Luke Owen reviews Star Wars: Darth Vader #1 from Marvel Comics…
Ever since Darth Vader made his first on-screen appearance, he became the one of the most popular villains to ever haunt an audience’s dreams! Now, follow Vader straight from the ending of A NEW HOPE (and the pages of the new STAR WARS comic book) into his own series, showing the Empire’s war with the Rebel Alliance from the other side!
The first issue of Marvel’s Star Wars on-going run showed some signs of promise, but also faltered in its need to appease fans and delivered some fairly poor artwork (the second issue had the same problems). The second Star Wars comic line to come from Marvel is a solo story for Darth Vader, which shows us the Sith’s journey from the end of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and his dealings with the Emperor. Like its Star Wars #1 and #2 counterparts, there are some good things to write about but it’s not overwhelmingly positive.
This first issue talks place after the events of the current Star Wars comic story and sees Vader travel to Tatooine to talk to Jabba the Hutt as well as give us a glimpse into the relationship between him and Darth Sidious. When the comic is dealing with Vader and Jabba verbally sparring, it’s is pretty damn good. Kieron Gillen’s dialogue can be pretty hard to follow at times as sentences between characters never seem that fluid, but he creates a great amount of tension between these two awesome villains. Gillen makes Vader seem like a bad ass, and this is the Vader we’ve come to know and love. The opening of the comic also beautifully mirrors Luke’s arrival in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, but masterfully shows us how the two characters are drastically different, which was a really nice touch.
The second half of the book however, which focuses on a conversation between Vader and Sidious about the destruction of the Death Star, is a bit clunky. While certain elements like Sidious talking about the years of plans and the decimation of the Senate are good, Darth Vader comes across as a whiny little kid being told off by his parents because he’d recorded over an episode of Lovejoy. This is Darth Vader! He’s meant to be the meanest guy in the galaxy! The reason why his turn against the Emperor in Return of the Jedi is so effective is because we’ve only ever seen him as a bad dude who cares about nothing but the success of the Empire. But in this comic, he’s a little puppy who is playing at being top dog. In the following scenes were he is criticising his crew for being “substandard”, he doesn’t have the same impact he did at the start of the comic because of this character shift.
But at least there isn’t a huge amount of fan servicing and call backs. So that’s a plus.
The artwork from Salvador Larroca is also much stronger that the other Star Wars comic, and he manages to convey a lot of emotion from the expression-less Vader as well as capturing the likenesses of other iconic characters. The action sequence in Jabba’s palace is well-intentioned, but it doesn’t always hit the mark. With that said, his force grip against Jabba is really cool.
Star Wars: Darth Vader #1 is a mixed bag. When Gillen is writing Vader to be a bad ass, it’s superb. But when he’s focusing on his relationship with Sidious, Vader comes across more like Hayden Christensen than one would like him too. It is a nice touch in a way to see this character transformation, but it wasn’t needed in the first issue. Especially not to this degree.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
