A new and sudden obsession with the upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic, lead me on a search for knowledge; knowledge about the characters seen in the three cinematic trailers as well as knowledge about the Sith, the Old Republic era, and Star Wars in general.  I’ve been a Star Wars fan since the mid-80s, I just never worried about learning any of the lore or anything surrounding the Star Wars universe; I surely never read any of the comics or books that had been published.  That is, until now.  Now I want to know more, I want to understand the lore.  I may even watch the prequels that I never bothered to watch before, not because I wasn’t interested in them but because I just don’t get around to watching movies much.  It took a few months after the release of The Lord of the Rings Online before I ever saw The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The first book/comic I decided to read was Blood of the Empire since it is freely available on the web site.

Normally I do not care for comic books but I have to say that this one was just awesome.  Maybe it was because of the character of Teneb Kel (Darth Thanaton), maybe it was the story line, maybe it was both, I don’t know.  All I do know is that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the comic and even the drawings were great (I don’t like most comic-style art).  Another thing is that apparently this comic ties directly into the game so maybe we’ll see Darth Thanaton somewhere, maybe he’ll be a main character along with Darth Malgus.  It will be interesting to see.

Cropped image of Teneb Kel killing a Padawan

If you are a Star Wars fan, I recommend checking out this comic.