“Ah, Crimson Empire. The Star Wars tale that I remember reading in the grocery store every morning before school started. Not only did I re-read most of the issues without ever buying one, I became indignant when I saw they’d stocked Crimson Empire II pt. 1 before putting out the conclusion of Crimson Empire the first.
The audacity!
For those of you who aren’t up on your Star Wars, these books are about the last of Emperor Palpatine’s last Imperial Guards.
For those of you who are less up on Star Wars, these were the guys in red who never said a word and I think were mostly excused from rooms before big reveals.
For those of you who are even less up on Star Wars than THAT, these guys were like Stormtroopers but in red and they carried some kind of sword thingy.
For those of you… oh, fuck this shit. At this point there’s no context anyway, so who cares?
It’s always dangerous to go back and read stuff or watch stuff you enjoyed as a kid. For some reason, it’s almost never how you remembered it.
But we all know that already, right? The danger there.
What was really interesting to me in reading this book was noting a few things about the Star Wars universe that I’d never noticed before. Here are a few:
-SILENCE!-
This has to be, hands down, the most uttered word in the Star Wars universe. You could hardly turn the fucking page without some poor sap being told to shut the fuck up. There were even moments when a character, answering a direct question, would get the response of SILENCE! I don’t know why this has such a hold on these people. I don’t know if I’ve ever been told to be silent, and I can’t ever shut the fuck up.
-Cute Names-
It’s like Stan Lee in the 60’s. Kir Kanos. Kenix Kill. Carnor Jax. Mirith Sinn. Where are the dudes named Jim? The more I think about it, the more sure I am that Luke’s parents were total asshole and that in their universe a name like Luke is our universe’s equivalent to naming your son “Clamdigger.”
-Darth Vader-
It makes sense. The dude is cool. But fuck me, in this timeline he’s been dead for a decade. How is it that there’s always a flashback that involves Vader? Or someone will say they were trained by Vader. By the way, Vader seems to suck at training because he’s always slashing people and busting their eyes out and strangling them from across the galaxy. I mean, rather than using magic powers to crush someone’s windpipe, maybe use some of the Force in the job interviews and hire some people who aren’t total incompetent penis heads.
-Hutts Being Pieces of Shit-
Ever since we saw Jabba the Hutt, every Hutt is the same thing. A fat, crime boss asshole guy who gets in over his own head. There has to be one Hutt who decided to climb out of the gutter, right? Maybe has a family and goes jogging to keep the weight off? Isn’t really interested in feeding subordinates to creatures? That must be the primary topic of discussion at Hutt family reunions, what kind of creatures they’re feeding people to these days.
-Killing Subordinates-
This is the favored activity of every Star Wars baddie, from the lowest of the low all the way up. They just sort of…kill people. They never say, Hey, quit fucking up. They just push them off a cliff or stab them in the head. They also really enjoy fighting their “best man” hand-to-hand and then killing him. Which is a really weird way to run a company. Can you imagine if Google decided to kill their best programmers just to show everyone they could? What the fuck?
-Scarred-up Dudes-
It sort of makes sense, right? With the increase in technology, medical technology would come a long way too, which means people would be surviving some really fucked up shit. What hasn’t made the leap is cosmetic surgery. Except possibly boob jobs. There seemed to be a lot of what I would assume are boob jobs. Speaking of…
-Aliens with Gross Faces and Hot Bodies-
Take a Playboy model, slap a crazy bug face on her, give her some fishnets, you’ve got a Star Wars character, no doubt.
-Live Music-
Seems that there’s ALWAYS one of those weird guys who looks like a Sea Monkey wearing pants and a shirt playing some kind of clarinet around, but I’ve never seen anyone put on a musical recording. For people who have such a hard-on for music, you’d think they’d have figured this out by now.
Anyway, that’s all very critical, and I’m sure a deep Star Wars fan could easily put away half of these points. However, a true Star Wars fan is also forced to defend the indefensible. There’s a guy named Dash Rendar. What else can I say?”