Star Wars: Darth Vader

There have now been four separate ongoing Darth Vader comics under Marvel's second licence, and the reasonable expectation for a fourth was diminishing returns. Kieron Gillen's 2015 run gave him Aphra and a court intrigue. Charles Soule's Dark Lord of the Sith gave him the Inquisitors and a castle. What was left?

The premise, which is a good one

Greg Pak starts one minute after Bespin. Vader has told his son the truth and his son has thrown himself down a shaft rather than accept it. Everything that follows is Vader trying to work out why that happened, and the only investigative method he has is to go where Luke went and look at what Luke saw. So he goes to Naboo. He goes to Padmé's tomb. He talks to her handmaidens. The book turns Vader into an archaeologist of his own life, and the discoveries hurt him in ways the Emperor is delighted to exploit.

Raffaele Ienco

Ienco draws the majority of these fifty issues and gives the book a cold, chromed, slightly airless look that suits a protagonist who cannot breathe unaided. His Vader is heavy — the panels sag under him. When Pak needs a moment of physical horror, which is often, Ienco does not blink.

Where it sags

The middle third is where the crossover obligations bite hardest. Crimson Reign in particular parks Vader in someone else's story for five issues. And the run leans on the same beat more than once: Vader is broken, Vader is rebuilt, Vader is more terrible than before. By the fourth iteration the shock has worn thin.

The ending

The final arc, The Razing of Exegol, sends Vader against a Sith cult on the planet the sequel films would later make famous, and closes on a note the character is rarely allowed: not redemption, but comprehension. It is the best last issue any Vader comic has had, and it earns a place beside Gillen's run rather than beneath it.