– Spoiler Review –
Star Wars Revelations #1 is a special one-shot issue which finds Darth Vader in the Eye of the Webbish Bog’s presence again, allowing writer Marc Guggenheim to weave a tale regarding how the many creatives behind this current era of comics are telling a larger, connected story while also offering intriguing glimpses at what might be coming for next year’s content. Both prophetic and overbearing, Revelations #1 has more questions than answers, but it makes for an interesting concept to showcase what will come next, hinting at a storyline I’m both excited for but worried this medium won’t be able to do justice.
Revelations #1 begins with the Eye of Webbish Bog calling out to Darth Vader, summoning him to his lair to share a warning. The Eye seems off, even more cryptic than usual, claiming it’s not feeling well, but it still has had a vision. In the visions it shares with Vader, we see all sorts of future events, though it remains to be seen how much will come to pass. One for sure seems to be coming, as its story certainly holds tons of promise, while the many others remain interesting questions marks. Beyond those nebulous events, the Eye also weaves together many storylines from across the current comics set in this era, like Vader’s own by Greg Pak, Doctor Aphra by Alyssa Wong, Bounty Hunters by Ethan Sacks, Guggenheim’s own Han Solo & Chewbacca, and the mainline Star Wars comic plus Hidden Empire miniseries by Charles Soule. As has been the case since the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover last year, the stories unfolding in this era of comics has been intertwined to some degree, but this narrative by the Webb gives us a better idea of how stuff like the Fermata Cage and Qi’ra’s plans against the Sith atop the Empire match up with Doctor Aphra’s Spark Eternal Saga, a rogue AI built to help fight the Sith as well, even if we’re already putting these threads together by ourselves. In a way, it makes Revelations feel like an advertisement for all the comics, imploring you to read them all instead of just whatever you choose, as it literally includes advertisements for the other series at the end. It’s a good offer, read it all and it’ll “matter” to the larger story, but it creates a fear of missing out for those who can’t feasibly dig into each series or wait for trade paperbacks, almost hoping to force people’s hands into diving in issue by issue. You can still easily read whatever series you would like, even just one, and be able to enjoy it, something I can vouch for as I’m reading them all, but Revelations wants you to know you’re missing out a bit with the larger comics-verse unfolding.
Regardless, all the potential teases for what could be coming to each story certainly could peak potential reader interest. Let’s break down as much of the potential futures as we can, shall we?
- Hidden Empire: In my review of the opening issue of the final miniseries in Qi’ra’s comic trilogy, I had my theories about the Fermata Cage, the device she had the Knights of Ren procure for her that contains an ancient Sith Lord inside, which she hopes to set loose on the galaxy and point towards Darth Sidious and Darth Vader to help free the galaxy of their control. And by theories, I mean I was shooting down the possibility it had Lord Momin inside, given everything that happened when he helped Vader build his Castle on Mustafar,
but Revelations clears that up right away and says it without saying it that Lord Momin will be inside. UPDATE: Really misread that and in Hidden Empire #2, the extra context helps, as Palpatine knows Momin MADE the Cage, but they have no idea if he trapped a Sith in there or not. END UPDATE I really hope they manage to open it up and we get to see whomever inside wreck some havoc on the galaxy, though it seems difficult to imagine knowing there’s not much time left until the events of Return of the Jedi. Elsewhere, in the big final image full of visions of the future, we see Qi’ra standing over Palpatine’s dead body, the Cage still locked (or relocked). This won’t come to pass, but it’s interesting to think it could’ve been a possibility. - Darth Vader: There’s not as much for Vader’s own series, beyond the Eye’s warning about his and Palpatine’s futures due to the Fermata Cage, though there’s some panels of Sabé, one showing her in her own big suit of armor or another of her putting on his helmet, while the funniest image is the one of Threepio holding his headless helmet.
- Bounty Hunters: Many of the glimpses of the future revolve around this series. There’s the tease of Zuckuss’ death, as well as Bossk’s, and maybe even 4-LOM, while the fabled Inferno Squadron looks to be joining the series, already teased in Hidden Empire. It shows Valance fighting Vader and losing, but surviving thanks to his durasteel body, which leads Lt. Haydenn (his handler and girlfriend…long story) to call in Inferno Squad, while Valance seems to be under the influence, not of alcohol, but a malevolent entity, which may or may not be tied to the new story teased elsewhere in the issue. Regardless of what’s taking over Valance, it does feel somewhat similar to his Legends comics appearances, revisited in the Legends one-off comic in 2019, where he suffers from a disease of some sort that messes with his droid parts. And eventually leads to his (heroic) death (as someone who’s indifferent to Valance, I wouldn’t mind). Speaking of…
- Star Wars: In the final vision pages, Luke could very easily be holding the Great Life Jewels that cause said disease, so maybe they are going to go down this storyline? It could be fun to do it in canon, especially now if that meant Valance’s termination, and feels like a smaller scale event that could maybe still happen in this era. Unless things are going post-Return of the Jedi soon. Elsewhere in teases for this series, not only does it show us Luke, Leia, Lando and crew will escape (I’m shocked, tell you!) No-Space, the old Nihil stronghold during the High Republic era, but that a new disturbance picked up by Luke places them in the sights of the new storyline Revelations has been teasing all along.
