A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 134: Darth Vader (2015): Book I: Vader

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Today we begin a journey into the Dark Side as we begin our reading of Marvel's 2015's Darth Vader comic,  Written by Kieron Gillen with art by Salvador Larroca! It has a high reputation, not least of which is due to its introduction of the beloved character Doctor Aphra, but can it do what so few attempts to fill in the blank spaces of the films pull off and actually be good on its own merits Let's find out together! Next Time: Book II: Shadows and Secrets (Vader (2015) issues 7-12) Show Notes Catherine Zeta-Jones Laser Scene in Entrapment   Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Michael Hermes Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners by patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes and various other special editions. Darth Vader is a tragic everyman. Never really bounced back from a failed relationship. Childhood friends.

dead or no longer speaking to him. Never wants to revisit his shitty hometown, but damned if he doesn't keep ending up back there anyway. Has an important job in a huge organization, but his boss is an asshole keeps blaming him for an expensive C-suite obsession that literally exploded. Now he's on the outs, trying to find that most elusive thing in corporate life,

a successful third act. This is where Kieran Gillen's initial 2015 run of the Vader comic series picks up the action in the wake of the destruction of the first Death Star, taking ample advantage of the gaps between the Vader we see in a new hope and the one we catch up with and Empire Strikes Back to invent a dramatic arc for the fallen Jedi and a more detailed sketch of imperial politics

than we ever receive following that first film. Today we're talking about the first six issues, each telling a pretty straightforward chapter in the story. We begin as we find Vader, serving as the Fall Guy for the Death Star's destruction, treated with impatient contempt by a peevish Palpatine back on Corrason, who is pointedly removing Vader from the loop

on some of Palpatine's pet projects. Intercut with this are scenes from Vader's bloody visit to Tatouine where he terrorizes Jabba into providing help with Vader's quest to get off the book's intelligence service from top bounty hunters. Next, we find Vader subordinated to General Tad. Tad. Tad. Tad.

Tad. I think it's Tad. Is it Tash? I have no idea. His first name is Cassio. So Cassio Tage, Tag. The lone flag-level survivor of the death star besides Vader. Tag is a military man who makes clear his contempt for Vader and his intent to use him as a weapon,

in part by pointing an imperial officer to babysit Vader and inform on him. Anyone who was seen hunt for Red October knows how this is going to work out, and Vader arranges for the officer to be implicated in treason during a raid on a band of pirates. And I'm pretty sure killed to prevent him telling any sort of counterfeit. narrative. Vader drops his body off and the guy looks super dead, which it's Vader. You kind of just expect that's how people will be turning up in these things.

Next, it's time for Vader to meet an original character. Dr. Afra, a gothic Indiana... Dr. Afra. Dr. Afra. Oh, is that how she talks? We're really...

She's from Boston. Yeah, but you'd be careful because she'll slip into Harley Quinn if you're not, if you're not too careful. Oh, no. Well, I mean, I mean, yeah. Yeah, uh-huh. Got these droids ready for you, Dr. She's a doctor.

Mr. Vader. Yeah. She doesn't know what to call him. She could end up calling him Mr. V. It's possible. She's in Gauthie, Indiana Jones, with a passion for covering or restoring anti-equipment like battle droids. Vader rescues her from a heist gone comically wrong, and explains that he needs her help to give an army, give him an army of his own to command.

and independent of the emperor. That quest takes them to geonosis where we see the sad fate of our geonocin queen from rebels. It was proven to be sterile, but goes through mechanical pantomime of biological reproduction, making battle droids in the literal image

of geonotions. Vader and Afro steal her army, and I think destroy her ability to make more of them, while one of his bounty hunters captures the emperor's new agent, Silo 4, and nobody comments on that 4. They torture the location,

