Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vol. 1: Vader by Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larroca , Adi Granov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this comic collection up as an Amazon freebie a while back and finally decided to look through it. I was pleasantly surprised with the story, and the art was top notch.
The time-line is between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. In true Sith fashion, Palpatine liberally assigns blame and shame on all who failed to perfectly execute his fool-proof plans. The brunt of which falls on Vader for not preventing the Death Star’s explosion. Plans within plans begin to unfold as Vader vies to maintain his supremacy on many fronts at once. New events you never knew about are intermixed with both ANH and memories of Prequel events.
The only negative I have is that the Expanded Universe seemed far more interesting than the plot in this divergent series. I am one of those who see the Thrawn Trilogy by Tim Zhan and much of the EU as canon (screw the Yuuzahn-Vong, they are worse than Jar Jar), and the new take (Disney productions) as an alternate time-line. That doesn’t mean both can’t be good, but I can’t help but compare the two and find the newer lacking. All that observation is for free! 🙂
Still, I found the survival of the strongest competitor to ring quite true to the mentality of the Sith.
I didn’t like the sudden worshipfulness of the techno-archaeologist toward Vader. It seemed contrived. That lost one star.
Spoiler in the next paragraph. Highlight to read–>The fact that Vader’s competitors do not use the force, but managed to give him some grief made no sense either.<–
Two stars down.
The rest was fine. I would read the others in the series if they went on a deep sale. I give this a handy 3 stars and call it a Worthy Read.
Words from the Wampuscat 