– Spoiler Review –
Darth Vader #38 (Vol. 3) sees the Dark Droids crossover in full swing, with Vader battling endless waves of Scourged droids and seemingly the Empire as he continues to struggle with his control of the Force.
As Vader holds back the legions of Scourged droids, his other allies are vital to resolving the situation. In the case of helping him stop the droids endlessly attacking him, ZED-7 and Ought-Six are frantically trying to repair the droid kill switch installed on every Destroyer, while Admiral Piett must hold at bay the surrounding Star Destroyers sent by Mas Amedda to kill Vader. In the storyline of the droids repairing the kill switch, humor comes knocking a few times from writer Greg Pak, as Ought-Six isn’t so sure about ZED’s peppy feelings towards their work and how it’ll ‘kill’ them too. With Piett and the other Imperials arrayed around them, we find out it’s Admiral Corleque, who helped try kill Vader on his way to Exegol earlier in the series, and he and Piett have a unique connection, enough where he doesn’t order his ships to immediately start firing on the Executor and tries to help them instead. His ulterior motive is they’ll still get to kill Darth Vader, per Amedda’s orders, but instead it just gives more food to the Scourge’s hunger to consume all of droid-kind, in classic Imperial Officer superiority incompetence fashion. ZED and Ought repair the switch and take out all the droids and Vader swiftly departs with their bodies in tow, leaving Piett to take care of Corleque, where their friendly connection ends. I quite enjoyed how, while we got some moments of Vader’s might with the assistance of the Zaly shield, the issue focused a little more on the other characters around Vader and gave them more to do than be in awe of his abilities, instead using theirs or debating their courses of action around him. Why Amedda was so hot to kill Vader all of a sudden, and why this doesn’t even seem to be a concern to the Sith Lord, feels like something we’re just leaving in the dust, but maybe we’ll know more when/if Vader makes it to Coruscant in later issue of this crossover arc.
Otherwise, this issue felt more like set up to get us towards the where the larger Dark Droids story is going, as Vader’s return to Mustafar after leaving the Executor pushes the plot towards where next he needs to go in his quest to regain his competency with the Force. He visits the Eye of Webbish Bog again, asking it for help to regain his power and it has a stinging counter: if you’re a Sith, why aren’t you just taking the power and control you want? Vader thinks it’s worth taking power from, but it points him back towards a fateful conversation he had with Sheev Palpatine during Revenge of the Sith, about the Tragedy of Darth Plaqueis the Wise, setting Vader on a course for Coruscant and his Master. Before he leaves though, the repaired Ought-Six realizes the repaired ZED isn’t with them and wants to go looking for him. We catch up with ZED-7 and we find out he’s the latest to be Scourged, mayhaps by the little vector disc he skewered with his hands before it latched onto Vader back when they were on the Executor. Either way, Scourged ZED locates a hidden droid factory, which doesn’t seem like the one Doctor Aphra helped him obtain a few years ago since this is Techno Union, and we see him greeting its newest creation, a giant tri-droid (otherwise known as an octuptarra tri-droid)! Watch out Vader, your trip from Mustafar to Coruscant might not go according to plan. Readers of last week’s Dark Droids #2 already know the Scourge is after Vader and coming directly to attempt gaining control of him, and the Force he has access to, so it can never be put down again by anyone. Will it be successful, if just for a moment, during this crossover? Regardless, I’ll be curious to see how it all goes down in October, especially to see how much crossover there is directly with Dark Droids #3 and Darth Vader #39 (Vol. 3).
Raffaele Ienco and colorist Federico Blee, along with letterer Joe Caramagna, make one of the smallest moments my favorite art-wise. Piett sends troopers out on the hull of the Executor to warn the approaching ships about the droids using flag signals, which is just cool to think they use and so old school of an idea, I absolutely love it and hope to see more of it. The initial panel with the troopers waving the flags is sort of beautiful, the starry expanse of space behind them, highlighted the fact they are all white outlines. Caramagna’s word boxes carry you down the great view of space, almost as if we don’t need to look at the peaceful message they are trying to share, as he has us jump over to the chaos of the next panel, following the path of one of the troopers as they fly upwards from a Scourged droid attacks. Blee bursts out the colors here, turning the white outlined troopers black, and removing our view of the stars with a sudden surge of reds, oranges, and yellows in a violent takeover, the droids looking calm and emotionless as they throw the troopers to their doom. The page later on, where the Executor and two other Destroyers lay into Corleque’s is mesmerizing in both its scale and beauty, as Ienco ensures Corleque’s Destroyer looks decimated, torn apart, with big billow explosions Blee colors with the same death and destruction he did in the little panel of the troopers being killed, while the other ships hang ominously in space, green blasts raining down on this ship, almost as dispassionate and removed as the droids where when committing their violence. Sort of makes one think about how there isn’t much difference between the Empire’s or the Scourge’s violence against its own kind.
Here are a few other things:
- In From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, there’s a great Piett story and an even better Anakin Skywalker one, not to be missed!
- Speaking of more Anakin/Vader, the Ahsoka show might be something you’ll want to watch.
Darth Vader #38 (Vol. 3) has some humor with its droids while focusing on setting up the big showdown to come with the Scourge and Vader.
+ Fun humor as the droids race to stop the droids
+ Both sides aren’t so different when it comes down to the violence, art team hints at
– Even more questions about Amedda in all this (is it a “test” as the opening crawl suggests?)
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.
DARTH VADER (VOL. 3)
Dark Heart of the Sith: #1-5 — Into the Fire: #6-11 — War of the Bounty Hunters: #12-17 — Crimson Reign: #18-22 — The Shadow’s Shadow: #23-27 — Return of the Handmaidens: #28-32 — Unbound Force: #33 | #34 | #35 | #36 — Dark Droids: #37