So the main article is about the amazing cross-media event known as Shadows of the Empire. I loved SOTE. I thought it was a great novel, a great story, and had a great batch of cross-promotions. My real question here is "why haven't we seen this happen again yet?"

NJO seemed the perfect opportunity. Here was a gigantic event-based story. NJO would have translated easily into the comic and video game formats. In fact, one of the Jedi Knight series of PC games was released that year! Making the Vong the villians of the game instead of desann and another imperial/dark sider resurgence would have made the game's storyline MUCH more important to continuity. Vong have yet to get any significant comic-book time. Of course Nom Anor had a cameo in Crimson Empire II and there was a Kyle Katarn Vong story in Star Wars Tales, but beyond the novels, the Vong never really spilled over into other media.

Next we see the Clone Wars. Here we did see a large marketing campaign, to a point. The cohesive organization we saw with SOTE was no where to be found, however. Continuity patches and the like were flying like crazy during the entire mad rush of new clone wars stories. Even now, tying it all together to form one single story is difficult. However, we did get video games, novels, comics, figures, and more.

The next opportunity we had was the new Legacy of the Jedi era. Again, we are being slighted on action figures and video games, apparently. However, there is a comic book series to tie in loosely with the novels. Of course, the comics take place nearly a century after the novels. That is barely a tie-in.

Now we can look ahead to the future. Tim Zahn's Alliegence novel is set during the classic trilogy era, much like Shadows of the Empire was. It is a Tim Zahn book, so it ought to sell quite well. If there were some kind of video game adaptation, along with a comic book that told a concurrent story, and maybe a few toys? Maybe a direct-to-video animation spot to get us adjusted to the new CGI animation style we are going to see more of in a couple years? Well lets just say this would seem the best target for a full-blast media blitz on a single storyline.

Of course, it is possible they are waiting to do something like this until the first season of the live action TV show is going. The TV show should spawn books and comics and video games that tell stories between episodes or between seasons. Action figures for the TV show would be a no-brainer.

I suppose it just remains to be seen if we will ever see the level of product coordination we enjoyed in 1996 during the SOTE era. I, for one, hope that we see it happen more than once. A big part of the strength of star wars lies in how complete and cohesive its universe is. It is its own living, breathing entity that brings a certain flavor and gravity to every story told within it.

The galaxy really gets a chance to shine when we focus on one story, one event, and look at it from multiple angles, and see the perspectives of several characters during those events. Shadows of the Empire had a novel that gave us Luke and Leia's perspective. A video game that gave us Dash Rendar's perspective. A comic that gave us Guri's, and two excellent west end games RPG supplements that showed us the rest of the galaxy during those events. The toys and soundtrack were just icing on the cake.

I can imagine it is difficult to swing such a large scale project, but seeing it happen once or twice a decade would be ideal for us fans. To me, SOTE was the biggest single shining moment of success among the various licensees of the star wars franchise. I know you guys have it in you to capture that magic one more time. Do it.