Darth Vader is getting a new year one comic book series that reveals the origin of his lightsaber

Okay, so life has kind of been crap for you lately. First that damn Jedi council refuses to grant you the rank of master, because they’re all peanut butter and jealous of your chosen one powers. Then you might have been responsible for the death of one of your mentors. Also, your other mentor is the dude responsible for a war that has engulfed the galaxy, your wife is dead and your best pal just proved that the higher ground offers a pretty sizable advantage.

Man, it kind of sucked to be Anakin Skywalker that day. And we haven’t got to the bit where he had to spend hours cleaning all that youngling blood off of his lightsaber hilt.

But where Revenge of the Sith ended, a new Darth Vader series begins. Fresh in his hawt new leather threads and prosthetic limbs, Marvel has announced that the latest series starring the newest Sith lord will be penned by writer Charles Soule  and drawn by Giuseppe Camuncoli, an artist whose run on Spider-Man over the last couple of years has been nothing short of amazing so far.

“The first arc is going to revolve around Vader’s construction of his red lightsaber, because at the end of Revenge of the Sith, he obviously loses his blue saber when he gets all chopped up and Obi-Wan takes it to eventually give to Luke down the road,” Soule said to IGN.

We’re going to explore the mythology around lightsabers

So we end up with a character who is known as having this iconic sword, like his magical red sword, but he doesn’t have it yet. So what better way to start a big huge series than with a quest for a magic sword?  We’re going to explore the mythology around lightsabers to some degree, which will be very fun. I’m really lucky that I get to tell that story. Seems like a big piece of the puzzle for him.

Marvel recently wrapped up its first Darth Vader series, which featured the enforcer of the Empire playing a dangerous game under the guidance of writer Kieron Gillen. Soule said of the differences in the Vader series.

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.

It’s rather superb and well worth a read. As for the new series starring a less experienced Vader? That’ll kick off this June. And that sound of heavy mechanical breathing is me getting excited for it.  HWOOO…HAAAA…HWOOOO…HAAAA…

 

Last Updated: March 14, 2017