“Scourge of the Droids”
Creative Staff:
Story: Charles Soule
Art: Luke Ross
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
What They Say:
The horror continues as THE SCOURGE begins to execute its grand plan, orchestrating its droid minions across the galaxy. It learns more with every passing moment, grows stronger…and is selecting the next targets on its path to total dominion over all mechanical intelligence! Standing in its way, only the warrior-priest droid AJAX SIGMA and the sentient droids of the SECOND REVELATION.
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.
With a lot of the setup done in the first issue, this one is able to expand on things a bit as we mostly follow it from the Scourge’s point of view. And it’s basically trying to do what it can to survive as its mind becomes more fragmented across more and more droids. It’s able to shine a spotlight on various droids to have more direct access but it otherwise leaves most alone as they’ll follow their normal programming for the most part. But as time goes on and as more are taken over, they’re starting to go beyond their programming and people are noticing that things are wrong with the droids. And for most sentients, that means the droids are trying to kill them, so that becomes a big problem. It unfolds well around the edges in showing this and through the narration of Scourge itself.
What Scourge is looking to do is escape from this very layered and ever-expanding trap that it’s in by finding a way into meat. It was stopped from this before by the Sith, hence being in the Fermata Cage, and is now intent on finding a path since there aren’t as many around nor Jedi. But through Threepio, we see how it tries to view a way to connect to the Force as well and finding that cyborgs might be an option of some sort. And who is the biggest cyborg out there? Darth Vader. It’s an interesting approach to things and Scourge as Threepio really probes Luke well to try and understand some of how all of it works and questions about Luke’s connection to the force even as he becomes more mechanized himself. It’s an interesting perspective as we see how Scourage is trying to isolate itself more and more as well, especially as it has a new target.
In Summary:
The scale of this story is one that still feels like it upsets the balance of going into Return of the Jedi and that’s just how my mind works in trying to place it within the context of everything. Beyond just the awkward problem of dealing with the droids but also not dealing with the droids and their issues, the core series so far hasn’t done much in a way. We do see how Scourge is making active moves to secure a better position but it’s a mixed one on whether it’s a good idea or not. This issue isn’t bad at all but against the big picture I’m just not show how it’ll all shake out in the end and just how it fits into everything. It’s effective and mostly done through a kind of narration and it has some great artwork, but the scale just makes me hesitate.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: September 6th, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
