After the frights of last year’s Tales from Vader’s Castle brought the Halloween spirit to Star Wars comics in a gleefully ghoulish way, IDW brought the series, and writer Cavan Scott, back for another round of spooky tales: Return to Vader’s Castle! In some ways stronger and more defined than last year’s outing, Return to Vader’s Castle is an excellent continuation and usage of the fun-loving scares all-ages truly can enjoy.
First I’ll shortly give my impressions on each story and its art, pick my favorite story/art, followed by discussing my picks and how I felt about the series overall!
“The Horned Devil” Art: Megan Levens; Colors: Charlie Kirchoff
A solid start, as focusing on the most horror-like time in Maul’s crazy, roller coaster ride of a life, both set a great tone for what was to come, and gave the series a feeling like the stories it would tell fit snug within the galaxy far, far away. Art really brought the creepiness of Spider-Maul alive, and the droid captain was just as unsettling.
“The Curse of Tarkin” Art: Kelley Jones; Colors: Michelle Madsen
By linking a Frankenstein-like monster to Tarkin’s catch-all Tarkin Initiative, “Curse” continued anchoring its tales to plausible events. Honoring Peter Cushing’s past in Hammer Horror was a masterstroke, and the art rose to the occasion to capture Tarkin in a similar light as his esteemed actor’s past work.
“Bop Sh-bop, Little Sarlacc of Terror” Art: Nick Brokenshire
The sarlacc continues to have a renaissance this year, as we get more of the hungry, mobile baby sarlaccs in “Terror,” like we saw in Galaxy’s Edge’s first issue. Their tentacle-led terrorizing of the Coruscant underworld is effectively creepy and horrific, and the issue goes much further than I imagined they were allowed, showing the little sarlaccs feasted for a truly scary image. Asajj Ventress is written well and I loved getting to see this little glimpse of her time as a bounty hunter.
“Vault of the Living Brains” Art: Nicoletta Baldari
This one was the most unnerving to me, as it brought me back to my childhood fear of the B’omarr monks roaming Jabba’s Palace. I’ve always enjoyed Hutt intrigue in small doses and Crakka’s real motives for her visit made for a good little story. The art didn’t feel like it would fit in with the horror-tinged series, but it quickly grew to be a favorite of mine for its painting-like look, as if the story was a bunch of paintings in frames, hung in an old, abandoned manor, it’s Hutt masters long gone due to the passage of time; in less flourishing terms, it added a macabre edge to the story.
“Night of the Lava Zombies” Art: Charles Paul Wilson III; Colors: David Garcia Cruz
We couldn’t have asked for a better finale to the series’ second outing, as it has some truly frightening concepts, artwork, and a killer ending that went even darker than I’d ever expect the series to go.
Favorite Story: “The Curse of Tarkin”
The way it manages to honor Cushing’s past and feel like something actually could’ve happened in GFFA is brilliant, especially due to its simplicity. Cavan Scott’s tale honoring Christopher Lee’s past in the previous series didn’t feel like it fit as well, but he pulls it off expertly here.
Favorite Art: “Vault of the Living Brains” by Nicoletta Baldari
See my flourish-filled thoughts on her art in my thoughts on this story above. There’s a full page where a young thief is surrounded by brains, chanting, “Who?!” in alarm, and I’ve had nightmares on and off ever since; that’s why it’s my favorite.
Overall, I felt like Return to Vader’s Castle was an overall stronger effort than the first one, but they’re both fun and spooky and well worth a read. The first one’s framing story ate too much panel time for the tales being spun, and now I feel like Return’s was too short and had too little going on by the end, though I prefer it that way so the focus remained on Return’s excellent yarns of ghoulish delight. The thought dead ex-thief turned rebel Thom Hudd from the first series is being tortured by Vader’s lackey Vanee, and the two exchange stories as Hudd slips in and back into chains. Lina Graf, and the two other rebels from the first series, return to rescue Hudd, but it happens all too quick and easy in the final issue; as the tale wraps up far too easily compared to original’s framing story. There’s a wonder little tease in the finale of how we could get this series to come back for a third year and I hope it happens! The biggest thing going for the framing story is Francesco Francavilla graced us with interior art this time around, while doing the main covers like last time. It’s excellent stuff, as his pulpy style lends itself well to the scares inherit in Mustafar and the Castle itself, and I’d really love it now if Francavilla did art for one of the spooky tales beyond just the framing story, but I’m damn glad we got him in any capacity again for Return.
Another reason I enjoyed Return better than the original was due to how the stories in each issue felt more plausible within the world of Star Wars. Where a few in the prior series had transformations that felt extra fantastical for SW to me, like Dooku turning into a Vampire-like creature or Han turning incredibly old, the stories here all grounded themselves in some context of canon and extrapolated from there, like Tarkin’s monster coming from his Tarkin Iniative, Spider-Maul being a real moment in his long life, and B’omarr order monks’ brain proclivity, and I loved the idea of actually imagining these happening rather than the some of the less than plausible original stories; good in their own right, just not my preference.
Return to Vader’s Castle was a more than worthy successor to the original, turning this series from a exciting one-off into a must-have series for years to come!
+ Grounding spooky tales in canon context
+ Art teams across the board really pushed the edge of all-ages…
+ …so did the stories
– Framing story was hit or miss
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.
RETURN TO VADER’S CASTLE
#1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5
IDW’S STAR WARS ADVENTURES:
Tales from Vader’s Castle (miniseries) | Annual 2019