Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith, #2 (November, 1996)
5,000 BBY
*Editor’s Note: Okay, so as this issue starts, Marka Ragnos, Dark Lord of the Sith, has died. In his honor, the Sith have turned out for a huge funeral procession. During said procession, two of the other Sith Lords start arguing about which of them is going to take Ragnos’ place as supreme Dark Lord. This would be Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh.
*Naga Sadow: to be played by Ralph Fiennes.
*Editor’s Note: Yes, the name of one of the Sith Lords is Ludo Kressh. I’m just going to let that stand.
*First Blue Glowing Spectre Alert!
*Uh, okay, so the dead Sith Lord appears to his feuding students and tells them . . . NOTHING! The scene ends with each of them saying that the cryptic remarks the Sith Lord spewed obviously mean that they are right and the others are wrong. How did this help exactly? And why did they even stop fighting?
*Editor’s Note: At this point, I really have to bring up the art, which is just fantastic. I’m no fan of the story stuff here, but this is some amazing art. The Valley of the Dark Lords, where the funeral is being held, is just breathtaking. It’s given a full two page spread and I think I could look at it for like half an hour without getting tired of it. And keep seeing new details too probably. It’s just a gorgeous, strange piece of artwork.
*None of the other characters are that great, but Naga Sadow is an interesting villain. He's a slightly more liberal Sith than the others and he's pushing for expansion. The debates are nicely rendered and are probably the best scenes in the book.
*I don't particularly like the designs of the Sith. They're too obviously Satanic in appearance, if you ask me.
*Editor’s Note: So, just when we most expect it, Gav and Jori arrive. They’re strangely optimistic upon confronting a race of beings that has all the accoutrements of the devil except the pitchfork.
Kevin J. Anderson, Dario Carrasco, Jr., Mark G. Heike, Bill Black, David Jacob Beckett
* out of **** stars.
*Next time, we’ll hit the next issue of this series and the plot will (finally) really kick in.