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| DARTH VADER No. 6, August 2015 |
There’s an unsettling aura of creative disconnection
which permeates Issue Six of “Darth Vader”, and dishearteningly it doesn’t just
confine itself to Kieron Gillen’s ‘blasphemous belief’ that the Galactic Emperor
would surround himself with a “team of technically enhanced warriors.” For the
pacing of this twenty-page conclusion to the British writer’s six-part
story-arc is quite noticeably drawn out for the magazine’s latter half. Almost
as if artist Salvador Larroca suddenly ran out of script to illustrate despite
still having a number of empty sheets yet to fill.
This situation is entirely plausible considering the
utter ludicrousness of this periodical’s opening scene, which sees the Dark
Lord of the Sith ‘fending off’ the pathetic individual attacks of technology
specialist Cylo’s “lightsaber-wielding cyborgs.” Despite the fighting, which is
annoyingly narrated by the humanoid doctor like some poorly thought out
second-hand car salesperson’s pitch, the Valencia-born cartographer really
struggles to imbue the action with any sense of danger or excitement and
instead confines each confrontation to a handful of suffocatingly tight panels.
Such a ‘cramped’ artistic technique even extends to when
Palpatine demands “a real demonstration” and all the combatants must fight “to
the death”. For the Spaniard boils all the supposedly frenzied drama of the
‘ensuing melee’ down to a single seven-framed page which simply focuses upon Vader’s
lack-lustre contest.
As a result Larroca then finds himself with an
intimidating ten pages with which to depict Anakin Skywalker’s discovery from a
completely incompetent bounty hunter Boba Fett that he has a son… cue plenty of
disappointingly drawn flashback scenes from the 2005 motion picture “Revenge Of
The Sith”.
It also seems rather nonsensical that any of Gillen’s
fanciful, yet in many ways unimaginative, creations would ever be capable of
replacing the former Jedi Knight as the Emperor’s right hand, especially when
the likes of the Trandoshan trainee simply attacks with his bare claws. The
bipedal reptilian may have undergone “cyberanimate modification” in order to no
longer feel something “as petty as pain”. But that is scant protection when a
lightsaber slices you in half. Something which makes Vader’s apparent defeat at
the ‘hands’ of the creature even less acceptable.
However the biggest flaw with the British author’s storyline
has to be the way in which he depicts the relationship between Palpatine and
his Sith apprentice, as Gillen seems to have completely forgotten that by the
time of the Death Star’s destruction these two characters would have existed
alongside one another for over twenty years. Instead the Emperor’s
rapport with Vader would seem to more closely resemble that of him still addressing
an adolescent Anakin, even incredulously rebuking his protégé for ‘disappointing
him on Mustafar’.
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| Writer: Kieron Gillen, Artist: Salvador Larroca, and Colorist: Edgar Delgado |
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