A nice quick read that takes place right after the Clone Wars as the Emperor and Darth Vader are consolidating power. One of the last Jedi and his captain survive one of the last stands of the Separatists. Yes, the Jedi was fighting for the Separatists, having been forced to seek their help with the clones turn on him due to Order 66. The captain's wife and daughter are taken as prisoners and to be sold as slaves, and it is up to the Jedi and him to try to find them. In the meantime, we have Vader coming more into his role as Dark Lord of the Sith and the Emperor's enforcer. Slowly for him, certain realities are starting to sink in. If some of the Darth Vader stuff seems familiar, some of it does come out of Luceno's novel Dark Lord Rising. Personally, I found the Vader parts compelling, but then again, I read the novel too, which I did enjoy. The main story was pretty good, though it seemed to run a bit fast at the end, as if the author was trying to wrap it up nicely at the end, so to speak. Anyhow, this is the first volume of a series, and I will probably seek out others since I do like reading Star Wars material, especially when it takes place in smaller settings and stories like this one. The book is a nice, quick read, but at times, I did wish it had a bit more depth. ( )

Dark Times have indeed come to a galaxy far, far away. The Empire is ascendant, and after Order 66 has been implemented, it is a bad time to be a Jedi. This book captures the feeling of those times. The artwork is on the realistic side (even when the characters are various humanoid/animal-ish aliens) and the coloring is subdued and natural, both a step away from the more colorful, more animated artwork you will see in other comics, Knights of the Old Republic, for example. Douglas Wheatley manages to capture expressions on alien faces very well. For instance, Bomo Greenbark's stunned expression when he learns his family has been sold into slavery by the Empire. Basically, I can't say enough good things about the art in this first volume of Dark Times. The story is also compelling. The time is soon after Anakin Skywalker has been transformed into Darth Vader, and even though his face is literally a mask, you can still tell that he is coming to grips with his actions and his new role as a servant of his master, the Emperor. There are a number of brief flashbacks to the prequel movies, which act as a nice connector between the Darth Vader from the original movies and the prequels. These are Dark Times for Vader, certainly. And for Jedi Dass Jennir, who must hide what he is due to Order 66, he must come to grips with what it means to be a Jedi (or not) in this new era.

This is not a happy story, as the title implies, but it is a riveting story combined with good artwork, and introduces a slew of interesting characters that I want to learn more about. ( )

I expected to like this new series a lot, spinning off as it did from the very good last volume of the Clone Wars comics, Endgame. Unfortunately, this volume never clicked with me for some reason. There's nothing I can point to, really, but there is a feeling of seen-it-before, with a Jedi on the run in a rag-tag ship, in danger of falling to the dark side-- it's Knights of the Old Republic mixed with Quinlan Vos's arc in Clone Wars, except not as good as either. One review I read online said that the story Endgame set up-- a Jedi leading an army of former Separatists against the Empire-- was more interesting than the one we actually got, and I agree. Still, the art is very, very nice, and the twilight gloom that arrives with the coming of the Empire is well portrayed. I think I'll pick up the second volume and see how I like it then.

added January 2019:
I read the first three volumes of Dark Times-- which chronicles the separate adventures of a couple Jedi, a group of smugglers, and Darth Vader in the months after Revenge of the Sith-- as they came out in the late 2000s, but fell behind after that; the series lasted four more. I finally got to reading volume four, but decided I ought to reread the earlier volumes so I would have some context. (First, I actually reread a two-issue story in Clone Wars, Volume 9 that some of the Dark Times characters debuted in.)

On reread, I actually liked it more than the above indicates, maybe because I knew to not have those expectations based on Endgame anymore, and maybe also because since I read it right after Endgame, the continuity of Dass Jennir's character arc was more obvious. Jennir isn't in danger of falling to the Dark Side, as I said above; it's more than in the era of the Empire, the ideals that sustained his entire life just ceased to be applicable. He's not choosing evil, but moving into a world where there is no opportunity to choose good. This is a very dark comic book (slavery and cannibalism are key features!), but it takes good advantage of its setting to tell a unique kind of Star Wars story, and it does so very well, in large part thanks to Douglas Wheatley's exceptional artwork.

(Since the original comic came out, it's been revealed that "Welles Hartley," credited writer of Endgame, and "Mick Harrison," credited writer of volumes 2-4 of Dark Times, are in fact both pen names for editor Randy Stradley, used I guess to disguise how much of Dark Horse's Star Wars output he wrote himself. But for some reason this book credits the story to one of those pseudonyms and the script to the other! In this interview from 2007, artist Wheatley even keeps up the subterfuge by saying it's the first project he's ever worked on with two writers, and it makes for lively conference calls. This has bothered me ever since the Hartley/Harrison revelation, and I want to know why it was done this way.)