Darth Vader faces his past – and the future of the Empire – in an uneven second arc, “Into the Fire,” of the eponymous comic.
At some point, writing new stories about Darth Vader was going to become too hard to manage. Dark Horse, in the twilight years of having the Star Wars license, never pushed to give Darth Vader his own ongoing series, instead focusing on a few mini-series and some Purge one-offs. When Marvel reset the comic timeline, they made a bold decision: give Darth Vader an ongoing. Not only did he have one ongoing series, but as one would end, another would take its place. Ongoings for Darth Vader took place after A New Hope, minutes after Revenge of the Sith, and with volume 3, after The Empire Strikes Back.
Now, in whichever ways it would be hard to tell new Darth Vader stories, the ongoings had all tapped into some unexplored areas of Darth Vader’s psyche. So far, all three have chosen to work with flashbacks, showing how Darth Vader thought about the events of Geonosis, the Clone Wars, and Mustafar, for his entire career as Darth Vader. All three show the immensely strained relationship between Darth Vader and Sheev Palpatine. And, all three have shown the ways in which Darth Vader has resisted Darth Sidious, or tried to do his own thing to save Padmé. I bring these up to show two things. First, that the three ongoings series are working to tell one story, one that wasn’t explored much in the movies. The Sidious-Vader dynamic had a lot of potential, and it wasn’t explored a lot until the novel Lords of the Sith. These comics, then, brought it to the forefront. The second reason I bring these up is to show where Greg Pak’s third volume differs from the first two volumes, as we’ll see.
Whereas the first two series seemed more focused on telling Darth Vader’s story immediately after one of the movies, Pak’s series focuses a little more on telling a Vader story that bridges the entire Saga together. The first arc of the series followed Vader as he fought against a sort-of rebel cell called the Amidalans, a group of Naboo who were devoted to the memory of Padmé Amidala. This brought the Prequels’ stories into the Original Trilogy era, with explicit callbacks to The Phantom Menace. The second arc, “Into the Fire,” aims to bring stories and locations from The Rise of Skywalker into the Original Trilogy era. This focus might come from two impulses – either to replace the need of a side character, because Vader has a much bigger playing field now or to give the series something to do, stuck as it is between two movies that take place fairly close with one another. I think, for as small a playing field as he was given, Pak is following a good thought trying to find a story beyond the bounds of the films he’s stuck between. But I do wonder, as we’ll talk about soon enough, if it doesn’t bring Vader’s story too far beyond the bounds of the films.
After Darth Vader’s failure to destroy the Amidalans, considering he found them only on a secret mission that he tried to hide from the Emperor, Sheev sends Vader to Mustafar as punishment. On Mustafar, Vader is barred from using the Force and is supposed to face off against droid assassins and the assassin Ochi of Bestoon. Ochi is portrayed as a mildly competent villain at first, but the series is quick to remind us that he would not really be a force against Vader unless Vader had no access to the Force. This robs “Into the Fire” of a lot of tension from the beginning, giving it a slower start. As much as I understand the purpose of the expanded material is to give backstories to side characters, this series doesn’t take a lot of advantage of the blank slate that is Ochi; I would’ve almost preferred the series sidelined Vader a bit more to give Ochi a bit more space to grow.
As “Into the Fire” progresses, it had a lot of potential to ramp up and explore some really interesting ideas. As Vader confronts Ochi and the droids, he comes in contact with the Eye of Webbish Bog, or the Oracle, which was edited out of The Rise of Skywalker; In the deleted scenes, added in the novelization, Kylo Ren comes in contact with the Eye, who gives him the location of the Wayfinder while teasing out some of his feelings for Rey. In the comic, Vader is sent into a spiral, exploring his tormented soul, before being given his own Wayfinder. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, all three ongoings have spent a lot of time exploring Vader’s psyche, so we don’t really see anything new here. I think this represents one of the weaknesses of the series: a weak
supporting cast. At this rate, it doesn’t seem like this series has any new insights about Vader’s mind, thoughts, or actions, which would be fine if we were experiencing the story with a different audience stand-in, like Doctor Aphra from Gillen’s run. Even a fascinating concept like the Eye of the Webbish Bog doesn’t bring up much new material for Vader, instead focusing on even more flashbacks. While it’s extremely interesting to think about Vader as a man stuck in a cycle of the past, I would love to see something *new* being done with the same material. Does Vader simply stop once in a while to remember these things? Does he think about Geonosis different after Yavin and after Bespin? I’d think he does, but the series doesn’t bring up a lot of new material to reflect that.
