Yeah, but that's like reading the back cover summaries of the novelizations and saying you know the origin of Anakin Skywalker. I need something more real.
Man there have been a lot of Vader comics lately...and I have yet to read any of them.... *leaves for amazon.com*
Goes without saying... get the Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison series. Really fabulous. And great ties to the old Empire comics.
The latest Randy interview said that The Ninth Assassin will have Vader finding an ancient power that rivals the Sith, and that he will be tempted to use it. I called that.
Or a Hungry Hutt Though my guess is more along the lines of a Rakata Warlord, or if they really want to be awesome a Star Dragon.
Wow, what an issue. I really enjoyed it. The artwork was great. This is a series which can be understood simply by looking at the pictures without reading any of the dialogue, which proves what a great master of his craft Steve Thompson is. As for the story there was a lot of action and mystery. We also saw a glimpse of Vaders and Palpatines relationship. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Vader is 100% badass in this one. Not only does he feel a threat to the Emperor before the emperor does, he saves his life and gets to show off his lack of mercy. I very much enjoy Dark Horses interpretation of the Vader/Palpatine relationship in this one. They are friendly to each other, feign openness. It is made clear that Vader serves his master not because he doesn't have the power to overthrow him, but because he respects the Emperor and wants to learn from his wisdom. Many other authors forget that Palpatine does indeed call Vader a friend during the OT and trusts his judgment in TESB. Here Palpatine is finally shown as a more thoughtful and wise leader instead of the lunatic slave master he is in most EU stories. It is an interpretation I find much more interesting. The only small weakness is that we don't see much of our assassin. He looks cool and that's about it. He will have to do a bit more than slaughter a bunch of redshirts to impress me. I'm curious who these snake cult people are and why they hate the Empire so much. Palpatine calls them dark magicians but he doesn't tell Vader anything about them. Makes one wonder what kind of connection he has to them.
Hmm… so just some different Dark Side cult, I was hoping for something else… oh well nice action scenes at least and the artist seems to hate Venators as much as I do.
I really like this art. Especially with the different species. Thompson draws a pretty good Vader. I also liked the good use of the Royal Guardsmen.
Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler They have a green snake on their chests. Somewhat like this but in green:
A very interesting and fast paced (at least it felt to me like that) issue. The art is excellent too. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Apparently this headless snake cult doesn't like the empire much. And they do seem even more menacing when Palpatine is saved in the last moment by Vader. Just shows how elusive they can be even to the Dark Lord of the Sith himself! This issue raises even more questions than it answers, and I have nothing against some good mystery. Also it was cool to see Vaders chambers on Coruscant![spoiler/]