of his secret base out of him where they learn he has stashed candidate replacements for Vader. Afra also admits to Vader, she is aware he's planning to kill her and simply asks that he give her a clean death where she can't even be afraid. Vader tells her he intends to keep her alive as long as she is useful but cautions her against betraying him. Vader and Afro raided the installation. Well, it's mostly Vader. Affers's mostly hanging out aboard the ship. But Vader and Afro rade the installation with Vader fighting his way into a training chamber where he encounters what look like Jedi but feel very weak in the force and aura. Vader is fixing a wreck shop when Silo reappears as Silo 5,

a clone who is religiously devoted to producing replacements for the Jedi who are effectively immortal through cloning and backed up knowledge. Vader is introduced to the League of Badasses, Silo 5 has developed, then fights a brief skirmish with them. The fight is halted by Palpatine. Vader says he finds the entire project and abomination is admonished by Palpatine that all sources of power of the Sith

including this. Vader storms off to the ship he shares with Afra where he finds Boba Fat who has tracked the pile of the X-wing that destroyed the Death Star and learned his name Skywalker. The realization causes Vader to come unstuck in time, snapping between moments of Padme

Shmi, Palpatine, and his present. He immediately calls Palpatine who taunts him before asking what troubles Vader. Vader seems to bite back what he wants to talk about and simply submits himself to Palpatine once more using language that is double-edged throughout. Then he gazes out his front viewport at the Imperial Fleet. His rage creating a spider web of cracks across the Transparenceals acknowledge that he has a

son and that he and everything else will be Vader's. Yeah. The last four pages basically why I wanted to do this. I remember I saw those when this comic came back. And I was like, well, at some point I need to get into this. Last four pages are all timers. I mean, if that was like, and that's the end of the comic, I'd be like, yeah, okay, cool, worth us reading it.

Nailed, Karen. Yeah. Yeah. Really nicely threads the needle of, it's okay if Vader finds out who Luke. It's good that Vader finds out who Luke is without going so far that it makes the conversation with the emperor or the emperor gets to tell him, hey, the guy out there is Luke Skywalker, or your son. Like,

or he doesn't say your son, because he's a Skywalker in Empire without it being like too unbelievable. Do you know what I mean? Like there was a version of this, the fact that Vader bites back the conversation

he wants to have with the emperor at the end of this and decides, I'm going to keep these as inside thoughts. These are Darth Vader thoughts. I don't need to talk to the emperor about this. It's just juicy and good

and lets the rest of the way the movies go work really well. Did anyone else, though, get concerned when we immediately start this off at Jobs Palace? that wasn't the thing that made me concerned, but it is like one of the things that made me concerned.

The Jabas Palace thing made me go, it made me go, okay, let's see where it's going. The fact that they do the, he kills the guards, makes me go, oh, look,

it's rhyming with Return of the Jedi. We were just talking about Luke choking these Gamorian guards. Here is Vader, cutting them in half. Okay. The thing that made me go, what was the moment where it becomes clear

that he has, already encountered Luke Han and Leah. And that... Okay. And so I had to go dig up what that was. And that is from... Can I throw this out? Please.

Is this referencing a story that, like, existed back when the movies were coming out that was like a comic or like a split... No? No. I thought this was maybe an old E.U thing. That's a great guess. No, this is referencing the ongoing Star Wars comic from Marvel that's releasing alongside Vader.

The two of these... comics were releasing at the same time. The Star Wars 2015 comic is written by Jason Aaron and penciled by John Cassidy and is a, is following Han Luke and Leia from a new hope through Empire Strikes Back, which I believe is similar to what this comic is going to do, is going to lead us from the end of the New Hope through the end of Empire Strikes. back, which is interesting, right? Because it means, like, what they're secretly doing here is a Shadows of the Empire, but for

a new hope and empire instead of Empire and Return of the Jedi. One day, one day, Shadows the Empire will be on our, on our doorstep. I kind of wish that, I kind of wish him and Luke hadn't run into each other. I hate it. So I went up and, so I went and read that comic, and it's the first two issues of Star Wars 2015. This is, you know, in the beginning when he's like, um, They tortured this.

It's not the very beginning. It's not the job. When he goes and talks to Palpatine, and Palpatine is like, what happened now? And Vader says, oh, yeah, the rebels, they, like, interrogated, or, like, tortured a guy to make them, to get access to a shipment.

