Indeed. I’ve noticed that the comics tend to be better when they focus on characters not from the films. I can’t think of any Legends comics focusing on the big three that were all that great and their Vader comics were all one shots and mini-series. Still, Mavel has had some success. I really enjoyed the Lando mini-series, the first Vader series was decent, and Dr. Aphra is shaping up too be quite good. But other than that, it’s all been sub-par.
The books are pretty much on par with Legends IMO.
The only comic that I've really liked so far is the Kanan comic. I haven't read a lot of the others, but the pre-TPM Maul one was pretty mediocre and the first couple of issues from the 2015 Vader series didn't grasp me.
As for novels, the only genuinely good ones that I have read have been Bloodline and Thrawn (I'll be reading Lost Stars soon though which I hear is great). The rest, pretty underwhelming. But I'd agree that the quality isn't that much below Legends.
Unfortunately, Canon is focusing way too much on the main characters, like you said. Even with the anthology films, they seem to have a preference for continuing stories with the main characters. Rogue One seems to have just been a welcome one-off, tbh -- hopefully, they continue down the road of RO, but I doubt they will.
While I think Canon and Legends are pretty much equal if we're talking overall quality... By the end there Legends had tightened up into a lean mean machine who's content was generally pretty high quality. Canon doesn't match late Legends in content.
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Well FotJ are novels. As for the comics, pretty much everything near the end was forgettable. They didn't have a good recurring series since Legacy ended in 2010 (and I was no fan of that).