When do you think the EU jumped the shark?

Thanas · Post by **Thanas** » 2008-02-23 09:11pm

Book wise, the EU jumped the shark with the Swarm War. What an utter piece of crap, and what a disappointment since Troy Denning wrote the above-average Tatooine Ghost.

However, the new legacy comics are actually surprisingly good, and IMO you should give them a chance, GR.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2008-02-26 02:16pm

Myself I avidly read the EU, but Vector Prime just didn't sit with me, after that I read the next NJO book, Dark Tide I think it was called and that was it.

Up until then, there had been some true crap though, the Crystal Star, Children of the Jedi, and Planet of Twilight being the three main festering sores. Dark Empire was too ambitious and gimmicky and I despised Dark Horses 'two tone' artwork style.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2008-02-27 11:35am

The yevetha was a mood killer for me. The yuuzong vong made me stop reading.

If I wanted to reach about evil hordes of organic mobs, Id read war40k.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2008-02-27 12:06pm

God yes, the Yevethan horde. In the same dreary series you also had Luke trying to track down his mother...

Another series that had a lot but had nothing, was the Bounty Hunter trilogy. The newer Han Solo stories weren't too bad, especially compared to the tripe like that.

What's the general opinion on The New Rebellion?

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-02-27 12:55pm

Jade Falcon wrote:God yes, the Yevethan horde. In the same dreary series you also had Luke trying to track down his mother...

Another series that had a lot but had nothing, was the Bounty Hunter trilogy. The newer Han Solo stories weren't too bad, especially compared to the tripe like that.

What's the general opinion on The New Rebellion?

New Rebellion was crap. Some guy plants millions of droids with bombs. Oh, and Luke does some weird crap to find him, and Han goes and gets info from Jawas who live on an asteroid somewhere.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2008-02-27 05:55pm

Thanas wrote:Book wise, the EU jumped the shark with the Swarm War. What an utter piece of crap, and what a disappointment since Troy Denning wrote the above-average Tatooine Ghost.

However, the new legacy comics are actually surprisingly good, and IMO you should give them a chance, GR.

Legacy, started for me on really bad foot. Slowly it has gotten at least decent. Not the best Ostrander material, but in the scope of the EU...it's not bad. I buy it with my cup of coffee at the book store.

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2008-02-28 02:28am

I've only read a few books in the EU.

Out of all of them, i thought Dark Empire and it's elk were the best, and i stand by that. It at least, to me, felt like a Star Wars story unlike most of the EU, even if i must admit that some of the plot points were fairly contrived.

That being said, the actual BOOKS in the EU were crap, as were most of the games (save Jedi Starfighter).

Really, i think that the EU was just a horrifically bad idea to begin with. Elfdart, way back in the thread, summed up my opinion basically: if you let a thousand people have duplicate keys to your car, don't cry when one of them wraps it around a tree (paraphased). This whole fiasco, all of it, is really George Lucus' doing...in his rush to milk the tits of the Star Wars franchise till they look like used condoms, he gave the figurative keys to his beloved car to a drunk driver, a blind man and a double-amputee who drives with his teeth...and then people wonder why the thing crashed and burned. I'm beating the car analogy to death here but you get my meaning.

Havok · Post by **Havok** » 2008-02-28 02:33am

Don't put it all on Lucas. We fans were ACHING for new Star Wars before Heir to the Empire came out.

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2008-02-28 02:50am

havokeff wrote:Don't put it all on Lucas. We fans were ACHING for new Star Wars before Heir to the Empire came out.

"Who's more foolish, the fool or the fool that follows him?"

No but seriously, i've been jonesing for Firefly since it was cancelled by Fox, but if all Joss Whedon can do for me is hire some hack to write what amounts to a televised fanfic then i'd rather just sit here with my Complete Series DVD and cry bitter tears in my beer as i watch Train Job for the nth time and reminisce.

Frankly too many people milk various series for all their worth (i'm looking at you, Joss...a new "season" of comics? Really?) without thinking of what the end result will be...i.e, the slow de-evolution of a series into little more than well known cliches and tropes associated with it. Which is what happened to the Eu...

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-02-29 01:33am

The best EU books (Han Solo At Star's End, the other Solo and Lando books from the 80s) had their faults, but they stayed true to the characters and setting, and were free of wank, for the most part. But the further you move away from the movies, the shittier they get.

I look on the bright side: At least Lucas didn't let these schmucks get anywhere near the movies. He let them fuck around with the bubblewrap while he played with the widescreen.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2008-02-29 01:19pm

To me Rebel Dawn, Paradise Snare and Hutt Gambit at least sounded as if they were written by someone who understood the characters.