And then there's that cut-in of him and Luke talking, and Vader looking down at the lightsaber and be like, wait, I know this weapon. This once belonged to. That's from issue two of Star Wars 2015. It is the thing I probably dislike the most in this is that that had to get shoe horned into this.

And like in that issue, they like fucking have a lightsaber fight. What the fuck? Give it out of here. They should never have had a lightsaber fight. They can't, basically, they can't have, they shouldn't have seen each other until Best Ben. 100%. This is how I feel.

And I know this is like the most old head shit. And we try our best not to be like this and try to be open minded. But I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. I think the tradeoff of losing, that's the first time that they literally cross-sing. is not worth this little bit of he sees that he has his own lightsaber. He sees that he has, has, has,

has, has anikin's light saber. It's not worth it. The action sequence is kind of fun, but like, even there, like, Han and Leah,

like, take control of an AT-A-T. Like, it is, it's not what I want. And I'm grateful that that's not what the rest of this comic seems like. And in fact, the,

one of the quotes, that was in the sort of press cycle for when this comic came out was from Kieran Gillen, who wrote the book we're reading. And he says, in Jason's book, Vader is primarily the antagonist. He's a force of nature that they cannot seem to escape. In my book, that's what he does on a Tuesday. Vader has so many more responsibilities and problems to deal with than anyone could possibly understand. There are things that people above him may want him to do versus what he actually needs to do

to achieve his own aims, which is not the least bit to discover what the hell is going on with that mysterious fighter pilot who was strong in the force. And like, this set of comics that we get is so focused on the internal life of Vader, him needing to deal with Tage,

him needing to deal with the emperor. And those spaces don't feel so awkward to fill in. Those gaps don't feel so awkward to fill in because they're not as, because we assume that Vader is already doing internal politicking at the empire. We assume that Vader is already doing weird master servant or master apprentice stuff with the emperor the whole time. Whereas we don't assume that Luke Lay and Han are like fighting Darth Vader in between the episode four and five.

Yeah, you would think you would get a movie of that. Right. Right. Exactly. Like, to fill in the day to day is exactly like the, like the yummy deliciousness. that this extra material offers us. I think it, I completely agree with you, Austin, that it takes away, the tradeoff is not worth it.

It takes away from the impact of that moment where Luke and Darth Vader, you know, fight for the first time to know that, oh, but that actually, like, those were some of my, like, gripes with the Clone Wars as well. Yes. When we think about, you know, I think Clone Wars did it well,

maybe in the relationship with like Duku in kind of building up a lot of tension between ahead of the moment where Dugu and and Anakin first meet but doesn't work as well with

maybe grievous I think or or you know in other ways but it yeah I don't I don't want to see like that cast here, like, I want to know

what has Darth Vader been ruminating on? What has he had to compartmentalize in, you know, keeping his loyalty to the emperor and, like, doing his

duties as the emperor's apprentice, whilst also having this pull towards this mysterious, you know, uh, uh, X-wing pilot. that kind of is like haunting his,

his memories. That's what, that's where the juice is. Don't tell me they hung out last week. You know what kills me is the thing I just found out, which is that the end of episode, not episode, issue six here, right?

The thing that we were just talking about being great, Boa Fett showing up and telling Vader about, about Luke's name, also was just in Star Wars six, which came out the same day, So what we're running into here is is classic Marvel comics

or like big comic publisher multi-comic event type thing, right? Where you're like, oh, you can read Spider-Man, but right now Spider-Man is also in the Avengers. So to really get all of Peter Parker's story, you have to read Spider-Man and you have to read the Avengers. Which also means sometimes you got to be really careful with the giant omnibuses.

100%. That come out because it's like, oh, we got everything it was going and it's like oh the mainline comics that you got the in the big tray and you're like I want to see the rest no you didn't no you didn't that that that that last trade paperback that like was like 300 pages that was as good as it was going to get yeah the second it's like now I want the 600 page omnibus it's like and here is what this seat here cape was doing when this was happening it's like no boo and I'm like flipping through some of the other issues here of the star wars 2015 and reading the Wikipedia entries and stuff.

