Review: ‘Darth Vader – Black, White & Red’ #3 Misses the Target But is Bolstered By Amazing Art
Star Wars: Darth Vader – Black, White & Red had a good streak going. While anthology series tend to be hit or miss, the first two issues of the series were both hits. I hate to report that Darth Vader – Black, White & Red #3 is the series’ first miss for me. Not a huge, “completely misses the target” miss, but more like “the shot got thrown off by the wind” kind of miss.
This month’s three mini-stories are all visually breathtaking. However, none of them have a lot going on in terms of story. Let’s cover the plots of each of the stories first, then talk about the art later.
Spoilers ahead…
Part 2 of Jason Aaron’s story, featuring art by Leonard Kirk from the last issue, was great. It saw Darth Vader eviscerating his captors using the Force, even when he was physically incapacitated. And in Part 3…well, it’s pretty much the same. Cyn and his group use a ship to blast the building Darth Vader is being kept in. But, surprise, surprise, Vader uses the Force to crash the ship on top of Cyn and his compatriots. Cyn survives, but Vader has now escaped.
“Annihilated,” the issue’s second short story, is also pretty straightforward. Darth Vader chases down a group of Rebel pilots fleeing to their home base. Vader takes down the ships before they get there. Vader then also takes out all the Rebels at the base as well. I’ll get to the art in a moment.
Finally, in “Diplomatic Impunity,” Vader knows that a Rebel spy is in his midst. The spy doesn’t know that Vader knows she is a spy, so Vader takes her to her home world, only for him to destroy it in front of her to prove a point: don’t mess with him. The story in this one kept me on my toes more than the others as I wasn’t sure where it was going, but even then, it was over so quickly.
I don’t expect Eisner Award-winning writing from an anthology series with multiple short stories, but what I liked about the past two issues was that they at least offered a different perspective on the character from what we normally see. In the previous issues, we saw Vader as someone who literally invaded a person’s dreams, someone who inspired a young child to take up violent behavior, and someone who took down an entire alien species with his back against the wall the whole time. In this one, all we see is just Vader being awesomely powerful. Cool, but we’ve seen it countless times.
The art, however, is gorgeous. This issue has the best art of the series. The second story with writing and art by Daniel Warren Johnson features some great storyboard-like art and action. Johnson has a great sketchbook-like art style and it effectively captures the motion and chaos of the story.
In the third short story, with art by Stefano Raffaele, there are some great shots of Vader where he looks both cinematic and extremely menacing. It’s a shame then that readers don’t have time to savor these drawings because the story ends right when it felt like it was just getting started.
Star Wars: Darth Vader – Black, White & Red #3 is worth it for the art alone. But compared to the other issues, the stories on hand aren’t as interesting, providing no new perspective on the character.
Score: 6/10
Star Wars: Darth Vader – Black, White & Red #4 to be released soon. In the meantime, check out our review of the previous issue.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
