Dark Times

Dark Times is a 2006 comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics as a series of continuing mini-series. It is part of their 30th anniversary retooling of its long-running Star Wars series of comics, replacing Star Wars: Republic.

The first issue was released on November 8, 2006, and is written by Mick Harrison from a plot by Welles Hartley.

The series is set in the Star Wars galaxy shortly after the events in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and about 19 years before Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The story begins in the days following the events in Purge by John Ostrander, and intertwines with the events of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno.

Tropes used in Dark Times include:

• Anyone Can Die: Oh god yes...
• Asshole Victim: Noone shed tears over Dezono Qua.
• Badass Crew: It's quite a coincidence that Dass Jennir found the one group of people in the galaxy willing to go to the mattresses for a complete stranger.
• Batman Gambit: Dass Jennir is proving surprisingly adept at this.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Dass Jennir realizes that the enemy have fully taken over the town. He proceeds to release the woman who tried to have him killed, defeat the master swordsman who tried to kill him, and single handedly liberate the town.
• Darker and Edgier: Pretty much the embodiment of this trope.
  • Oddly, the ending of the Blue Harvest arc seems to subvert this.
• The Dark Times: Duh.
• Dirty Business: Dass Jennir is the first Jedi to espouse this without falling to the Dark Side.
• Divide and Conquer: Dass Jennir's plan for dealing with the slavers.
• Downer Ending: The ending of the Resa Greenbark arc.
• The Dragon: Darth Vader is very uncomfortably settling into this role.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Poor Crys.
• Eats Babies
• Enemy Civil War: Dass Jennir engineers one of these.
• Fantastic Racism: Taken to its most odious extreme.
• For the Evulz: Dezono Qua's motivation.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Dass does this in Blue Harvest to make the gangs underestimate him.
• If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Dass tries to prevent this, with catastrophic results.
• I'm a Humanitarian: One of the more disgusting examples in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
• Lighter and Softer: After three entire arcs of having the cast picked off one by one and sinking into despair, things might be finally looking up, if Blue Harvest is any indication.
• Mauve Shirt: Stormtrooper Commander Vill of Vader's 501st shows up quite a few times, serving as a somewhat sympathetic viewpoint for the stormies. Then Vader asks him if Palpy's got an Order 66 equivalent if the good Darth goes rogue, Vill tries to evade the question, and winds up getting force-choked and thrown off a cliff so he can't report the question to Palps.
• Papa Wolf: Master K'kruhk.
  • Bomo Greenbark is one as well; it's why he turns against Dass after he kills the man who murdered Bomo's family before Bomo could do it himself.
• Must Make Amends: Dass's attempts to liberate the slaves he was forced to leave behind.
• Recycled in Space: The Blue Harvest arc is basically Yojimbo in space.
• Schedule Slip: Several.
• Shaggy Dog Story: The fate of Resa Greenbark.
• Shoot the Dog: Dass Jennir is forced to do this a couple of times.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Dass disarms the spicers' most skilled swordsman in one move. In an interesting subversion, the move is incredibly detailed, the single stroke taking up an entire page and shown through five individual panels.
• Stuffed in A Fridge: Poor Crys.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Dass Jennir.