Review: Star Wars: Target Vader #1

STORY

This is the first issue of a new six part series featuring Darth Vader. When it comes to Vader, Marvel seems to prefer doing brief series of anywhere from 6 ”“ 24 issues for some reason instead of just a single continuous run. But as long as they keep producing good stories with good at, I’ll keep reading them.

This particular series has Vader on a quest for the Emperor to eliminate a smuggling ring called The Hidden Hand. While the Empire is willing to overlook a certain amount of criminal activity, selling weapons to the Rebellion is a big no no. These cagey smugglers are no fools though as they higher a team of bounty hunters, and on with a score to settle, to kill Vader. Its a good ploy, as it either ends with Vader dead or merely keeps hum occupied long enough to allow The Hidden Hand to conduct its business with the Rebels. Vader, while only playing a minor part in this issue is his typical terrifying and powerful self. He is menacing, ruthless and unstoppable. Strangely he shifts gears from seeking the Hand to investigating a plot to murder him without any explanation at all as to how he uncovered this information. Its a bit of a faux pas if you ask me. I think having Vader already on the hunt for the hunters is less interesting than Vader being taken by surprise while on a completely different mission.

This issue is all about the set up as one would expect and so we are also introduced to the bounty hunters tasked with killing Vader. Nearly all are new characters, with the exception of Dengar, a classic trilogy bounty hunter who pops up whenever you don;t want Boba Fett stealing the show. The rest of the cast includes a female Tuskan sniper and a female Gamoran doing her best Conan impression but the really interesting character is Valance. This is a former storm-trooper turned cyborg bounty hunter, whats extra cool is he has been pulled from Marvel Comics Legends canon into the mainstream cannon with this series. I for one applaud this move to bring in some of the characters who had been swept aside by the Disney update of Star Wars. With any luck my favorite space rabbit Jax will make his cannon appearance soon too!

This iteration of Valance definitely has a grudge against the dark lord and I can’t wait to see what the writer has done with his backstory. How much of the previous Valance will be cannon and how much will be a reboot of the character? That alone is enough to hook me in to an already entertaining story.

ART

The art is quite good, with detailed panels, tight lines and good character design. Though I do prefer Walt Simonson’s take on Valance, he looked rougher, gritter. Here he looks kinda pretty like a movie-star wearing half of the MCU Ultron’s face. Everyone else looks fine and pages are generally well laid out. For the life of me though I can;t figure out why this book needed five colorists? I didn’t see any obvious changes in rendering style so the consistency is good but it’s still a strange thing to see on a 23 page book

LETTERING

Nearly all of the lettering is well done, effortlessly adding dialogue while not obscuring the art. Everywhere except for one panel. Its a larger panel and it gets wordy and poor Valance has everything but his head covered by word balloons. I wish the editor had asked for the team to fix this. Its a small crit I know but it was notable enough to bother me when reading the book.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A good start to a new Vader story with the added bonus of bringing a cool character from the 80’s comics into the modern Star Wars cannon. 4 out of 5!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Â STAR WARS TARGET VADER #1
Writer:Â Robbie Thompson
Art:Â Marc Laming and Cris Bolson
Colors:Â Neeraj Menon, Jordan Boyd, Andres Mossa, Federico Blee, Erick Arcinega
Letters:Â Clayton Cowels