And it's like, you know, an unexpected romance. Leah and Hahn discovered an uncharted stormy world. And they hang out under grass and trees and waterfalls and they have wine together. It's like, I don't know that I need. I don't, I don't, and it's, I don't, it's, I don't know why the Vader stuff hits me good. And the, the main trio stuff hits me bad. But it does. And maybe that's not true.

Maybe if I went and read all of these books carefully, I would end up feeling pretty good about it. But on first blush, it's not what I want. Well, I think a part of, like, the big part of the conversation we had with Empire Strikes back about, for example, Han and Leah's relationship was the tension of them being apart and not knowing the next time they were going to see each other. And, like, and kind of the, the dramatic epicness of kind of, like, will they, won't they? Is there any, you know, chance for this couple who have responsibilities beyond each other? All of that kind of bigness.

Yeah. When it's filled in by they're having a date in drinking wine, it's like, it's not as big anymore. And, but with Vader, the, the, the, like, we understand that Vader has had, a lot going on, I guess, to put it really simply. Like, I imagine, you know, when we think of the time in between the movies, we think about, like, God, what, we don't get that much time between him and the emperor. So what is that dynamic like on a day-to-day basis? You know, like, how much, how much is Darth Vader when he says you don't understand the power of the dark side? Like, do we get to see that colored in here?

do we get to see those chains kind of come to life in the way that the emperor and him interact? Like, does he feel lockdown? Does he feel beholden beyond his power to this person? That feels bigger than kind of like what adventures has, you know, the team gone on? I think what it's answering specific questions about like, well, you know, how did they end up on Hoth, like what kind of drove them to find Hoth maybe as their outpost planet?

Okay, like that sounds more interesting to me, like, because that feels like it's building towards a big moment instead of filling, just filling it in, if that makes sense. Like, there's a difference between between filling it in and

building towards a thing. Yeah, when I look at this, it's, part of it is, Vader was really interesting for us to talk about, particularly Empire Strikes Back, because there's so much ambivalence and ambiguity in the way he carries himself throughout that. And that means there's a ton of imaginative space for you to play with with this character. What is internal motivations?

You know, what's fun about these characters, like any sort of story like this is also to a degree an exercising character analysis of an extant work, right? And it's funny because we treat them as like, oh, these become the new canon. These are like new chapters of the story. But really the way you approach them is the same way you would approach, like, I'm going to analyze Polonius's motivations

in Act 1 of Hamlet or something, right? And that becomes a story in like, how do you, like, what is there interesting to say about Polonius? And at first blush, maybe there's nothing. But then you think about it and it's like, well, actually he's an interesting position here. And he has various cross currents with like his, you know, his role, his family, suspicions about like, is he party to a coup, things like that. Vader is like much, much richer, right? Like this is a guy who has, he has fallen, he has sold his soul.

But also, especially now with the prequel trilogy in mind, we know that the price of his soul was his family. And then he still lost them anyway, but he didn't know it. So that's looming in the background of all this. What happens when he finds out the truth? And what does he feel about his position in the empire? What does he feel about the emperor? And that creates a ton of space for you to tell stories to flesh this out. Yeah.

Whereas with Han and Leia, I think you could also do that too. But I think the thing you're going to get stuck on is you're going to create, well, for instance, very strong possibility. it's going to be like, I need to serve up like romantic moments and interludes for the, for these characters. But it can't really mean anything that would change like the meaning of Empire Strikes Back or, or change like the, oh, they're just on a quick break here for Empire Street. You can't do that. So you're really like working within a limited range of what's possible. Fan fiction works run into this problem all the time. Like some of the worst things that you'll ever read will be like, well, what if these two characters had this like entire relationship?

but also this is canon compliant. So, like, you read a chapter and then just yank this thing back onto the rails of the story we already know. And we're going to beat for beat retellings. And then we're going to be like, but then what if they made out some more?

