Review: ‘Darth Vader’ #42 – ‘Rise of The Schism Imperial’ Retreads Old Storylines
The 42nd issue of Darth Vader finally begins a new story arc for the series, but struggles to give us something new. As last month’s cliffhanger and this issue’s title suggest, the Schism Imperial is surfacing as a new threat to Emperor Palpatine. But that plot thread only arises again towards the end of the issue, as all the action revolves around Vader’s latest attempt to command a group of droids/hybroids to his benefit.
To my memory, this is the fourth time since the Jul Tambor arc that Vader has tried to command a small army of mechanical beings, all of which were quickly destroyed after their formation. This latest attempt to form a small squad of elite hybroids is different to those other times at least, but the tactic wore out its welcome a long time ago. This is also not the first time Sly Moore has schemed against Vader/Palpatine, so I hope it leads us somewhere different this time.
I am mildly interested in where the Schism Imperial arc will go and how it leads into Vader’s obedient state in Return of the Jedi — unless Sabé returns, this should be the final arc of this comic run — but the comic doesn’t do too much to tease that story, ending pretty abruptly as soon as it rears its head.
Hopefully the drama and excitement will increase as this arc builds a head of steam, but so far it’s off to a slow start. I just wish Darth Vader would give us something that feels new and fresh.
Spoilers ahead…
Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
The issue kicks off with Mas Amedda and Sly Moore meeting with Emperor Palpatine, who is not impressed with the Grand Vizier’s failed attempts to kill Darth Vader in his “weakened” state. Moore uses this opportunity to get close to Vader, boasting that she believes she can succeed where Mas Amedda failed.
Palpatine seems to have forgotten that Moore did indeed try to kill Vader with bounty hunters a little while ago and failed miserably, but oh well. It is fun watching him lash out at his other subordinates instead of Vader for once, as he sends Mas Amedda flying across the room with a bolt of Force lightning.
As an aside, I find the art a little weird here. Every close up of Sly Moore looks almost comical, when instead she should be looking serious and confident. Not sure what was going on there with the pencilling.
We then snap to Zee-Nine City Seven, the droid city that has now been overtaken by Imperials. Our man on the ground here is a name fans should recognize pretty quickly — it’s none other than Enric Pryde, the character played by Richard E. Grant in The Rise of Skywalker. Though the character is a general in the film, he’s just a lieutenant at this point in the timeline. Including him here was a nice touch that immediately piqued my interests.
Pryde is making a report when the city suddenly comes under attack by rebels. He discovers that they have already destroyed his Star Destroyer and they have deployed an elite squad of hybroids to kill all the Imperials, who overwhelm them and imprison Pryde himself.
It does seem a little odd that these augmented rebels — who call themselves the M.A.R. Corps — haven’t appeared in any stories prior to this, particularly when we’ve just had a comics crossover where hybroids played a pretty key role. Some additional forward planning could have made their appearance here feel more natural.
Soon after, Darth Vader arrives. After freeing Pryde, he heads straight toward these augmented soldiers with the intent of controlling them with his new Droid Scourge virus and succeeds pretty quickly. The splash page here is a cool way of depicting the chaos of the fight between Vader and the skilled hybroids, with regular rebel soldiers shooting from afar.
The rebels are all killed by the hybroids under Vader’s command and he swiftly takes them to Mustafar. Here, he further augments them to make sure they serve him implicitly. Interestingly, he finds that he can feel their pain as they resist his augmentations, which surely is going to be his downfall if he aims to use these people to take on Palpatine. Again, I’m not sure why he thinks droids and hybroids can help him in his overall goal when they’ve failed so many times before, but perhaps he’s going for quality over quantity.
Sly Moore turns up while this is all going on and Vader is understandably not pleased to see her. It’s here that Moore pitches the Schism Imperial, showing him holos of its most recognizable members: Governor Tauntaza and Captain Corleque, both traitors to the Empire who were both defeated by Darth Vader in the last year of this comic run.
Vader correctly identifies this as a pitiful line up; why would he want to ally himself with a group of people he has all recently defeated? Moore promises him that they can give him real power, but I don’t expect Vader to agree to this proposal yet. Surely they’d need to show him real strength before he’d consider allying with them and he likely knows they need him more than he needs them.
The issue ends before Vader can respond. I imagine this was the best point to do a cliffhanger ending, but unfortunately it means the comic just… ends. It feels like a pretty random spot to end the issue, though clearly the goal here was to end the comic with Vader being introduced to the concept of the Schism Imperial. I just don’t think it worked.
The Schism Imperial arc of Darth Vader has gotten off to a slow and rocky start. There are a number of obstacles to overcome, but the main one is that it feels like we’ve done all this before. Not just Vader controlling droids, but we’ve also seen Sly Moore scheming to take over the Empire and recruit/kill Vader before too. Hopefully writer Greg Pak will give us something new but right now, I can’t see it.
Rating: 4/10
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
