Bitching aside, I don't understand the sparse depiction of Luke's turning to the Dark Side. Here's what I've gathered:
Issue 1: Luke feels the Dark Side increasing, and is subsequently abducted at the palace on Coruscant.
2: The undying nature of the Emperor is revealed, and he offers Luke the only way to defeat him- by learning the secrets of the Dark Side. Much is mentioned about destiny and how he's taking Vader's mantle.
4. Leia is captured, and Palpatine expounds at length about how he will train her as well in the Dark Side.
5. Palpatine attempts to seduce Leia in the most idiotic approach ever, by appealing to her sympathy as an old man, and by stupidly trying to win her trust by showing off a freakin' light side, Jedi holocron. He wants to become her baby, but she rebuffs and runs away, to which he shrugs it off because it was a test to see if she contained the Skywalker anger. Then he becomes a typical moron villain and realizes that he overlooked that she stole the holocron.
Also, we see the Imperial officer with the biggest hat in the galaxy.
Leia then tries to get Luke to leave, but he insists that he knows what he's doing, and seems to not truly be in the Dark Side, because he is glad of her Jedi presence to "break the grip of the Dark Side." Some stuff related to the imminent invasion of Mon Calamari by World Devestators occurs, as well as the rescue of Han and Chewie, and then Luke goes to attack Palpatine in his clone lab, and Palpatine is caught surprised. He actually was weak enough in the Force to not realize that Luke has not turned, that Luke was using him all along.
6. The Emperor confronts Leia with Luke demanding for her baby, and Luke duels her, even though we never saw Palpatine tempting him back to the Dark Side and aren't sure if it's another trick by Luke in the first place. However, some notable stuff on page 21:
Leia then says that now that he knows, he should come back. Luke also says he found "great isolation and sadness" and fear in the Dark Side that Vader and even the Emperor felt in times of their greatest triumph. The Emperor throws a vampiric hissy fit and then alternatively threatens and tempts them, and then the Jedi twins totally strike his ass down. After the Force storm, of course.Luke wrote:I found knowledge there... all the dark things father knew so well... [...] warned me... "Once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny..." But I had to do it Leia. I had to know my father... I had to know why he chose the Dark Side.
The question after all this, of course, what was the point of Luke going to the Dark Side, storywise? It seems that his purpose was to a) find out what Anakin experienced in order and b) bring down Palpatine from within. I like both of these goals- it's both a nice familial attempt to understand his late father better, as well as a novel way to destroy the Dark Side. However, none of this is really executed very well in the comics.
As far as a) goes, we never really see Palpatine actually teaching Luke anything. We just see Luke acting like a total jerk. We never know if he's experiencing any of the same training that Vader went through. But this is the lesser point.
As far as b) goes, Luke certainly achieves that in the comic, but the problem is that Palpatine becomes a totally manipulated tool in the story. He's being outplayed, but seeing as how he's the Dark Lord of evil and manipulation, it's really hard to believe that he doesn't know it. We never really see Luke actually acting like he's gone to the Dark Side, and the fact that Palpatine acts like a bloody dotard doesn't help things.
In DE, he's as dumb as Trioculus, and just a run-of-the-mill villain with no depth. And besides cackling a lot, revealing his plans, and a few neat Force maneuvers, he doesn't actually do anything that would seem that he's bringing the Empire back with a vengeance. Well, other than the World Devastators stuff, which I suppose was probably pretty hot shite back in 1991.
And maybe I'm spoiled by contemporary comics, but the retro style of DE made it incredibly non-dark in my opinion. Probably it's because of a combination of the whimsical art, the totally non-scary (and kind of campy) nature of the Emperor, the Stan Lee-esque overexcited narrator, everyone dressing in vampire cloaks, and the fact I knew what was going to happen.
But finally, I don't really hate the comics, I just wish they were done better and more coherently (both storywise and artwise). I actually don't think that Palpatine coming back is such a bad idea (though it betrays a lack of imagination), and it doesn't necessarily undo Vader's sacrifice. The Chosen One created Luke, didn't he? So indirectly, Anakin did bring balance to the Force by defeating the Sith, vis-a-vis the spawn of his loins. (Insert reference of Son of the Suns somewhere.) But I do agree that it belittles his redemption, since Luke seems to be doing a complete Quinlan Vos in DE by jumping back and forth from the Dark Side.
Anyways, those are my thoughts. Rebuttal?
), I still think that it's not quite so bad. Because it's still Anakin's children finishing the job. But then they would make some changes, such as Luke and Leia reflecting upon their father's memory more in DE, and possibly Anakin's Force ghost coming back at some point. Then it would be quite nice, since it ties in Anakin's redemption to his children truly becoming Jedi.