And it's like you're not going to, that is less interesting space to inhabit. In a weird way, like the things you can imagine being interesting with Han Leia is like, honestly more tensions about like, respective roles and styles

I was thinking the same thing. Roels and the rebellion would be great. Yeah, I should say, I've now read this issue very quickly that I was talking about with the wine. He does get the wine thrown in his face. They're not like hooking up. She does do her normal thing,

which is like, this is low even for you. Don't try to seduce me in the middle of all this. However, the thing I hadn't known and I have since now read, is that Luke fights Boba Fett in this issue of Star Wars 2015. I don't want it.

I don't want it. And I actually think looking at it and not only, he doesn't, you know, Boba Fett almost beats him and then like a sort of fluke slash R2D2. Sloss maybe the force saves Luke from Boba Fett the last minute and he escapes, which I don't want. I don't want him deflecting Boba Fett blaster bolts in between a new hope and Empire Strikes back. But more than that, I actually think looking at these issues, and I think the art is fine. But I think that there is a sort of uncanny valley response that I'm having, looking at the faces of characters who are supposed to be Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and... Hang on. I don't know if this is true Star Wars, but I remember this coming up with Indiana Jones media.

Yeah. Which is that you, like, there are extensive rights about, that are granted about Indiana Jones. Likeness of Harrison Ford is a real different thing legally. And so I remember this coming up where, like, you can do. picked Indiana Jones. But if he looks too much like Harrison Ford, you begin to run into problems. And so I think that can contribute to the uncat.

Maybe the Star Wars actors totally signed away. They did. I think for this specifically, this is supposed to be them and not the, I'm like 99% sure on this because I looked into this years ago, which is, and it's a perfectly fine, like I actually think that this looks like them.

That looks like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher more or less in this second to bottom panel that I sent over. But it's still weird to see them because it makes me go, is that how they would talk? Is that how their dialogue is written? Is that the face that Carrie Fisher would make? I don't have that problem with Darth Vader or the emperor really. He's wearing a helmet and the emperor is a cartoon anyway. Bader like like stand there saying nothing and it's like what a fraught moment. We have that moment where it's like, oh shit. A hundred percent. There's so much happening under that blank

helmet. Well, and to that, to that point, and then we get Dr. Afra, who is a new character, and we get, what's his name? Tash. Tash, Tash is in the movies, but he's not a major guy. He's in the first movie. He's not, though. He's cool, though. He's cool, though, and then he's just not in the movie again, so it's like, whatever. It doesn't matter. And so I think it's, you don't run to the same, I don't have the same friction, you know? In any case, this is all side content to, like, what this actual comic is. But I do briefly want to voice a frustration. because we might have a Wikipedia editor in our listenership, and I need to just voice this.

I read that quote from Kieran Gillen earlier in which he says, in Jason's book, Vader is a force of nature. And my book, that's what he does on a Tuesday. But the fucking Wikipedia summary of this says, if Jason Aaron's concurrent Star Wars comic depicts Vader on, quote, a Tuesday,

then Gillen's series shows the relatively mundane politics he must grapple with during the rest of the week. That makes it sound like the same thing twice. Because if you say it shows you, shows him on a Tuesday. For me, it was Tuesday. For me, it was Tuesday. That's mundane. But without the context of he's an antagonist, he's a force of nature, that doesn't mean

anything. So I really need a Wikipedia editor. It's not going to be me. I got to tell you, I ain't signing up. But if you're already there, I need you to go in and say, if Jason Aaron's concurrent Star Wars comic depicts Vader as a force of nature, which is Kieran's quote, then Gillen's series shows the relatively mundane politics he must grapple with during the rest of the week

or during honor, you know. I'll become a Wikipedia entry if President AOC nationalizes fandom. Yeah, absolutely. Listen, and we could like 100%. And remove all the ads and all the tracking and all the other shit

that makes it a hell to go on. Yes. Nationalizes it and then releases it to a nonprofit. There we go. Like basically like Wikipedia, you know, operate this stuff. That's right. But yeah, that is the only circumstance under which I would become a Wikipedia editor. Exactly.