Instead, the series tries to offer these canon connections as the real meat and bones of the series. After Vader finds the Wayfinder, his attention is turned to Exegol. This is where “Into the Fire” ramps up almost too much, in my opinion, finding it hard to place it between Episodes V and VI. Vader takes Ochi, as a captive, to the Sith planet of Exegol to find out what his Master is hiding there. In this chase, Vader goes through the same dangerous path that Rey and Kylo took to the planet, but Vader finds himself face-to-massive-face with a giant, dangerous space creature. This is one of Pak’s strengths, and the artist Raffaele Ienco takes this and runs with it: the series makes liberal use of the giant monsters of the franchise. Vader controls the massive beast, finishing the trip to Exegol with it in tow. Seeing Vader control giant space beasts might throw his duel with Luke on the second Death Star into question: he can control these mammoth space creatures, but can’t fight a Jedi? Sure – lots of explanations both ways, but what I’m describing here is the visceral feelings that came up as I read. I think being attentive to these questions is important in writing a story like this, as it was on the forefront of my mind.
On Exegol, Vader is treated to the fullest extent of Palpatine’s machinations. After facing off with the Emperor, both in control of Exegol’s hellish beatts, who shows off his impressively powerful display of Force-wielding to confront Vader, he sees the nascency of the Final Order. A giant bled kyber crystal, a fleet of Star Destroyers with planet-killing cannons, an army of clones, and more greet Vader in the labs of Exegol. Palpatine’s purpose in showing these off? To keep Vader humble, reminding him that there isn’t a lot that he can do to stand against Sheev. But this revelation feels hard to fit between Empire and Return of the Jedi, considering that Vader never mentions anything, maybe assuming that it stopped with Sheev died on the second Death Star.
If anything, this comic serves Darth Vader’s story less than it serves Abrams’ movie. And that’s not always a bad thing! Plenty of tie-in material was released to support upcoming films, like the excellent Lost Stars, Resistance Reborn, or Allegiance. But those weren’t released as anything but tie-in materials. Using a Darth Vader comic to tell a different story doesn’t move the character forward; instead, it almost treats Vader as a prop for something else, even something metatextual like another film.
As I read “Into the Fire,” and wrote this review, I found myself wrestling a lot with the implications that this arc presented. I really appreciate Pak’s desire to bridge the entire Saga and bring all of these story elements together. I did like the confirmation that the Final Order had been brewing for a while, and it wasn’t something that popped up after the death of the Empire. But it felt like a stretch to say that Vader knew about it all, even if it was supposed to serve as the climax of the rivalry between Vader and Sidious, one that would come to a head on the second Death Star. It felt like the reveal raised the stakes really high, leaving the second Death Star to feel like an afterthought. Who needs a Death Star when you have a Sith fleet? Who needs Luke when Vader has been brought to a heel? And maybe the series will continue to answer these questions, but unfortunately, the massive Marvel-wide War of the Bounty Hunters brought the series in a different direction, bringing the massive implications of Exegol down to…the hunt for Han Solo. And maybe this is where I sit most uncomfortably with the series: it wants to do so much, but is more realistically limited than it can admit.
As a few quick hits: the art is wonderful, and Raffaele Ienco really brings out a lot of the doom of Mustafar and Exegol. Dark, blood red lava of Mustafar meshes well with the horror-esque take on the Sith that Vader battles on Exegol. The coloring by Neeraj Menon works extremely well, accenting the Ienco’s work spectacularly. The colors lend a sense of doom to Exegol, but they bring out the beauty (and weirdness) of the perilous trek to Exegol, highlighting the giant space creatures. I attached a screenshot from one of the flashbacks to show how well the two are integrated. As I mentioned above, I don’t care much for the constant flashbacks in the series, as they don’t serve the character much. That being said, they are a visual delight, casting a red tint over the memories, somewhat reflective of Vader’s ruby lenses and showing how he sees his past through a veil of darkness.
And the lettering is wholly unique, as Joe Caramagna puts in some serious work in the series. I can’t name many series that takes as much advantage of the lettering as this one, and it does it to good effect. Of course, most of the series uses typical black-outlined white bubbles to represent speech. Star Wars comics also add a blockier one for droids, but Caramagna uses a few extra ones. When Vader speaks, his speech bubbles are reversed: a white outline shapes a black text bubble. Vader’s inner thoughts are just like his memories, cast in red, reflecting the fury that fills his every waking thought. These bring a great sense of character and tension to the series, and you can’t help but feel the overwhelming redness and rage.
In the end, Darth Vader (Vol. 3) “Into the Fire” sits as a very mixed bag. Without having much new to add in terms of Darth Vader’s character, this series seems limited in what it can do to bridge the Saga as a unified story. Unfortunately, it ramps up the scale of the story too quickly, without spending much time unpacking the implications, leaving the story feeling too big and, ultimately shallow without giving many implications of what the story means.
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DARTH VADER (VOL. 3)
Dark Heart of the Sith: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 / Arc Review — Into the Fire: #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11