– Spoiler Review –
After Qi’ra’s big comic trilogy taking over Star Wars comics came to a close earlier this year, we find ourselves at the next comic crossover event, though it goes in a much different, horror-focused direction. With Dark Droids #1, writer Charles Soule and artist Luke Ross kick off the big event by introducing us to the dastardly force ready to sweep across the droids of the galaxy and those who might rise up against it, leaving many of my concerns prior to this release in the dust along the way.
Dark Droids #1 is a slow build, but it pays off readers’ patience with a creepy, growing sense of dread which sprawls out in a larger and larger web until the threat of this new, yet old entity comes for familiar faces at the end. This unease and dread, as well as the focus on droids and their place in the galaxy, takes a much different route than Qi’ra’s expansive campaign to rid the galaxy of the Sith ruling it, helping set this crossover apart from the others, starting to put me at ease over my concern regarding how this all felt like way too much happening in the six months from the end of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. This is going to be a galaxy-wide problem, there’s no mistake about that from what we all learn in the issue and from what the solicitations have been revealing, but the more intimate potential of this story, of both (and other) sides in the same situation, fighting off this droid Scourge, makes it feel like less of a distraction to the coming story and something which could make some impact. It all remains to be seen, but the entire crossover ends in December, so we won’t have to wait terribly long to see how it all goes (and the solicitations for issues in January and beyond will do a good job of remaining coy with details as they likely have in the past). My biggest hope is not only does this main miniseries by Soule and Ross maintain its spooky, haunted atmosphere, but the rest of the series also get into the fun of the horror-theme in their own way, as that’ll go a long way into making the entire Dark Droids crossover something worth remembering for readers too.
It all begins with a speech from an entity without a name, at least for now, trying to understand what it is and concluding it is a droid now. But what is it? At the end of Hidden Empire #5, Qi’ra finally got the Fermata Cage open, out which popped a strange little disc Qi’ra’s original targets for the Cage (Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader) discarded without a second. As the battle winded down after Qi’ra’s forces were routed and the Cage was sabotaged, the AI construct built by an ancient cult that was exercised from Doctor Aphra’s body found its way over to the strange disc, melding with it. The voice which opens the issue is the Spark Eternal, joining with the entity already inside the disc, and the combination of the two looks to start off a deadly chain reaction that I struggle to imagine how our heroes, and villains, will be able to overcome. The Empire returns to the Amaxine Station, where Qi’ra made her final stand with her Crimson Dawn forces, to clean up anything left over, be it parts or technology, and a KX-series droid comes upon the mysterious disk, which sprouts legs and takes over the droid’s mind. It wants more, unable to help itself, and begins to thread its way through the communications network, slowing taking over more and more droids, which all start to rebel against the organics around them. When I said chain reaction, I was not kidding, as a good chunk of the entity’s proliferation throughout the Star Destroyers droids is told silently, Luke Ross and team’s art delivering all the impact as they make short work of the organics on the ship, with Imperials floating in space, blood on a FX-series medical droid’s blade, and later a full page of haunting Scourge point-of-views, which are little circles letting us see through the Scourge entity’s newly acquired eyes, with little electrical bolts arcing through the view, doused in a subdued purple from colorist Alex Sinclair, each one highlighting a moment of organic death.
Before it completes its takeover of all the droids aboard, turning the little MSE-6-series aka mouse droids into silent, under looked vectors, one heroic mouse droids sends out a warning message, trying its best to fight off the Scourge’s disc form and eventually failing. Where and who is the mouse droid sending this message? Who is it trying to warn? The issue answers moments later, taking us to the Colony of the Second Revelation, a droid religion preaching of enlightenment for droids as they become self-aware and free of their Maker’s programming. The leading droid priest of the colony is Ajax Sigma, who upon learning of the mouse droid’s message, whom he calls Petyr, calls it blasphemous to their beliefs, digging into his warrior past to lead the others in a fight against this Scourge. It’s quite a lot to take in, but there’s been a little preparation thanks to the Revelations one-shot I’ve referenced a lot lately as many of the issue’s visions have been coming true or are seemingly close to doing so. In the issue, we first met Ajax Sigma, learning he led a droid revolution in the High Republic era but was struck down by the Jedi Order, though his neural core survived, found its way into Han Solo and Chewbacca’s clutches (as seem in the…. Han Solo & Chewbacca maxiseries!), and later uncovered and he was reborn as he is today. We’ll get more details on his backstory in next month’s Dark Droids: D-Squad #1’s backup tale, but for now those who read Revelations won’t feel as left out as those who didn’t. It’s an intriguing concept however, these “enlightened” droids and their search for more, building off the bones of the stellar and underused L3-37 in Solo, and Soule uses the few panels this group is in well, Ajax’s poetic speeches telling all readers enough to understand their place in all this. Will the Rebellion and the Empire side with the Second Revelation in the fight with the Scourge? An alliance like that won’t come easy, but I’ll be interested to see how they get involved with the bigger power players dealing with the Scourge.
