented the Emperor's living energy, his conscious dark force, leaving his body for his newest one across the galaxy.