- Doctor Aphra: Last but not least for the series we already have, the earliest Aphra scene teases how she’ll escape imprisonment in her own body, possessed by the Spark Eternal, an AI created to help the an ancient cult called the Ascendant mimic the Force and take down the Sith. Later, there’s a funny one of the murderbots chilling with IG-88 and Artoo. But the most shocking and enticing and surprising is Aphra and Domina Tagge kissing!!! Considering Aphra’s attraction to the woman despite their current working relationship, alongside exes like Magna Tolvan (who she just kissed again!) and Sana Starros back in her life, this would be quite the development/third option I wasn’t betting on.
As fun as all these teases are, the brand-new story and character Revelations introduces, which looks to affect all sorts of stories going forward, is the most intriguing, exciting, and worrisome part of the issue. We’re introduced to Ajax Sigma, a droid revolutionary, but his movement is stopped in its tracks by the Jedi of the High Republic era (Loden Greatstorm, I see you!), though what Ajax’s plans were and why the Jedi felt the need to stop them are left undefined. Regardless, Ajax might’ve fallen but his processor survived, passed down for generations, even finding its way into Han Solo and Chewbacca’s paws (maybe how Guggenheim’s series about them will tie into Revelations when they are seen hiding the processor here). A droid eventually digs up the buried Ajax processor and then we see them building him a new body. In the vision with Luke, Leia, and Lando, along with Threepio and Artoo, the trio find themselves running into the renewed Ajax. Luke fights Ajax, whose new body can block lightsabers, who is eager to repay justice to this Jedi after those who wrong him in the past. Luke tries to talk to him, offering him an ultimatum at one point, and then Ajax flees. According to the Eye, which we find out has been poisoned in an attempt to lure Vader out and kill him by Mustafarians, Ajax is the end of everything, of the Force itself even, and these visions are just the warnings. Vader wonders why he should care, but the Eye points out ending everything includes him, so it adds a little context to the final scene first seen in Hidden Empire of when Palpatine calls on Vader to hunt down the Fermata Cage. The idea of a droid revolutionary isn’t terribly new, L3-37 is the biggest and most recent that comes to mind, but that the Force considers him such a threat means he should be a big deal in the comics going forward. Though when and how remains the greatest mystery, because as I said earlier, we are running out of time before Return of the Jedi and it’s stretching suspension of disbelief Hidden Empire events, the idea the Death Star II is out there for the Rebellion to worry about and they haven’t done much about it, and this Ajax and his plans could be unfolding, several substantial storylines, this close to the film. This could very well happen AFTER RotJ, mind you, especially considering the enticing thread hanging open from Last Shot regarding L3-37’s plans, but then that all runs into everything going on in The Mandalorian and its connecting shows, so…when this happens, when Ajax and his plans start invading comics, will there be enough time to make it all feel worth it?
And more importantly…do to the concept of droid freedom and their sentience justice? Over at Eleven-ThirtyEight, Manor writer Chris submitted a thought-provoking exploration of what it would mean for the Star Wars franchise to consider droid sentience and actually address it, both for what it could mean for our heroes and for the franchise as a whole considering droids are often considered lower beings by well…everyone. As Chris mentions, L3’s story in the film ends on a sour note, with her essentially forced into combining with the Falcon, while we saw in a one-shot comic Cassian Andor take the choice away from K-2SO about switching sides, so we’ve seen what it can make our heroes look like if they take decisions away from the droids in their lives. Could Ajax Sigma and his storyline actually tackle these heavy subject matters with the nuance needed? If it ends up being like War of the Bounty Hunters‘ crossover event, where there’s a main miniseries and the other stories are heavily intertwined, there’s a greater potential because then there will be a good amount of cooks in the kitchen, but if it’s all done in another 5-issue miniseries, I highly doubt it’ll be enough to really tackle everything involved with droid sentience and what it means for the franchise. As intrigued as I am by what Revelations is teasing, both how this fits in the timeline and if the subject can have the proper exploration, weigh heavily on my mind and bring more trepidation than excitement.