I liked the X-Wing series, including Stackpoles books, though I found myself warming more to Allston's.

The whole Corellion and Black Fleet trilogies were just snoozefests to me and Children of the Jedi, Crystal Star, Planet of Twilight were utter crap.

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2008-02-29 01:21pm

After reading a friends copy of Fury I decided to read an older book, Wraith Squadron. The differences are amazing.

Silver Jedi · Post by **Silver Jedi** » 2008-03-01 10:36pm

The whole Post ROTJ EU had been very up and down, but the point at witch I said "you know what, fuck this" was about half way through Dark Journey. Before that, it never got so bad I couldn't at least trudge through to the end of a book. After that, I kept reading new ones until the godawful mess that was the Swarm War. Haven't read anything since then, and I can't say that I'm sorry.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-03-02 09:44am

Jumping the shark is the moment where the most preposterous event happens as a flimsy attempt to revive interest. I would vote for Darksaber. They tried to invoke the worn out theme of the deathstar but they ended up doing a shitty non-deliver. The thing even had a cool name, but ultimately, ::poof:: the plot and interest went up in smoke.

Jumping the shark doesn't neccesarily mean that everything after is crap though. The Simpsons jiumps the shark every three or four years now.

clone1051 · Post by **clone1051** » 2008-03-04 08:37am

I'd say the running start to the jump was the Yuuzhan Vong war, and the Swarm War is what actually made the jump. Before Vector Prime, the EU had some good stuff and some shit, but it still, for the most part, FELT like Star Wars. The Yuuzhan Vong didn't, and the Swarm War was just CRAP.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2008-03-16 03:45pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:EU has had a lot of crap in it from day one, Lucas himself lost his vision and gave us three more then a little sub par movies for prequels, how else are a random selection of other authors with often little or no oversight supposed to keep things together? I just incorporate the best parts of the EU into my view of how Star Wars should be and ignore all the rest, my imagination fills in the gaps. Its much more enjoyable then trying to rationalize away ever last piece of rubbish.

I agree. I was about to agree with some other folks and say it was Dark Empire (though the comic was entertaining, it was also ridiculous from a Star Wars standpoint). But yeah, the RPG stuff, the SW Holiday Special, KJA, even the silliness (not just the minimalism) in Zahn's books and the Marvel comics.

Looking back, the EU has ALWAYS been a sea of crap, with a few floating bits of shiny redeemable stuff in there every once in awhile. But most of us were such fanboys and so desperate for ANYTHING new with the Star Wars name on it, we ate this stuff up. Eventually the market just got flooded with the stuff and so on blah, blah blah. Some of it was really imaginative... but worthy of the SW mythos? Not really. And things just got worse as time went on. About half the video games were awesome, and that's been probably the best stuff to come out of the EU.

I think I "gave up" on everything but the games in about 2000 (but my attention was wanning by late 1997, as I totally skipped the NJO and a lot of the other books that were coming out at that time, I guess this was after the initial euphoria of the Special Editions had worn off). When the prequels came out, I read the novelizations of the films (I only purchased the TPM novel, the rest were library check-outs). I tried reading a few of the comic collections later, but yeah...

The short period where the EU seemed magical and cool to me was 1992-1997. I still haven't read the Han Solo trilogy, or much of the pre-Zahn stuff, so it's not like I've seen everything, that's just my feeling in general. It bores the crap out of me typing this, so I'm done.

Darksider · Post by **Darksider** » 2008-03-16 04:44pm

Unlike most people I found the NJO books to be somewhat readable with a few gems in between. I Enjoyed Unifying Force immensely, and don't hate swarm war as much as some people. I mostly thought Swarm War was just meh. on par with some of the earlier crap. I have yet to fully read any bit of the Legacy books. what with them re-hashing the plot of the prequels and the mando-wanking jedi-bashing of one Karen Traviss, i'm officially done with the post-ROTJ EU.

The prequel and inter-movie EU looks to be shaping up nicely with the CGI series and Force Unleashed, which looks like a blast.

Darthbane2011 · Post by **Darthbane2011** » 2008-03-22 09:57am

The EU jumped the shark the moment ROTJ ended.

Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff such as Timothy Zahn's works and a few other novels are pretty good. But now, it seems that that Luke & the others are no where closer to having a unified galaxy than they were in ANH. They still are fighting battles, having family members turn to the dark side, and having cheap sith pop up every now and then.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-03-22 10:14am

Darthbane2011 wrote:The EU jumped the shark the moment ROTJ ended.

Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff such as Timothy Zahn's works and a few other novels are pretty good. But now, it seems that that Luke & the others are no where closer to having a unified galaxy than they were in ANH. They still are fighting battles, having family members turn to the dark side, and having cheap sith pop up every now and then.

