Dark Empire was a comic book by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy from Dark Horse Comics. It caused another tremor in Star Wars fandom when it appeared in 1991.

Veitch introduced a number of new and controversial elements in his story. Palpatine, in a fresh new clone body, is back, for one. Luke has maybe fallen to the Dark Side. Leia finally unlocks her own force abilities. The galaxy’s most incompetent bounty hunter, Boba Fett, gets a new lease on life. Perhaps the biggest addition, though, is the introduction of holocrons – holographic storehouses of Jedi (and Sith) knowledge that opened up a vast unexplored past for Veitch to explore in his Tales of the Jedi series. Holocrons have since become a core part of Star Wars lore, making Dark Empire an important installment into the Expanded Universe.

Cam Kennedy’s art is fantastic, gritty and DARK, imbuing the new technology, like the Emperor’s new flagship, the Eclipse, with jagged menace.

The West End Games sourcebook compiles all these new features of the Star Wars universe with studied detail. It’s fully illustrated with panels from the comic, so it feels extremely in line with the source material in terms of aesthetic (Alas, the gray scale repros in the sourcebook don’t do it justice. Grab the comics.). Dark Empire, more than any of the WEG sourcebooks, I think, pushes Star Wars into strange territory. It is still Star Wars, but a Star Wars most won’t recognize and few will feel comfortable with.