Darth Vader doesn’t fight the Emperor, then gets assigned another new mission in Star Wars: Darth Vader #28 written by Greg Pak, art by Raffele Ienco, colored by Carlos Lopez and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Darth Vader #28 is repetitious to its detriment. In following up on the reveal that the Emperor was secretly behind the planet-threatening actions of Governor Tauntaza and the tease of another Vader/Palpatine showdown as a result, the issue circles back to cover now well-trod ground rather than breaking new ground. In doing so, it fails to both adequately pay off the cliffhanger and pull the series out of its recent doldrums.
The plot is straightforward enough (again, almost to the issue’s detriment): Upon rebuilding himself following his battle with Tauntaza, Vader and Sabé go to Coruscant and confront the Emperor. But it turns out Vader isn’t really mad at the Emperor, nor terribly conflicted by his ongoing partnership with his dead wife’s lookalike. Instead, the Emperor orders the death of Sabé. But when the Emperor’s Royal Guard attack and she proves herself a competent and seemingly ruthless fighter, Palpatine agrees to, essentially, sanction her partnership with Vader. He then sends the pair out on a mission to suppress a rebellion on a former Trade Federation world, a mission which Vader turns into a further test of the newly-expressed ruthlessness in Sabé.
This is all material the series has covered before, right down to setting up a fakeout involving a conflict between the Emperor and Vader that turns out to be nothing more than a confirmation of their existing dynamic. Artist Raffele Ienco continues to use the visual trick of inserting flashback panels to Vader’s life as Anakin alongside present day events. Buf they’re meant to suggest some kind of disconnect between, say, the Emperor insisting the name “Anakin” means nothing to Vader and what Vader is really feeling, it’s not being made clear.
The pivot to “and here’s your next mission” in the second half of Darth Vader #28 is similarly repetitive; it even features what has become the series go-to device for injecting a bit of action into an issue, a fight with some wild alien creature (here it’s a pair of Sandworm-esque cliff worms on the planet Skago Minor).
Even worse, it moves the series further away from the still-lingering “Crimson Reign” plotlines; all those characters introduced coming out of “War of the Bounty Hunters” — that rolly-polley killer droid, the giant bug guy, their reluctant Imperial master Valance — all seem long gone. Even Wald and Kitster, Anakin’s childhood friends who factored into the fight with Tauntaza are just gone, as Vader and Sabé move on to the next thing (I guess they’re both still just hanging around on that dying planet and Sabé doesn’t really care anymore). This latest Vader mission doesn’t even pay lip service to his presumed overarching tasks of rooting out Crimson Dawn double agents (for the Emperor) and installing his own brand of order throughout the galaxy (for himself).
There’s bit and pieces here that are still intriguing, mostly centered around Sabé. The sequence in which the Emperor switches on a dime from just killing her to realizing she has a darkness inside her that he can use is fun, and in the issue’s closing pages, we see Ochii being held captive on Naboo (he was sent to track down Tauntaza; how he ended up on Naboo is unclear) by a group of shadowy figures who turn out to also be former handmaidens of Padmé. Learning of Sabé having apparently thrown in her lot with Vader, they vow to either save her or stop her.
It’s a strong finish to an otherwise lackluster issue, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to trust writer Greg Pak’s cliffhangers. It’s also getting hard to buy into the almost-dance he keeps returning to between Vader and Palpatine. There are legitimate (and potentially fascinating) points of conflict between the two, but Pak can only tease such a conflict only to instead affirm Vader’s commitment to the Emperor so many times before we’re going to stop falling for it. In covering so much familiar ground, while seemingly leaving a handful of dangling plotlines behind, Darth Vader #28 may well represent that breaking point.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
