Originally published March 11, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
IGN is reporting that Marvel is set to launch a brand new Star Wars: Darth Vader ongoing comic book series from writer Charles Soule and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli, which will pick up from the end of Revenge of the Sith and explore Vader’s ‘Year One’ as the apprentice of Emperor Palpatine.
“The book begins one second after the end of Revenge of the Sith,” Soule tells IGN. “Darth Vader is in the armored suit that we see throughout the rest of his life, most of his life. He is just awakening to that moment and that realization. So he has shouted ‘No!’ in the way we see in the film, and then it picks up immediately after that point. So we see him adjusting to that. We see him learning to be more machine than man. We see him going through some really, really cool early moments of his early mythology and history.”
Soule also went on to discuss how the new series will be different from Marvel’s first Vader series from writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larocca, which took place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
“I would say that in Kieron’s series, you had a man who had been doing that job and was sort of accustomed to his reality in a way that this Vader is not. So [in this new series] the fire is burning very, very bright in terms of his hatred and anger and the things he’s trying to work through. He’s trying to understand himself, whereas Vader in Gillen’s series was almost sort of an older crocodile that’s been around for a long, long time and has no real enemies or challenges. Obviously there were challenges in that book, but this is someone who’s very, very sure of his place in the universe and galaxy. It was kind of about topping that a little and taking that away from him and seeing what he did. Now this is more someone who isn’t sure what’s going to happen to him. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be alive in two weeks or 40 years. He doesn’t know what his day to day is going to look like and he doesn’t know what his purpose is. So it’s about trying to understand that, what life without Padme is like, and just kind of understand what it means to be a Sith lord, because all this stuff is new to him. And really exploring the Dark Side in an open way where he doesn’t have to be ashamed, doesn’t have to hide from the Jedi, can really go deep into it.”
Star Wars: Darth Vader #1 is set for release in June.
