BOOK I
VADER
It is a period of insurgence. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base on a moon of Yavin, have won a shockling surprise victory against the rightful reign of the galactic empire.
The Empire’s ultimate peacekeeping force, the DEATH STAR, was destroyed due to an unforseen design flaw. Without this deterrent, the rule of law is in danger. Chaos looms!
For the nineteen years after the vanquishjing of the Jedi and his painful rebirth on volcanic Mustafar, sith lord DARTH VADER has faithfully served his master. But now, he has failed the Emperor and must pay the price….
The Review
Darth Vader is one of Star Wars’s most iconic characters, and it is only fitting that he gets his own series in the canon. My expectations were very high for this series, and I must confess that this comic elicited a very lukewarm response from me.
First off, I need to compliment the story group (and the comic writers) for having this story seamlessly meld with the Star Wars title by Jason Aaron. It picks up off right after Vader’s failure at Cymoon 1, and with the destruction of the Death Star tailing behind, Vader has two strikes, and is not in the Emperor’s best graces right now.
The story structure itself is a little confusing, as it is often shifting from in medias res, and Vader is doing many things at once. He wants to know the secret the Emperor is keeping from him, he wants the pilot who blew up the Death Star, and he has Imperial business with Jabba. He’s quite the busy cyborg!
What irks me, however, is in Gillen’s desire to produce a classic feel, he is just hashing together familiar elements that are corny and redundant. Vader’s entrance and audience with Jabba is almost completely the same as Luke’s in Return of the Jedi (albeit more successfully), and in hiring Boba Fett; the bounty hunter inexplicably seems to have a Wookiee partner, mirroring Han Solo. It’s just not creative storytelling, and the worst is; to kill time on Tatooine, Vader slaughters an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders, just so Gillen can remind us “Remember Episode II. Remember how mad Anakin was? He still is Ooooohhh”. Even the “coolest” parallel is stupid that being Overseer Agadeen from the Jason Aaron series has been punished for his failure by being (rebuilt?) or Sithed up in some dark underground lab, like Anakin was.
I’m not giving up on the story just yet, as there is intrigue and mystery what will happen next, and as an avid Star Wars fan; I certainly want to find out.
As a sidenote, the artwork was decent, but I didn’t like Vader’s lightsaber. It looked like a plastic Nintendo Wii remote.
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