Luke Skywalker is DEAD!

Tonight Lisa and I drove up to Martinsville for dinner - our second time at the place - at Pigs R Us (click here for my initial review of that excellent barbecue joint). Afterward we walked around the mall there for a bit, and it was in Waldenbooks that my eye caught Star Wars: Legacy #3 in the comic book rack. I bought issue #1 awhile back and although I've missed #2 since then, I decided to buy this new issue and take another look at this new direction for the Star Wars saga, even though my confidence in this series hasn't exactly been all that high ever since I first heard about it. I mean, in my worldview of all things Star Wars, the Sith were finished off in Return of the Jedi and bringing them back makes Anakin's self-sacrifice completely pointless.

But, I have to give Dark Horse Comics some credit for boldness with this series. Because in Star Wars: Legacy #3, something happens that I never thought I'd see happen in any Star Wars project: Luke Skywalker has died! Now, Legacy takes place a hundred years or so after Luke's heyday, so I guess his eventual death had to be in there somewhere. But still, it's quite astonishing to see him make an appearance as a shimmering blue "Force ghost" a'la Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke, in full traditional Jedi garb and looking as young as he does at the time of the classic movies, visits his descendant Cade Skywalker (I still hate that name) and scolds him for (a) his drug addiction and (b) turning his back on the Skywalker heritage. Cade makes the astute observation that the Force sure hasn't done the family that much good: just look at what it did to Luke's father.

It's enough to pique my curiosity a bit more about Legacy, and maybe give it a few more chances to convince me that this is a worthy addition to the Star Wars canon (whatever the heck that is supposed to actually be). But in the meantime: Luke Skywalker is dead. The most well-known heroic icon of my generation has passed away. Luke Skywalker is six feet under. Pushing up daisies. Joined the choir invisible. Gone to meet his maker. Dead as a doornail. Pretty depressing, ain't it?

(I think they should have drawn him to look somewhere around 80-90 though, and let us see what a much-older Luke would look like. That's my only real complaint about this issue though. Other than that, I thought it was pretty good.)