They're pretty much always going to have battles, that is why it is "Star Wars." attempts to do other types of stories don't usually pan out. When Han starts riding around the galaxy solving mysteries we'll know its beyond redemption

Havok · Post by **Havok** » 2008-03-22 12:39pm

Themightytom wrote:They're pretty much always going to have battles, that is why it is "Star Wars." attempts to do other types of stories don't usually pan out. When Han starts riding around the galaxy solving mysteries we'll know its beyond redemption

That's already happened, and it was better Star Wars then most of the EU.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2008-03-22 01:23pm

Themightytom wrote:When Han starts riding around the galaxy solving mysteries we'll know its beyond redemption

No, it's if they go back and do the Solo children solving mysteries. Like a combination of YJK and JJK meets Scooby Doo.

"I would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids! And their Wookiee, too."

Ok ok, cheap joke.

Anyway, as to when the EU jumped the shark for me is hard to say. Due to the nature of the Bantam books coming out all over the damn timeline, it's hard for me to really pin it on one of those. And honestly, I think that was a mistake on their part. They said that each book would have effects on the others, but really outside of calling back to Zahn's work or if it was in a series, they really didn't. They were, for the most part, pretty standalone.

So there was some good, some bad. I liked Zahn, and the X-Wing novels mostly. The Han Solo trilogy was also good fun, as were the Bounty Hunter Wars (I'm a fan of Batman and that's pretty much what Fett was like there). There were stinkers, like KJA and The Crystal Star (I almost didn't finish reading that; it was a supreme effort of will to do so). But it'd be hard to say it ever really "jumped the shark" since they came out all over the place, chronologically.

When it went to the NJO and beyond, where they got sequential, that at least allowed for some continuity in the books. And would, in my mind, make it easier to peg it as having a jump the shark moment. Sadly I never got too far into the series so I can't say. Vector Prime wasn't that good, but I liked Dark Tide and Agents of Chaos. Star by Star was the limit of where I got so I wasn't too upset with my reading. However, from what I've heard, I'm glad I didn't.

Especially with what I hear from LotF. Mando hour? *sigh* I'd say Jacen-as-Anakin-but-not-really (and no, we're not really rehashing the PT, honest!) is a good jump the shark moment for me. Even though I haven't read it.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2008-03-22 03:29pm

RogueIce, what Han Solo trilogy are you talking about? The original Corporate sector trilogy released way back, or the one with Rebel Dawn, Paradise Snare and Hutt Gambit in it?

irishmick79 · Post by **irishmick79** » 2008-03-22 07:32pm

The sheer volume of books and material was simply overwhelming. I got really tired of a three (or more) book series popping up every year that I would have to drop at least 6 bucks per book on or whatever. Nevermind the technology guides, the comics, and video games and all of a sudden you're looking at a ton of money to spend if you wanted to get it and keep track of everything.

The EU didn't help its case by re-hashing story arcs like mad and absolutely refusing to pass the torch from the original SW heroes to the next generation of leadership. The main heroes needed at some point to start to die off or go into retirement, and basically the EU wasted the chance to do that by constantly sending them up against the Imperial or Sith megalomaniac of the hour or the newly discovered, wildly militant but woefully ignorant of the SW galaxy alien race.

I think around Dark Empire and the X-Wing series the EU started to fall into a rut, and never really came out of it. It just got harder and harder to justify spending the money on the same old done-to-death story lines.

Vehrec · Post by **Vehrec** » 2008-03-22 08:05pm

Lord Pounder wrote:After reading a friends copy of Fury I decided to read an older book, Wraith Squadron. The differences are amazing.

How so? I've read Wraith Squadron so many times I could probably re-write that entire sequence, so how does Fury compare?

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2008-03-22 08:19pm

irishmick79 wrote: I think around Dark Empire and the X-Wing series the EU started to fall into a rut, and never really came out of it. It just got harder and harder to justify spending the money on the same old done-to-death story lines.

.. How can the X-Wing series considered to be 'in a rut' they focus on a completely different cast in a different storyline compared to the rest of the EU, aside from the similarities between the "Rogue Squadron" and "Wraith Squadron" Books.

Vehrec wrote: How so? I've read Wraith Squadron so many times I could probably re-write that entire sequence, so how does Fury compare?

I've always wished they'd get Allston to write more about the Wraiths, set in between 'Solo Command' and 'Rebel Dream.' "Starfighters of Adumar' was all very well and good but I still wonder about the ultimate fates of Myn Donos and Kirney Slane and all the others that were sadly absent when the Wraiths reappeared in the NJO.