Darth Vader: Issue 24: Crimson Reign: Old Friends
What is it ? : Newly commissioned Commander Sabe emerges from the Shuttle armed and armoured in the garb of the Empire, and Vader tries to communicate with the Executor to order it to destroy the Governors Star Destroyer. However, communications are blocked, and the villagers object since the conscripts from the village would be aboard.
Sabe commands Zed-6-7 to give her the names and skills of the abductees, but Zed refuses as he is currently accessing the communication logs of the Governors Star Destroyer and has tracked her to a nearby science base.
Inside the base, the Governor is with her science team who are putting the finishing touches to an experimental device, when the alarms go off, but instead of the usual incursion from local animal life, they realise that it is an attack by Darth Vader himself.
Battling through the defences which include various Confederacy Battle Droids, Vader enters the experiment chamber and the governor orders the device used against him. Purple energy swirls around Vader and he is disoriented and stunned by the attack. Sabe attempts to defend him while he recovers, but her blaster is shot out of her hand by a Super Battle Droid. In the nick of time Ochi arrives at the last moment and attacks the droids until Vader is ready, but when he recovers he force chokes Ochi for allowing the governor to escape.
Sabe questions the scientists, who are conscripts and express regret at what they have created, a device which drains life energy out of a target, and they show her records of an entire world they drained, Karolia.
As the records show the devastated planet, Vader remembers being on the Death Star when they destroyer Alderaan, and he remembers hearing the voices call out in pain before being silenced. As Sabe tells the scientists they never knew what the Governor would do, Vader remembers that he knew the deaths his actions would cause, and remembers slaughtering the Sand People, butchering the Jedi Younglings and executing the leaders of the Confederacy. He looks at Sabe, and sees Padme saying there's still good in him, but closes her image off from his mind behind a massive blast door telling her "No".
He takes Ochi's speeder bike, which Ochi tells Sabe that Vader will remember who helped him, while Sabe begins orders to secure the site and prepare for Vaders return.
Inside his mind Padme places her hands on the door, which emits light before exploding open, as Vader thinks about how Padme/Sabe thinks they are turning him back to the light, but in reality they have no idea what they really have done. . . .
High Points : The flashbacks which reveal Vader's thoughts have always been the most interesting part of this series, and they return here after a bit of an absence, and it's interesting to see how Vader compares himself to the scientists, both involved in the destruction of a planet, but them innocent of foreknowledge of what they were doing.
It's also interesting to see the device that the scientists were testing for the Governor having an effect on Vader, him beginning to say "you cannot hide behind this technological . . . ", before he is struck and effected by it, obviously going to call it a technological terror, further connecting it with the Death Star.
Low Points : First a very minor nitpick, when Zed-6-7 accesses the recordings of the Governor heading to the science station, he says her ship was escorted by Tie Defenders, but the recording we see him projecting clearly shows just normal Tie Fighters. Whoops.
But the more major problem with this issue is far far greater, in that I really don't know what's going on. The experiment effects Vader, but we don't know why it seems to effect only him! Is it a weapon which only effects Force Users directly due to their more intimate relationship with the life force of the universe? Or only because he was directly in front of it.
What's going on with the memory of Padme in his head, while I found it interesting that Sabe's physical similarity to Padme was making him think of Padme more, and how Sabe was acting like her. Why is this memory breaking out of the barriers he has placed around it, as it seems to be acting like an independent person, rather than just his memory?
So what do you really think ? : It just seems confusing, and while there's some interesting stuff going on, I'd prefer if we got to explore these ideas a bit more instead of them just being thrown at us. Sabe making Vader think more of what Padme would think of him is an interesting idea, but it barely is touched upon. The governor creating a weapon which drains life energy, which potentially drains Jedi and Sith of power, really interesting, but it's not been clearly explained.
Final Words : While this comic series often wastes time going over the same territory again and again, there some solid ideas in here, that Sabe and Padme (before her death) carried on Anakins ideals of freeing the slaves, and indeed saved some of his childhood friends. But in this issue, Wald and Kitster are practically abandoned and only feature on one single page. We've got the idea that being around Sabe, who looks similar to his wife, would cause Vader to think upon her, and what she would think of his actions since she died, but it isn't really explored.
This series which is supposed to be an exploration of Vader's psyche, instead wastes it's time showing us that Ochi is untrustworthy (something we've seen countless times before), but is a fawning and obsequious to Vader (again something we've seen countless times before).
And we're left with so many questions, right down to why the Governor is using Confederacy Battle Droids, when she's got Stormtroopers and Crimson Dawn at her command?
Score : 7.5/10
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