But yeah, we can do a little clean up there. But I do think, like, even in a throwaway scene here, like, at up front with Jabba's Palace, even here it has some of stuff I really like from working in this interpretive space. When Jabba calls Vader Jedi. Yeah. And it's so layered because on the one hand, one hand, and Vader sort of like spits at the He chops up all Java's guards and all this. He sort of spits out the word and rejects it.

But again, it's Java. And there's this little element of like, Jabba sees through this, right? Like the Java knows that, oh, you can dress in the black mask and all the gear. And like, you're pretending to be a sift, but I see what you are. Like, you are a fallen Jedi.

You're a defrocked priest. But from a Java's perspective, you are just one of this order. You think Java's in on it? like that? Like, you think Java understands the, the, you know, the, the, the, or like the Jedi order and, and this, like, the, I, that's, to me, I kind of read it as, you know, it doesn't matter what you, what you think you are. To me, you're all Jedi sort of thing. Like, you're all the guy carrying the laser sword to me. And, you know, what I know of Jedi is I know. I know. know, they, they, they try to trick me. They try, like, you know, these are my dealings with the Jedi. Beyond that, like, you don't really, there is no nuance to the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, saber wielder beyond that. Um, but I like this idea that Java is kind of owning him in a more, uh, knowledgeable way. Yours might be truer to the Java that we meet, kind of a, blonde hamfisted dip ship, but I But the thing that makes me sort of like my interpretation is I like the crime lord as a figure who sort of sees through the patina of like false politics that surround everything to the underlying motivations and realities. And what he sees when he sees Vader is a Jedi. And I don't think he would call the emperor a Jedi. Right. Well, I mean, this is kind of one of the surprising through lines for me from this reading is just how dogmatic.

Vader is. Vader is a true believer. One of the things that Kieran puts front and center in the script is that Vader is constantly not just to random imperial admirals or officers, but to Palpatine saying, don't underestimate the force. The force is more strong than anyone, you know, is stronger than anyone believes. Like, he's the traditionalist here. Gillian's point of departure is that border meeting aboard the death stop. 100%.

Like that this is the full mascot. Yes. Like when, when pushed, in the heat of the moment, a true believer emerges. Right. And there's the bit at the very end, which he already talked about. You described it in the intro that, you know, he looks around to all these other guys, the kind of the, the, the protegees or the potential replacements for him that Silon, Silas.

Silo. Silo 5 is making. Silo number is making. And he calls them abominations. The emperor is like, don't say that. everything is, you know, you would be an abomination if that were true. You know, all things, anything that creates

power is part of the force. It's all the force, is what he says. No, he says the force. He says everything is of the force. I'm pretty sure. I'll double-check it right now. I screen cap this right now, because this, I felt like it was such a, you stand there more metal than man and talk of abominations.

We're not for my open mind. You would not, you would not be here. Everything is of the force. Damn it, you're right. I know. I know. I wrote it down, Rob. Do not understand how you disappointed me on Lestafar. The thing he doesn't understand is Vader agrees. He thinks he's an abomination. That's the trick of this.

He's not like they're an abomination and I'm not. He's like, I'm also an abomination and you're making things that are even further in that direction than me? This is a good Vader. Right. That's really, like, Vader in the pursuit of, of, purity, as it were, through his son Luke. Like, Luke could be the pure version of a Sith Lord that Darth Vader could never be because he's been compromised, right?

Because of that self-loathing, because of that, the way he perceives himself to be less then or to be in his words an abomination. It adds a certain thing to me of just like wondering if his obsession with his son is that here's here's the chosen one actually. The chosen one is like I was only the sort of like a step on the way to the chosen one. I just, like, helped bring him, bring him to the world, I guess. And that the actual chosen one is this pure kind of vessel that I am now seeking. I wonder if that's how you think about him.

