Darth Vader – Black, White & Red: 4
What is it ? : And the final issue, with the finale of the main story, and 2 supporting stories.
Hard Shutdown: part four
Spotting Vader is still unarmed the mercenaries fire at him, but using the Force he drags them around slaughtering his way through the forces. Seeing what he has brought them into they turn on Syn, But Vader pulls his lightsaber into his hand and defends Syn, killing the remaining mercenaries.
Syn stands defiant, telling Vader that while he might have won, and while he might now kill him, Syn will always have been victorious over Vader, having disabled him and left him vulnerable, to which Vader knocks him unconscious.
He awakens surrounded by the nests of large insects, unable to move. And Vader stands over him, explaining that he now has done the same to Syn, his mind is still active but his body is shut down. He explains that Syn is merely the son of Vig Sendvall and a few cybernetic bits, where Vader is the son of no man, and that the flaws in Vaders systems that Syn has exposed will now be fixed, what he forgot is the one weakness in all Vaders enemies, that they are not Vader.
The insects emerge from their burrows and begin tearing Syn apart as Vader leaves.
The Inhabitant
Vader stands in the rain, reporting a planet is ready to be mined by the Empire, that it is fertile, but uninhabited. Later his body is in a Bacta tank being sterilised, minus his suit and cybernetics. The medical droid explains that the world is potential a source of infection, and his remaining organic parts could be infected so should be sterilised by Bacta despite his protests, but he begins to react and the Droid says that something has been detected which might cause hallucinatory effects.
Vader becomes aware of being in a strange place where a large beast speaks to him, introducing itself as Ghymnon a pathogen intelligence which infests the planet and has now infected Vader. He thought the world uninhabited, but it has been there for eons. It begins beating on Vader, but as he is manipulated he begins to gain power. Ghymnon tells him that it is controlling his will, but as Vader takes control of the environment and uses it against Ghymnon he explains there is will, and there is Vader, and he defeats Ghymnon and walks away.
He awakens in the Bacta tank and the droid tells him the Bacta has brought the infection under control.
Later Vader is back on the planet, along with troopers who are pumping Bacta into the water to sterilize the planet, and finding a small piece of organic life on a rock, Vader burns it with his Lightsaber, describing the planet as having had only one inhabitant, until today.
Return to Hoth
Vader is informed that a Probe droid monitoring for a Rebel return to their Hoth base has been destroyed, so he decides to head out in his Tie Fighter to investigate. However a General objects, saying there is no point in Vader putting himself in danger, to which Vader asks if the General is questioning his abilities.
On Hoth he lands outside the Rebel base, finding it still surrounded by the dead of both sides of the Battle of Hoth. Inside he finds the Probe droid, which has been torn apart by something?
Suddenly he comes under attack by Wampa's, slicing the arm off one, but another scores a lucky hit on his chest piece causing his breathing apparatus to fail. He tries to return to his Tie Fighter, only to discover more Wampa's already tearing it apart, so he retreats into the remains of a AT-AT Walker, sealing the hatch after he is inside.
However the Wampa's tear open the hatch, so Vader is forced to fight them again, killing them all before collapsing due to his breathing. The Empire retrieves him, and the General points out that he did warn Vader about the danger, to which Vader uses the force to quickly throttle the man, before striding away . . .
High Points : Everything in this issue is fine. But there's not much more than that to recommend it, the end of Hard Shutdown, has Vader being particularly evil in his revenge, leaving the man that disabled his systems, similarly disabled and left to be eaten by bugs. The Inhabitant does leave some ambiguity as to whether Vader actually communicated with Ghymnon, or whether it's all just a hallucination, and whether he actually defeats the infection or it's the Bacta? Making this the most interesting look at Vader, as we're unsure if it's showing us how powerful Vader is, or whether it's showing us how convinced of being powerful Vader is!
And the final story, while I suppose Vader being weakened by the damage to his life support system makes this somewhat of a more fair fight, but Vader vs some Wampa's seems a very unchallenging fight.
Low Points : While I can justify each of these stories to make sense, my initial feeling is these don't feel very Vader. It's a waste of effort to torture Syn to be eaten by bugs a the end of Hard Shutdown, as I feel Vader is practical to just kill him and not care about how Syn felt he had won a victory, being the epitome of the "facts don't care about feelings." guy. The Ghymnon could be a delusion or reality, while being potentially an interesting concept, but sadly they don't really give us much reason to care either way.
And Wampa vs Vader seems a very unfair fight for the Wampa, Vader just comes across as petulant in kill the General at the end.
These stories just don't work for me as horror stories where Vader is the monster, which is kind of what the premise of the comic promised.
So what do you really think ? : Disappointing, the idea the comic promised of seeing Vader in a new way is totally undelivered. If we'd seen him in Hard Shutdown becoming a predator, stalking his prey while weakened but still deadly, that would have been interesting and a bit different. If we'd seen the delusion that Vader is in control of everything, where obviously he's manipulated by Palpatine, so is still the weak little boy, in The Inhabitant, it would have been different and interesting. And if we'd seen Vader as overconfident, and requiring help in Return to Hoth, once again it would have been different, but none of the stories show us anything of Vader we've not seen before, or even show him in a particularly good light.
Final Words : While an interesting experiment, with just the three colours of the title used throughout, and generally looking pretty darn nice, the stories are what let this series down, there's nothing I'll remember in a few weeks time, and certainly nothing I'll ever want to return to.
Score : 7.5/10
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