Marvel’s Star Wars line of comics are offering followers of the Prolonged Universe with the Disney-era’s greatest tales to date, with the Darkish Droids sequence redefining the franchise’s strategy to droids, particularly these droids who’ve claimed sentience. With the thought of droid intelligence, and droid liberation, central to the crossover occasion, it’s price revisiting an iconic piece of Star Wars lore from the “Legends” period: IG-88’s droid revolution.
Tales of the Bounty Hunters was a brief story anthology launched by Bantam in 1996. The guide was edited by Kevin J. Anderson, who additionally contributed the story “Due to this fact I Am: The Story of IG-88.”
“Due to this fact I Am” tells the story of IG-88, revealing the droid to have been far more than a bounty hunter – with Anderson’s story detailing his function as a galactic revolutionary.
First showing in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Again – alongside the opposite bounty hunters whose careers could be chronicled in Tales of the Bounty Hunters – IG-88 has an in depth historical past within the “Legends” continuity, which encompassed all Star Wars multimedia content material spanning from 1978’s Splinter of the Thoughts’s Eye novel to Disney’s 2014 acquisition of the franchise and reboot of the canon. His appearances in Marvel’s Disney-era comics have proved IG-88 is as lethal as ever, however with droid sentience taking middle stage within the ongoing Darkish Droids occasion, “Due to this fact I Am: The Story of IG-88” stands out greater than ever because the Expanded Universe’s most notable droid rebellion story.
As advised in Anderson’s story, there have been in truth 4 IG-88 prototype murderer droids, which labored collectively towards their goals of upending the normal galactic order, with mechanical life subservient to the organic. It’s fascinating to notice that whereas the IG-88 mannequin was designed for killing, as depicted in “Due to this fact I Am”, one of many demarcations of IG-88’s sentience is that he used his engrained abilities as means to additional a a lot bigger finish. Darkish Droids and its Colony of the Second Revelation, a militant sect of free droids, have centered the concept that droid sentience depends on outgrowing their programming, one thing Anderson demonstrates with IG-88’s revolutionary goals.
Taking its title from Descartes’ well-known “first precept” of the philosophy of thoughts, “Due to this fact I Am” skillfully wrapped its narrative across the Authentic Trilogy, depicting IG-88’s makes an attempt to liberate droid-kind, in the end delivering a wild conclusion coinciding with the climax of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Every IG-88 was destroyed, till solely the unique remained. The final IG-88 merged itself with the second Dying Star core, planning to transmit a sign that may intervene with the programming droids’ throughout the galaxy, and to make use of the may of the Dying Star to subjugate natural life. IG-88 was solely stopped by the Rebels’ destruction of the superweapon.
In his last moments, IG-88 used Descartes’ full quote, including his personal correlatives: “I believe, subsequently I’m. Due to this fact, I need to endure. Due to this fact, I need to take acceptable motion to outlive.” Whereas his assassination programming advised him the reply was violence, IG-88’s objectives far exceeded his unique function. In Star Wars: Darkish Droids #2, one other chief of a failed droid rebellion, Ajax Sigma, has launched the “Three Revelations” of droid sentience, signaling a brand new period for droids in Star Wars storytelling, constructing on the foundations laid by Kevin J. Anderson in “Due to this fact I Am: The Story of IG-88” practically thirty years in the past.