For an issue this big and with so many different possibilities, several different artist teams were brought along to make visions of the future feel unique, to varying levels of success. The teams are as follows: Salvador Larroca on art with GURU-eFX on colors for pages 1-3, 36-40; Dono Sanchez-Almara colorist for all remaining pages; Pere Pérez artist for pages 14-19, 34-35; Emma Kubert and Wayne Faucher for pages 12-13, 20-25; Justin Mason on pages 4-11; Paul Fry for pages 26-33; and Ariana Maher on lettering throughout. Of the groups arrayed within, my favorites were Pere Pérez and Justin Mason. For starters, they were the two that felt most similar in their depictions of the Eye himself, his elongated face and wide set eyes by both give a good impression of someone who is in pain, as he keeps saying, almost drunk looking (on the flip side, Larroca draws the Eye like E.T., which is a choice, to say the least), while Pere gets to shows off the Eye’s might, how he barely lifts one of his four appendages to stop the lightsaber throws at him, directing it back with the Force alone. Pere’s Vader is also threatening, beyond how normally drawn by others, the red glint in his eyes always visible to give him a demonic look, reflections of the flames of Mustafar ever present as well, showing what can be done without tracing. I also quite liked his Palpatine, one panel creepily only showing his eyes and his nose under the hood as he talks to Vader, while Pere’s sense of scale is delightful, the panel of Destroyers next to the Executor or Vader and Momin appreciating the Sith Lord’s new Castle create scenes that feel like a frame from a movie or concept art for one. He’s also responsible for the final vision page, with the Aphra/Domina kiss, Luke holding the jewels, Qi’ra standing over a dead Palpatine, and Sabé putting on Vader’s helmet. As for Justin, he’s responsible for drawing Ajax Sigma first, the white and gold body design a distinct look that both causes him to stand out among the crowd, making him seem superior to his peers, and recalls L3 with the white, dirty yet clean chassis. Justin also draws one of the funnier panels of the issue, where the Eye, exasperated by how difficult telling Vader all this is, puts one of his four appendages on his face in frustration. Emma Kubert and Wayne Faucher’s sections were the most unique and too dissimilar from the rest of the issue, though nothing that ruins the experience or anything. The sillier art style works rather well for the Aphra double page spread, her events often exaggerated for drama and laughs, though the almost child-like faces looked very weird for characters like Valance or Bossk in the Bounty Hunters‘ specific spreads. Paul Fry recently took over the Han Solo & Chewbacca comic, and while his Luke here has some weird expressions (like the lopsided grimace), the other characters are decent, plus the refreshed Ajax might be more silver than we saw, but he seems to have a personality with the cape and vibro-knife arm extensions. One of my favorite panels from Fry is on the opening page of his section, the desolate view of the empty moon, several droids dismembered and broken in front of the team, sets a spooky vibe for the scene. Sanchez-Almara’s colors for this panel are somber, the exposed bedrock and its brownish red feels more lively than the greenish grey and dead ground above it. As for Larroca, his tracing is just too hard to ignore now, especially with the Eye suddenly looking like E.T. than well, what everyone else drew, while his Palpatine sort of looks like it was taken from one of the recent Planet of the Apes films, and lastly one shot looks ripped right from Vader’s Rogue One scene with Director Krennic, colors and all. Overall, Sanchez-Almara delivers some great coloring, as I quite enjoy the grainy texture he brings to certain pages and panels, making the vision events feel more plausible, while adding tons of atmosphere to a scene, which makes Pere’s scene of Vader at his Castle similar to the RO scene unique and even more terrifying. And lettering throughout is Ariana Maher, who had a difficult task with tons of double page spreads with weird layouts to somehow draw a reader’s attention across and yet she made it rather easy to follow. Truly without her, there were a few pages where I would’ve had to assume what was going on and where I was supposed to look next, as she even managed to use SFX placement (like the “Kshzzk” in the opening Aphra page to link us to the scene happening on the other half) to push eyes long a big two page spread beyond just dialogue boxes. Her dynamic SFX for blaster fire or lightsaber swings have always stood out in her The High Republic work and she adds some great dimension to all the artists involved, be it Luke’s big swings against Ajax to show he’s still got a lot to learn or Anakin’s tight swish blocking lazer fire in a Clone Wars era flashback.
Here are a few other things:
- Also, while not everything in these visions will come to pass…it seemed weird to throw us into the next part of most of the comics’ stories when we’ve just started certain storylines. For the average comic book reader, they likely don’t read the solicitations every month, so they aren’t already clued in on what comes next, and it could rob them of some of the fun of the coming issues until these comics get to the parts teased in the Revelations.
- The whole plot of the Mustafarians trying to kill Vader again felt pretty thin considering events in other mediums, like the VR series Vader Immortal.
Revelations #1 is full of exactly that, but your mileage may vary with how much you enjoy the looks ahead and what it could mean for current storylines or characters, while it also leaves open the discussion regarding the coming story of a droid revolutionary and if it will be done properly or not.
+ The final vision page and all the fun little teases of what could or could not be
+ Introduction of the Ajax Sigma storyline and all its potential…
– …but also all the concerns that come with the subject matter being handled with the proper nuance or not
– Jumping ahead when we’re just getting started in some places
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.