Darth Vader - Black, White, and Red #1-4

Darth Vader - Black, White, and Red #1-4

Originally released in 2023

Written by Jason Aaron, Peach Momoko, et al.

Art by Leonard Kirk, Peach Momoko, et al.

It turns out that Marvel has its own line of books in the style of Batman: Black and White or Superman: Red and Blue, in terms of anthology series with limited colour palettes. One of them focuses on the iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader, and if you're going to pick 2-3 colours to use for a series about him, black, white, and red make a lot of sense.

The series mainly seems to give the reader short stories to show how awesome Darth Vader is.  It's a bit of a shame that these stories never really delve into his character or his thoughts, though I get the appeal.  It allows us to see how absolutely terrifying Darth Vader can be in a way that might not work as well in a movie.

A four-part story by Jason Aaron and ___ is spread throughout the four issues, with two other stories by various writers and artists included in each issue.  The most unique was the one written and drawn by Peach Momoko, which was completely silent and surprisingly visceral. (The depiction of a TIE Fighter in a nightmare sequence made my skin crawl)

Aaron's multi-part story involves the son of the man who designed Vader's mechanical body, who seeks to ruin his father's work by dismantling Vader after exploiting a weakness in his armour. He manages to capture Vader, but this only serves to make it so Vader can destroy everything that the son has built without lifting a finger.

The stories are often told from the perspective of ordinary people in the Star Wars universe - they aren't Force users, bounty hunters, or royalty, and as such, the prospect of coming face-to-mask with Darth Vader is an utterly horrifying one. He takes one Imperial soldier to her homeworld and effortlessly dismantles its defenses just to teach her a lesson.

Even genetically-modified monstrosities are little match for Darth Vader, though it does give us the closest that we'll likely ever get to the Xenomorphs from Alien showing up in Star Wars.

I do wish this series gave us more of a look into who Vader is, or his thoughts about Padmé, Shmi, Palpatine, and Luke in particular. (It's rarely clear when these stories take place, though at least one of them happens after A New Hope and one where he travels to Hoth happens after The Empire Strikes Back) I suppose that's what the main Darth Vader comic series is for, but I would have liked to see him get explored more as a character. What we get shows how awesome and terrifying Vader can be, but some variety would have been nice.