Creative Staff:
Story: Greg Pak
Art: Raffaele Ienco
Colors: Neeraj Menon
Letterer: VCs Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
In his search for vengeance in the depths of MUSTAFAR, DARTH VADER has seized the mysterious key to the EMPEROR’S greatest secret. But the key itself needs a key — which only the deadly assassin OCHI OF BESTOON seems to have. Vader and Ochi are in for the fight of their lives with the fate of the Emperor in the balance — but how much of this is all PALPATINE’S plan? And what happens when the SITH LORD and the SITH ASSASSIN start to figure that plan out?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Into the Fire storyline has been moving well with Vader dropped on Mustafar as Greg Pak sets his punishment as given by Palpatine for all that has gone wrong since the destruction of the Death Star. Vader’s on his path to find out more of what’s been hidden from him for decades, realizing more and more what a useful pawn he’s been when he thought he was so much more. Raffael Ienco has some really fantastic pages within this issue, as expected, but it gets to go wild and crazy with the last page in a way that really delights me even though we’re heading down a path that I’m extremely wary about.
Mustafar dominates the issue overall, however, as Vader is still without weapons beyond what he himself is and Ochi and the droid assassins are continuing to pummel him pretty well. There’s a lot of good action to all of this as we see the back and forth of it where Vader is trying to control the situation through how he retreats and firms up a position in order to slowly but surely take down the droids. The problem that comes up is that the droid assassins are in on this with Ochi because Ochi promised them a unique and powerful weapon, i.e. Vader. And they want the tech that makes himself. But one has to laugh quite a lot when they realize that the parts that make him up are largely decades-old deprecated pieces of standard life support tech. Their prize is anything but – yet he manages to continue to take them down.
There’s a lot to like as Vader naturally turns the tide and comes out on top of everything and is working toward his next goal. Having Ochi as a prisoner just shows how terrible he is as a person since he goes into cowardly mode and does anything Vader asks him to do, though he tries his luck a bit here and there. But what Vader is up to next is what kind of worries me a bit as the Wayfinder that he’s procured of the Emperor’s is leading him to Exegol next. That again takes us into TROS arena and I’m both hopeful that the comics and books can clean up a lot of this that the film failed on while at the same time worried that it’s dragging us into some pretty hard to fix material.
In Summary:
Greg Pak hasn’t let me down when it comes to the Vader series yet and it really feels like something he’s a lot more naturally attuned toward than the mainline Star Wars book he was on briefly. There are some good draws on pieces from the larger lore that weren’t used and while I have a wariness of connecting much of this material to the sequel trilogy, it’s also a given that it would happen at some point and is part of the larger appeal of the expanded universe. I really like the droid crew here and their realization upon getting a good scan of Vader and Ienco delivers a fantastic teaser finale page on top of a really great book all around. I’m excited to see what’s next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology | Amazon Kindle
Release Date: January 13th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99