Part 14: Mara Jade: By the Emperor's Hand
We've tapped out SOTE. All that's left now are tangentially related events before and after the whole Shadows event. This one, Mara Jade: By The Emperor's Hand, I've included because it's included in the Shadows Of The Empire Trade Paper Back. It doesn't involve any of the characters in Shadows, nor does it even involve Black Sun (technically), but it does cover what happened to the criminal organization.
According to Wookieepedia, after Xixor's death the ensuing power struggle basically caused the organization to self-destruct. Savan's political maneuvering only hastened the demise. The next attempted revival takes place in...
Wait, what, who's Mara Jade?
Oh, the Emperor's Hand. Of course. Much how Darth Vader had secret apprentices (the dude from Force Unleashed), the Emperor had his. Mara Jade would eventually go on to convert to the Alliance and become Mrs. Luke Skywalker, but that's another EU story. If anyone knows much about Mara Jade and wants to share their EU knowledge, I'd be interested in hearing. The whole "neither light nor dark" thing is probably got some cool information behind it. Most "grey side" Jedis are usually pretty interesting, if KOTOR is anything to go off of.
Anyways, the comic starts by showing off some of the things Mara Jade during the Original Trilogy era, including infiltrating Jabba's sail barge. Unfortunately for her, Jabba is a suspicious character and kicks her off his crew before the climactic event:
After failing to get Skywalker on the barge, she is assigned a new task: assassinating Prince Dequc. Dequc is a crime lord in charge of an organization called Black Nebula, which has aspirations of reviving Black Sun.
So she travels to planet Svivren. The Imperial garrison there is pretty slack, and Black Nebula forces are pretty blatant about their power. Mara Jade goes to the Imperial General Touno and bullies him into giving her carte blanche to do with Imperial forces whatever she wants.
Which includes teaming up with
Strok's forces approach Black Nebula's stronghold which acts as cover for Mara Jade to break in and kill the crimelord.
She also takes the sweet medallion that was around Dequc's neck to put in the Emperor's Museum--it was a medallion that Xizor used to wear back in the day. Anyways, the Emperor rewards her by giving her some time off. She spends some time on Imperial Center enjoying the high life, going to private parties, hanging out in bars, enjoying the great outdoors--that sort of thing. She does some research in her spare time and discovers that there has been no change in Black Nebula's activities. She breaks into the Emperor's Museum, steals back the medallion, and discovers it was a fake. Xizor wouldn't wear a fake, so she figures out that Dequc is still alive. She feels guilty for failing the Emperor, but before she can do anything about it, he uses the Force to visit her and gives her a vision:
She was so depressed, she ate a bunch of space ice cream and fell into a sugar coma.
Unfortunately, that means Director Ysanne Isaard is in charge on Imperial Center. The medallion theft is tracked back to Mara Jade and she is arrested while still inconscious.
The story continues on for a bit with Mara Jade in prison and her subsequent breakout. It's mostly just some action fluff as eventually Mara Jade gets away and goes underground on the planet Phorliss. There she gets a job as a bar waitress.
She lives a frugal and busy, but fulfilling life. She even develops a fanclub of regulars.
It seems the Empire and Black Nebula has forgotten about Mara Jade, giving her a chance to move on with her life. Right?
Heh.
Turns out Mara's boss, Drig, has been taking loans from Black Nebula. He's a month overdue on rent so they kill him.
Mara tries to fight back and is almost overpowered when her favourite regular, Chiara, sprays boogers out of his nose to buy her time and pass off her lightsabre. He dies for it too.
So she constructs a fake gambling "aid" and uses the Force to help cheat a Black Nebula run casino.
The ploy works, getting her the attention of Black Nebula stooge, Lord Allic. He has a large butt.
She promises to reveal her cheating secret if she's given a face-to-face with Dequc. While being escorted to the crime lord, she discovers that Captain Strok was undercover with Black Nebula. She knocks him out to protect her cover.
Black Nebula buys her story and she gets her face-to-face. She uses the Force again to give a demonstration and impresses Prince Dequc. She gives the "device" over to Dequc's technicians to reverse engineer and is given a tour of the base while they work. Too bad she bumps into Strok again.
