Posted on November 9, 2023

The New Empire Saga notes and sketches, 1984

1. Story beats

For my earliest comic projects, I’d write and draw it one page at a time with only a vague notion of how it would end. As my story ideas gained complexity, I started writing synopses as a guide to stay on course. But when I began scoping out my multi-part Star Wars sequel, I discovered how you’re supposed to approach these things: brainstorm all the ideas you can, write them down, and put them in order. This is how you discover which events create opportunities for other events. The grownup word for it is plotting.

Since The New Empire would be the biggest thing I ever came up with, plotting was the key to making it all work. I wrote down all the random ideas that came to me, then the ideas that were inspired by those ideas, then numbered them in the order they should occur in. I pasted them all together for you below.

The story actually began with To Hunt a Jedi in the preview issue of Lightspeed and continued in Before the Storm. I also wove in threads from other stories I’d written and drawn, which was like have cake AND ice cream.

I sometimes lament the fact that I never got to turn this into finished comics, but the exercise of writing them was hugely valuable as I developed other stories, like Broid. I still use the same method to this day.

2. Scarab

I had a lot planned for this guy. He’d start out as a villain, then become a hero, and later we’d learn that he was originally a hero before becoming a villain. Not unlike Anakin Skywalker. Only at the time we didn’t know much about Anakin.

3. The Vencorians

There were plenty of “disposable aliens” in Star Wars, and I wanted to create the opposite; a race that was “brought in from the cold” and turned into a tool of propaganda by the New Empire. When Luke rescued them in To Hunt a Jedi, the Alliance was obliged to adopt them, since their homeworld’s climate had been wrecked by Port Sandilos. After Luke destroyed the port, the New Empire would build others to restore their supply lines and blame the Alliance for the inconvenience to other planets – all for the sake of these insignificant “greenies.”

In other words, weaponized disinformation would become a key component in the new struggle. How familiar does THAT sound?

4. Bib Fortuna’s gang

The survivors of Jabba’s racket would band together under Bib Fortuna and become an X-factor in the story. As shown in To Hunt a Jedi, they had a vendetta to carry out against the rebels. But their criminal activity would also invite a crackdown from the New Empire, turning them into de facto rebels themselves. Once they made common cause with the Alliance, a whole bunch of interesting sub-plots would come into play.

Another X-factor (not shown here) would be the Ubessi, the race from which Leia got her bounty hunter armor. Similar setup; they’d go after Leia for besmirching their honor, but find themselves on the wrong side of the New Empire and become uneasy allies. I really liked the idea of writing stories about groups overcoming their differences to defeat a common enemy. We could all benefit from that.

5. The New Empire

First up: design development for the “Vice Emperor” who would orchestrate a multi-layered strategy against the Alliance using politics and deception to make up for past losses. Meanwhile, he’d be building the worst superweapon ever conceived. I’m intrigued by how much he thought like Grand Admiral Thrawn and looked like Supreme Leader Snoke. (Years before those two characters appeared.)