The second issue of Darth Vader opens with the Sith Lord swooping in to save an Imperial shuttle from a pirate attack. The former Anakin Skywalker still has some wicked piloting skills. Awesome, right?
But once the battle is over, we get to listen to Grand General Tagge tell Vader that he’s a weapon to be wielded, nothing more. (To be fair, Vader insulted Tagge a few panels earlier, saying that the Imperial officer had “graphs” instead of vision.)
Tagge, having the Emperor’s favor at the moment, gets the last word… He assigns a hapless lieutenant to be his liaison, essentially giving the unfortunate man the task of holding Vader’s leash.
I find this type of scheming and passive-aggressive behavior fascinating when I’m watching Game of Thrones, but here it feels more like and odd version of Office Space without the humor. (Something tells me Tagge would be perfectly at home with TPS reports.)
Anyway, Vader tracks the pirates back to their hidden base while formulating plans to be rid of his watcher.
The pirates have some modified droidekas that have been armed with missiles, which looks cool but makes no sense. (I’ll buy into the idea that ships and space facilities are armored well enough that stray blaster bolts don’t present a big decompression risk, but missiles? Really?)
Vader gets to demonstrate his prowess as a pilot, a Sith and a schemer in this issue… but the series still doesn’t quite feel right to me yet.
I want to like Darth Vader, so let’s see how I feel about the title after the first story arc wraps up.
PaulHadsall.com 