She sneaks further into the base and sets up her final trap for the assassination.
When brought to Dequc, she hints that Xizor's statuette may hold secrets to a hidden Xizor treasure stash.
After successfully eliminating Dequc, she disappears into parts unknown to try and complete the Emperor's last orders: kill Skywalker.
With that Black Sun was well and truly dead. Until someone tried to resurrect it again. Apparently it was back and running during the Thrawn crisis. Later on, they tried to assert galactic dominance similar to what Xizor had, but were put down by the New Republic. By the time of the Sith-Imperial War and the Second Imperial Civil War, the organization had resurrected again under new management that was eager to operate in the open, displaying Black Sun colours clearly on ships and uniforms, rather than acting in secret. They were responsible for trading illegal Yuuzhan Vong weapons in the Outer Rim among other things.
Ready for the return of everyone's favourite Shadows Of The Empire point-of-view? That's right! It's Jix!
I don't even know why this exists or who gives a shit. Why did anyone ever need a prequel to reveal more about Jix? Maybe the creator wanted to see his original creation get more love, I dunno. Anyways, let's go over a few fun facts about Jix.
One: he's Corellian, because of COURSE he is.
Two: he trained at the Imperial Academy of Carida, because of COURSE he did.
Three: he was involved with the sterilization of Falleen which claimed the lives of Xizor's family and set off Xizor's vendetta against Vader, because of COURSE everyone is related to everyone in some way when it comes SOTE. Well, he didn't perform his duties well enough so he was court-martialed and sent to Kessel. He later escaped and through a series of events wound up working under Vader personally after saving the Dark Lord's life. Which brings us to Shadow Stalker.
It's silly. The whole book is basically Jix being written to look like the most badass mercenary there is. Sound familiar?
He farts around for a while doing stuff and--oh god, I don't even know.
Just--just what is this?
It does have some funny panels, like when Vader Force Chokes Jix for having a bad attitude. Good thing he lacks... fear?
Anyways, the plot of the book is that Vader wants Jix to travel to a the planet Corulag and assassinate the Imperial Governor Torlock, who apparently plans to defect to the rebels. After arriving on the planet, he finds a landspeeder under attack by Rebels.
His one-liners rival those of Action Fett.
He rescues the women in the speeder and she reveals she is Frija Torlock, the governor's daughter. She knows her dad is suspected of treason and says he has gone in hiding. Jix is suspicious though, as he notices the Rebel attackers are actually disguised Black Sun operatives.
He takes Frija with him while he investigates. She's basically just there for eye-candy and is drawn as such.
He goes to break out Governor Torlock and... hold on, this is where things get stupid. This might have worked with characters people actually cared about, but no. The plot gets super convoluted, but because it involve Jix and a bunch of other one-off unknowns, it's just dull and uninteresting. Here it goes:
The imprisoned Governor Torlock is a Human Replica Droid (HRD). You know, the super rare kind of droid that is capable of perfectly imitating a human. You know, the same kind of droid that Guri is. There's another one! Actually, more than one. After the break in, Jix is captured by Imperial Admiral Droon. Droon is in league with Frija--the real Frija. The one Jix rescued is another HRD.
Are you getting a headache yet? Here's a page of Jix killing a Dragon Slug:
Okay, so the HRD Torlock reveals that the real Torlock got wind of a Rebel attack on Corulag, so he made the two HRDs and went into hiding. Meanwhile, Droon and real Frija planned to implicate Torlock as a traitor so they could take over and rule Corulag. Jix escapes, breaks into their HQ and confronts real Frija and Droon. Droon claims it was all real Frija's idea, which doesn't go over well with her.
Jix returns Droon to Vader, who kills him.
He lies to HRD Frija about real Frija's survival, gets a hug, and the single-shot issue ends. That's it. I hope everyone had their Jix fill. We're done with him, thankfully. Apologies to any Jix lovers out there. Here's a Jix Av:
Next: "Whatever happened to Dash Rendar".