“Scourge of the Droids”
Creative Staff:
Story: Charles Soule
Art: Luke Ross
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
What They Say:
“SCOURGE OF THE DROIDS!” A STAR WARS EPIC LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE! Who or what is THE SCOURGE, and why is no droid safe? As a corruption spreads from one droid to the next THE REBELLION and THE EMPIRE face chaos! What role does AJAX SIGMA play in all of this? And whose side is he on? Find out when horror comes to a galaxy far, far away! Charles Soule continues his legendary run on STAR WARS with the most ambitious event in STAR WARS comics history! Joined by his WAR OF THE BOUNTY HUNTERS collaborator Luke Ross, the superstar team carves a new path for the future!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Probably the last crossover event of the period between ESB and ROTJ, Marvel Comics’ Dark Droids storyline has Charles Soule handling the main series and working throughout the run. Soule has done a lot for Star Wars in the past decade between comics and novels and it’s largely solid and enjoyable. I’m very, very, wary of when anyone tries to deal with droids because it just ends up being problematic and we know through sequel films that nothing really changes, or even gets worse. This series has Luke Ross on board for the artwork as the two have worked together before a lot so there’s a good pairing that provides for some strong artwork and layouts to tell the story and provide the view of the droids and through a particular lens. We’ve got a pretty competent and engaging team on board for this through and through.
What makes me wary beyond the way droids have not been handled well is that this follows up the events with the Fermata Cage, which wasn’t great, and the Spark Eternal, which was awful. While all of that came to a conclusion, Miril and the Spark are now in this small droid and trying to understand going from organic to mechanical. And it doesn’t take long for them to figure out how to leap not just to another droid but for there to be two instances of it now and that they are one and the same. It’s amusing watching as the new being here is able to take over a Star Destroyer fairly quickly and try to explore its abilities through so many different mechanical forms, often coming down to which creative ways to kill the humans on board. That it gains control of a ship so quickly is pretty standard viral fare and we’re basically getting some of that nature here.
The impact of this is being felt elsewhere quickly as the Second Revelation group, droids that have gained sentience, realize what’s happening and have to prepare to deal with it because of how it threatens them by subjugation. It’s interesting to see some of this here but it feels like it’s from a whole other property at times as it doesn’t quite connect for me. At the same time, we also see how one of the droids makes it way to the Rebel fleet and aboard the ship where Threepio and others are trying to come up with plans to find out what the Empire’s new superweapon is and that it won’t be as easy as what they did against the Death Star. Having the Rebel fleet infected so quickly stretches things a bit in my mind but it’s part of what this sprawling viral event will be like and is why I’m wary of it.
In Summary:
Dark Droids certainly has plenty of potential but with the last event landing with a thud for me and all of it getting closer to the ROTJ film moments, I’m just wary of doing something so big so close to that as it doesn’t track well. I get the need in terms of story and business to interconnect things, but the droids themselves is such a minefield of potential terribleness. I do like that this book does a good montage sequence to show the different ways droids are treated and that it’s a complicated situation, but the reality of the larger galactic social view on droids is clear and not likely to change anytime soon in-universe. Soule sets things up well and if I had actually liked the previous storylines with the Spark Eternal I might be more open to it, but there are just a lot of recent bad ideas that are floating into this from other works.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: August 2nd, 2023
MSRP: $5.99