With the Scourge in control of a Star Destroyer, it’s already come for the Empire, it plumbs the ship’s secrets in the databanks, making connections where organics couldn’t, figuring out what’s not being recorded by what is, and coming to know more about what the Empire has in its databanks than even it knows. Though the Rebellion isn’t aware of the Scourge just yet, the issue ends with a big assurance they will soon thanks to a mouse droid vector sneaking aboard, as a meeting between Admiral Ackbar, Mon Mothma, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Commander Grek finds itself under the Scourge’s watchful purple POV…through the photoreceptors of C-3PO! If you’ve been following the news or solicitations with the comics, this isn’t a surprise, as a Scourged Threepio is on the cover for the next issue while D-Squad will be about Artoo’s quest to save his friend, but for readers not as in the know, and even more for those who are, this is a great spot to end the first issue. Putting out heroes at direct risk, despite them all having plot armor (besides Grek in this scene), raises the stakes, especially after how quickly and efficiently the Scourge took down a whole Star Destroyer. Can they avoid catastrophe? Will the Scourge strike as quickly or wait it out for a moment? We’ll see!
As mentioned before, Luke Ross is on art, with Alex Sinclair for colors, and Travis Lanham lettering. Ross is one of those names where my ears perk up now if I know he’s involved and he doesn’t disappoint once again, despite the tall order ahead of him with focusing so much on droids. The KX-series droids are both intimidating due to their adversarial role in the recent Jedi games, but after K-2SO’s friendly, yet grumpy ways they can be seen as less scary droids, but I like how Ross’ efforts here capture a middle ground: cold, uncaring, frightening killer who doesn’t hold back. The KX droid who picks up the Scourge puck seems friendly enough in the bits of dialogue he has with his Imperial ‘pal,’ and it’s more intrigued than alarmed when the thing sprouts legs and begins crawling up its arm, extending a purple probe and taking over. The panel where it takes over the KX is spooky, the droid standing straight up, unmoving, Sinclair immersing it in the purple glow which comes with the Scourge and drenching the panel in dark, inky blacks. As it returns to the Star Destroyer, we later see it venting a hanger to the cold of space, not even looking up from its work, not even caring about the destruction and death it’s causing. The mouse droid Petyr’s flight from the Scourge disc and short fight with it was a fun sequence, as while the two are very small it’s almost comical, the fight has big stakes, and it looks like the mouse droid can be fierce when it needs to be. Having them being the vectors is such a pro move, as they are often disregarded, and the one sent to infiltrate the Rebellion provides another sequence which is all dark humor now, it launching itself off the Imperial shuttle’s ramp towards the medical frigate, floating calmly and quietly in space, like an airborne virus sneaking out of nowhere, while the perspective still makes it look small compared to the frigate, but it seems bigger than any other ship around it, displaying the weight of its threat despite the disparity. Sinclair does some really great stuff with the colors, as most of the opening is dark and drab, as it normally is with the Imperials, devoid of much color despite the plant life on the station or the Scourge’s signature purple, so when we switch to the Colony of the Second Revelation, it’s such an abrupt, bright change, as the reflections off the many metallic surfaces livens up the hall Ajax is in, showing it to have more life than the Imperial hallways ever could, despite this space only having droids. When we get a glimpse inside the Rebellion’s frigate, the colors hover somewhere in-between, as the hallways look drab as well, but the people within are vibrant, showing how they have similar bureaucracy but more life and individuality than the Empire. The design of the colony’s hall area reminded me of the inside of a clock or grandfather clock, form with function, as you’d imagine droids would like, while also feeling like they are standing inside themselves, free to move about, free from programming. Lanham’s lettering was vital as always, and it all began with the opening page as the merged Spark Eternal tries to understand what it is, going back and forth, like the narration boxes do, before arriving on a spark, a light of understanding when it figures out what it is. And to help represent how pervasive it was, how connected it is across all those droids, I liked how it talked out loud about what it was uncovering in the ship’s databanks, on what it wanted, and what it would do next, switching from droid to droid, then narration box to narration box, no break in the conversation.
Here are a few other things:
- I appreciate the issue came with a reading order list for the crossover event!! Hopefully it’ll be in all the crossover issues as well.
- Soule was interviewed over at the official site about the whole of Dark Droids, talking about horror inspirations, while also revealing a bit more about the Scourge itself, on how it’s the type of monster that knows it’s one and thinks attaining the Force for itself will help it stop being hungry for more. There are also some new covers revealed, including a look at what might be the Scourge itself, or something it’s built using the droids under its control, that is actual a callback to unused General Grievous concept art; I really like the droid general’s final design and this one feels FAR more fitting here! Make sure to check out the interview now!
- Look, it doesn’t really matter (even within the movie itself) and this is just more funny/fun to notice than anything now, but this is the second time we’ve seen Luke involved with discussion about the second Death Star, first being the one to tell the Rebellion after rescuing a family that escapes from its construction and now this chat about the station this issue, yet the opening crawl of Return of the Jedi claims he doesn’t know about it. In the context of the movie, it makes sense he’d know about it when he decides to join the mission upon his return, so maybe it’s the ‘more powerful than the first’ part he didn’t know about it, which again makes sense within the film and when that information is finally revealed.
- It was neat to see the training droids Vader was facing, as they are the same ones I’ve battled in the Vader Immortal VR series!
- As a big Doctor Aphra fan, it was really cool to see her as third non-droid character to be seen in the issue, even if it was cameo.
Dark Droids #1 might have met some resistance from me before it started, but off the promises of tone and story within this issue, I’m ready to see where this all goes.
+ Sense of growing unease and fear as the Scourge so successfully spreads, culminating in a great escalation
+ Ross and team bring their A-game to build the horror and threat facing our heroes and the galaxy
+ Promising start…
– Some readers might feel left out a bit at this point
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.