You can’t keep an evil man down.
What They Say:
By now the galaxy has learned the terrible truth: Sith Lord Darth Maul still lives. Worse, he has joined forces with his brother Savage Opress! The Jedi are searching for them and, after Maul and Opress cut a murderous swath through the Outer Rim, so is an army of mercenaries hired by a wealthy mine owner. Darth Maul has a price on his head, and for him there is only one way to deal with such a problem: go directly to the source!
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It is kind of hard to explain to those who either weren’t there or weren’t big fans of Star Wars what a big deal Darth Maul was when the Phantom Menace news hit. Now don’t get me wrong, when Lucas finally announced that he was making a new trilogy most fans I knew where head over heels at the idea and in the…well, not nascent days but certainly not what exists today by a long shot days of the internet this was a big deal. And when the trailer for the movie was released there were reports of people buying a ticket for whichever movie it was and then leaving after the trailer to talk about it online.
And I was there, May 3 1999 when Toys R Us opened its doors at midnight to let in a rather large crowd that had gathered to obtain the toys- toys which were considered such a big deal that they had a street date and companies were threatened against violating it to enforce the date. It was a big deal. And among all the toys that flew off the shelves the ones most people seemed to want was of the new Sith Darth Maul whose double-bladed lightsaber was a major source of talk surrounding the trailers for the upcoming Episode 1.
And then the character was cut in half at the end of the first picture, which caused no end of people being unhappy.
Fast forward a few years and the character’s popularity still hadn’t abated as fans still had a thirst for this mysterious character they barely got to see on the silver screen. During this time as the Star Wars novels and comics presence on the market practically exploded various writers tried to fill the fans longing with various tales of the Sith Lord, be it from his early days to (possibly?) clones and every now and then someone would look to explore the interest the character continued to generate though of course all these stories pretty much fell outside any sort of official continuity (such as it is).
Then in Season 4 of the animated Clone Wars series Darth Maul returned, reportedly at the behest of Lucas himself, which brought the character back to a more prominent place in the Star Wars Universe (though his return to cannon is in some doubt as the animated series is still in flux as to if and how much of it is accepted as official cannon by Lucasfilm). For his return it is discovered that Maul managed to survive his seeming fatal wound by using the Force to catch a latch and not plummet to the bottom of the shaft he fell into while his rage kept him alive. He then managed to find a spider like droid that he used for legs while spending the next decade in a state of madness until rescued by his brother Savage Opress and being brought back from his exile.
This comic series begins at some point after these events as Maul and his brother plan their next move as Maul has not forgotten the Jedi in the least and is still looking to eradicate them from the galaxy. But it turns out that the Jedi aren’t the brothers’ only problem as the very wealth and very powerful being by the name of Ja’Boag has placed a very vast bounty on the brother’s heads, one which causes foolish yet hopeful bounty hunters to try to track the pair down.
This situation doesn’t sit well with Maul as he has no great desire to be fending off those trying to come and collect on the bounty in the midst of his plans to fight the Jedi so he and his brother decide to pay Ja’Boag a visit. Whether it will turn out to be lucky for Ja’Boag or not, the Jedi council has heard of the bounty and has decided to dispatch a pair of Knights to Ja’Boag’s location as his company excavates materials that help a number of worlds produce their power, but his actions have caused some strange ripples as of late. In the race to find Ja’Boag first who is going to be the winner and what might this mysterious man have up his sleeve to deal with unwanted guests?
The comic itself begins in a very straightforward fashion of presenting a group of bounty hunters who believe they have cornered their prey finding out that having found those they seek it is a large distance from having cornered them and in addition they discover that they were very, very wrong about how well their skills would match up which introduces a dose of one sided action from the get go. This turns out to be rather important as it serves as a bit of the exposition part of the comic that works to establish the new characters and situations which temporarily saves it from being as boring as any other exposition done in pretty much every comic, book and movie that occurs in the Jedi Council chambers…which unfortunately is where the comic then shifts for more exposition. Luckily this kind of dragging lull isn’t terribly long and the story gets back to the action which the writer shows a bit of a flair for developing and the artist most assuredly has the skill to pull off.
This issue is one that is hard to judge on its own as it is clearly working hard to get all of its actors into one place but for the most part it does so in a mostly satisfactory manner, though the comic does show a bit of an oddity in that it takes the time to set up Maul and his brother as well as Ja’Boag and his background but spends almost no time introducing the reader to the Jedi who will be playing a role, at least early on (though there is a hint that someone more familiar may appear at a later point). This is probably my only complaint as it makes it seems as if Jedi are merely interchangeable or possibly that these ones will be dispatched so fast it isn’t worth acknowledging much about them. It is an odd point that stands out in a comic that otherwise seems to have quite a mastery of both humor and action along with an adequate sense of exposition needed so perhaps it will be addressed in a later issue. What is here is a satisfying if not stellar start to a new limited series and it does provide a sturdy if not exactly complete foundation for events to move forward.
In Summary:
Darth Maul- Death Sentence 1 works hard to bring its various characters onto the game board with Maul and his brother discovering that some incredibly brave or hopelessly foolish individual has placed a bounty on their heads large enough that Maul feels he needs address the issue immediately. The book has a nice sense of action and humor though there is a sizable amount of exposition as well, not all of which feels compelling at this early juncture. With some fabulous Sith masters in play along with some Jedi the promise of even more action hangs in the air and this volume gives a bit of hope that there may be a good deal of material to serve as payoff ahead.
Grade: B
