Darth Vader is on the trail of an ancient cult that has resurfaced in a plot to kill Palpatine, but is Vader the hunter or the hunted, in this week’s Star Wars comic?
The plot to kill Darth Vader continues, with a top assassin orchestrating a plan to lure the Dark Lord of the Sith to a forgotten world filled with danger, in Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin #3 (DarkHorse.com profile) by Tim Siedell. Once again, the story goes a little deeper with the game of cat and mouse now becoming more dangerous. Spoilers ahead!
Summary: Having thwarted a bomb plot to kill Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader has taken two Imperial Guardsmen to track down the leads about a cult which uses the mark of a headless snake. Reaching the cult’s homeworld, their shuttle discovers a drifting Imperial cruiser, sliced in half. Vader vaults into the debris, retrieves the ship’s logs and determines that survivors must have evacuated to the planet below. Landing at the rendezvous spot, they discover escaped ships but no people, and then are attacked by a giant beast. After it squashes one of the guardsmen, Vader kills it with a thrown lightsaber. Moving on, they reach some ruins, where Vader dispatches another predator and discovers the overgrown wreckage of several other Republic cruisers. As they close in on the temple that may have fired on the ship in orbit, the assassin tracks their progress and silently kills the last guard as he lags behind Vader. The assassin waits outside while Vader enters the ancient temple by himself. Upon reaching the central chamber, he discovers that he is not alone…
Review: It looks like the temple is inhabited after all – are these the diseased cultists of the headless snake? And what do they want with Vader? Tim Siedell keeps the tension up with plenty of action in this straightforward issue – Vader going into the trap while the assassin follows from a distance. The assassin is mostly just seen in glimpses, but we are reminded of his lethality in both his quiet takedown of the guardsman, and in his evasion of one of the creatures in the forest.
But it is Vader here who demonstrates his physical side – jumping out of the shuttle in space to board the derelict and weaving around its insides in zero gravity, then taking down several monstrous beasts in the woods – and he’s learned some new tricks for his lightsaber. Props to Siedell and the art team (pencils by Ivan Fernandez, inks by Denis Freitas, colors by Michael Atiyeh, letters by Michael Heisler) for the depiction of the way Vader puts an end to the second beast. It’s cool. Most Vader stories work well when Vader is a man of few words and the story is told from the perspective of someone else (like how this story starts in Issue #1), but here Vader is the main character, and he does get most of the words – when they are needed for the story. This issue is mostly about the art. I do wish the two royal guardsmen took off their robes for jungle trekking – just doesn’t seem very practical when monsters abound in the woods.
My favorite panels: the one page piece of Vader surveying the overgrown wreckage of some Republic star destroyers, crashed on the surface – the engines have becomes aerial nests for some giant flying beasts. Plus some great shots of Vader versus behemoths. If you’re a fan of Vader just being bad-ass, this one is for you.
The cover by Ariel Olivetti is okay, though it doesn’t really cover the story from this issue – it depicts something from last month, but perhaps that’s the way covers sometimes end up.
This issue doesn’t add much to the overall mystery, but moves Vader close to finding out a secret, and has some great luscious artwork. Plus he’s now totally alone, in a weird place, with someone waiting for the right moment to strike. Can’t wait to see what happens next!