Star Wars: Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars: Republic gave Anakin Skywalker the scar over his eye. Issue 71, published in November 2004, showed the moment landing in a duel with Asajj Ventress during the Clone Wars. That panel sits inside a much longer project. The series filled in the space around the Star Wars prequel trilogy, following characters the films barely had room for. It ran under a different name at first, and it eventually gave way to a separate series carrying its numbers forward. Why did the title change? How many issues did the run actually cover, and what took over when it ended? And which barely glimpsed characters, from the films, ended up carrying entire arcs of their own?

• 2. One Series, Two Names

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  Dark Horse Comics published the series from 1998 to February 2006. It started under the plain title Star Wars, before the name Republic was attached at issue 46. The complete run reached 83 issues, set in roughly the same fictional period as the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Once it ended, Star Wars: Dark Times took over the story, continuing the Republic numbering on its own inside covers. Character development throughout leaned on the films, giving larger space to already prominent Jedi such as Mace Windu and Yoda. The stretch of issues that followed spent most of its time with two Jedi the films had barely shown: Ki-Adi-Mundi and Quinlan Vos.

• 3. Ki-Adi-Mundi's Widening War

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  Issues 1 through 6 ran from December 1998 to May 1999, written by Jan Strnad with art by Anthony Winn. In them, Ki-Adi-Mundi returns to his home world just before The Phantom Menace, defending his own people, including his family, from raiders. His success there earns him a seat on the Jedi Council.

  Issues 7 through 12 ran from June to November of 1999. Timothy Truman wrote them, with art from Tom Raney, Rod Pereira, Rick Leonardi, and Al Rio. Soon after, the Council sends him to Tatooine to investigate Sharad Hett. Hett is a former Padawan who now lives among the Tusken Raiders, suspected of turning evil. Meanwhile, Gardulla and Jabba the Hutt send henchmen to attack the Sand People, hoping to drive up sales of outdated weapons. Hett dies in the conflict, but his son and Padawan, A'Sharad Hett, survives and travels to Coruscant to join the Jedi Order.

  Issues 13 through 18, from December 1999 to May 2000, were written by Timothy Truman, with art by Tom Lyle, Jan Duursema, and John Nadeau. Mace Windu, Yaddle, Adi Gallia, Plo Koon, Even Piell, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and A'Sharad Hett travel together to Malastare to broker peace between two rival factions there. Their mission gets tangled in a high-stakes podrace. It runs out of a business owned by a figure named toktzaxeman. The racer Sebulba wins it, despite surviving an assassination attempt. Mace Windu then leaves for Nar Shaddaa, tracking the trafficking of an animal from his own home world. Later, Ki-Adi-Mundi joins A'Sharad Hett and Adi Gallia to pursue Aurra Sing, recently on a rampage of killing Jedi.

  Meanwhile, elsewhere in the galaxy, a very different Jedi crisis was unfolding, one where the danger came from inside a Jedi's own mind.

• 4. A Jedi Erased

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  Quinlan Vos has had his memory erased, losing both his Jedi training and his sense of right and wrong. He falls in with a Devaronian named Vilmarh Grahrk, who bets on Vos's survival after missing his own chance to profit from Vos's death. Vos regains his memory of himself, and of his apprentice Aayla Secura, upon finding their lightsabers. He and Grahrk then travel to Ryloth, hoping to find Secura and learn who tried to erase both of their pasts.

  From there, Vos is sent to Dathomir, where a coven of witches plans to use a worn-out portal to leap across space and time. Each time the gate opens, it causes damage to whichever planet lies on the other side.

  On another world, the leader of a species that devours brains turns Aayla Secura to the dark side. Vos's own former master arrives, along with other Jedi and Grahrk, and together they help pull Secura back.

  Issues 40 and 41, published between March and May of 2002 and written by John Ostrander with art by Davide Fabbri, return to Grahrk. They retell the earlier Stark Hyperspace War, a conflict first shown in Jedi Council: Acts of War, this time through Grahrk's own account, embellishments included.

  Grahrk would go on gambling with Jedi lives well beyond this one war. But the greater danger to the Jedi Order was still years away, waiting inside the Republic's own ranks.

• 5. The Empire Arrives

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  Issue 78, published in October 2005, opens shortly after Revenge of the Sith. In it, Emperor Palpatine introduces his highest-ranking Imperial officers to Darth Vader. One officer, Sagoro Autem, hesitates to serve the new Empire, and his former partner Omin warns him he is about to be executed. Vader arrives and kills Omin for helping Autem escape. He then hires three bounty hunters to track Autem down, defeating two of them himself. The third hunter turns out to be Autem's own son, who flees with his father into the Outer Rim.

  Issues 79 and 80, released in November and December of 2005, follow the days right after the Clone Wars end. Jedi Master Kai Hudorra and his Padawan, Noirah Na, hide from clone troopers who have turned on the Jedi under Order 66. Elsewhere, Jedi Master Dass Jennir has befriended the people of New Plympto, former allies of the Separatists. All three Jedi eventually reach the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where they watch clone troopers kill a Jedi who refuses to surrender. Hudorra and Na choose to leave the Jedi Order altogether. Jennir instead returns to New Plympto to fight the new Galactic Empire, a story picked up in the first arc of Star Wars: Dark Times.

  New Plympto is the last place the Republic series shows its Jedi still fighting, before the story moves on without them.