“Ghost Ship”
Creative Staff:
Story: Benjamin Percy
Art: Stefano Raffaele
Colors: Raul Angulo
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramgna
What They Say:
DARTH MAUL STARS IN HIS VERY OWN HORROR BLOCKBUSTER! A prison ship – transporting a cult known as the FINAL OCCULTATION – goes offline, and DARTH MAUL is sent by PALPATINE to investigate. What he finds on board is the stuff of nightmares!!! It’s up to him to stop this profoundly dark and unstable force that wishes to bring chaos to the galaxy.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Black, White, & Red run of books continues within the realm of Star Wars and Darth Maul is an easy one to go with for obvious reasons. This opening installment tells a complete tale that comes from writer Benjamin Percy where we get into Maul’s mind pretty well in order to show what he’s capable of before our first meeting in The Phantom Menace. Stefano Raffaele handles the art duties here and it’s highly effective in the use of the color design but also just in making the black and white elements work as well as they do. The draw is often the red for many but I love that we basically get shown over and over that black and white comics can work well with very familiar properties and Raffaele’s design work is just fantastic throughout this.
The premise for this tale has Sidious bringing Maul in to deal with a prison transport that has gone dark and needs to be handled. The transport has a trio of prisoner on it from a group known as the Final Occulation which harkens back to the High Republic era stories. Sidious is intent on them being brought back alive as he wants to interrogate them but Maul is wary because of the kind of beings they are where it’s a power that would be dangerous for even Sidious to have in hits arsenal. Maul knows he seres his master but there’s also a wariness of going beyond the clear binary of dark and light at this point and what these beings represent is more akin to chaos and anarchy.
The tale gives us a solid horror house-in-space kind of project once Maul arrives on the ship, from his own craft being cut loose to him walking the halls and finding the guards in various states of abuse or dying. The three main people that Sidious wants him to retrieve are worked through one by one and they all have a different style of horror about theme that works. It leans into that kind of “chaos space” element that w don’t see too often in Star Wars but makes it clear there are things that view existence on a different plane here and Maul is being tempted by them to it. I like the different challenges he faces and the surreal aspect of the first and last ones – the middle one feels like a TMNT low-level villain – and the color design helps to make it feel even creepier than it might otherwise. But it’s the black-and-white details that really sell it.
In Summary:
With each issue being done by a separate team so we essentially get a bunch of one-off tales, it’s a better approach than a lot of short stories that don’t get the time to really engage the reader as we’ve often seen. Percy’s script is given room to breathe and uses it effectively here so we get some classic Star Wars horror material and some nods to the past in an intriguing way. The dialogue is handled well, the narration spot on, and the mood is very evocative throughout the course of it. The artwork is the big draw for many and it’s totally warranted, but the blending of everything into the larger narrative is strong here. It’s good Darth Maul story and those are few and far between outside of the animated works.
Grade:
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: April 24th, 2024
MSRP: $5.99