A parent wishing their child could be all of their strengths and none of their weaknesses and has their, as a tale as old as time. I mean, it's good shit. So we get that for the chosen one. I didn't think that that phrase would come up in here, but it sure does. In a way I couldn't have guessed. Do you want to talk about the emperor's scene? Yeah.

This is another fun thing. So when we discover what Vader, basically, Vader shows up a job as terrorists the place up. But we realize is basically the day before, he got humiliated by Palpatine, like pointedly humiliated. And like made clear the entire Death Star debacle being hung on you. For the reasons we kind of outlined that Palpatine's keenly aware that,

Oh, Vader, hey, guess what? Gillen kind of agrees with our reading of a new hope where Vader's the clever one. He's the subtle one. It destroyed the Death Star. Palpatine is keenly aware that the too clever by half plan to expose their own base got the Death Star destroyed. The other thing that I really like here, for someone who thinks about this as much as I do from this political standpoint, I don't think it ever fully clocked the degree to which, as Palpatine outlines, hey, we played our cards. That's right.

We dissolved the Senate. And the only reason we did that is we had the Death Star and so we no longer needed it. And then a day later, the Death Star blew the fuck up. And now we don't have the Senate confirming any legitimacy. So we are now plunged into crisis. He says. They made their authoritarian push. Or at least they've fully.

exposed it, that we live in a sort of post-republic, post like any sort of representational order, and now it's all like rule by force and rule by terror. And then the terror machine was blown. That's right. Yeah. We kept the skeleton of the Republic for nearly 20 years while the Death Star was constructed. 20 years, my apprentice, all that planning is now a layer of dust orbiting around Yavin. Now we no longer have the Senate to hold order. We do not have the Death Star to force it. Our greatest weapon is gone. Our production is in ashes. We are besieged. In all these years, we have never skirted closer to disaster. Thanks to you. You tagged the Rebel ship with a homing beacon, then let the rebels escape with the Death Star plans deliberately.

And Vader says, I take responsibility for my actions. But I was not alone in my failings. The arrogance of the weapon courted disaster. Even the power of that space station is nothing compared to the four. Enough, Vader. And then he goes on to basically say, yeah, you could blame other people. You're the one who's left. I'm going to put it on you.

And that way he caps this off. Oh, you are truly the chosen one, Vader. chosen to be the one responsible. Fuck. Well, and in the end, in he? He makes the, in the end, he chooses to be responsible for it all and takes some moves.

So, you know, maybe it's set in. I love thinking about how mad Vader is at the emperor all the time. It's so juicy to me. This guy sucks. I mean, he then goes on to say, like, later in this, in this,

I think it's in the sixth issue like when the emperor is like what's up with you and he's like are you angry at me or something wrong? Are you angry? And Vader's like, I am angry which is exactly how you want me. You want me angry all the time.

Like you want While he turned to John Draper They need to be in counseling so bad. They need therapy. So bad. So bad. So, midway through this, I got angry at Rise of Sky of the sequel trilogy again. Because the entire arc of Palpatine is his hubris.

He's out of control. And Vader is the symbol of his hubris. Oh, here is this pet Jedi. I have broken him completely to my will. I can do whatever I want to him. And he will be powerless to stop me because I basically own his soul. And that the payoff for that is he test this by deciding to a little. electricute Luke in front of Vader and

Vader throws him down a fucking well basically and like kills him. Yep. Didn't matter actually. He's dead. No, he's dead. No, he's not dead. That's a big deal. He has his own. He has a B as a clone. Don't worry about it. This guy, Silo 5 probably helped to make a clone. Don't worry about it. So annoying. Bad. It's so bad.

But I just, I love this notion that like the empire is in crisis now. because basically everything that Tarkin outlines in that movie is all being held together by we're at the end of history. The Death Star is, it puts a period on history. And the future is the empire, it's the Sith. And we don't need to worry about the consent or awareness of the galaxy anymore. And then, God, I have a question, which maybe we're getting here early,

Like, is it even the Sith? The stuff with Silo, who gets introduced in this scene, so, so, so Palpatine chews out Vader for, for the Death Star, and then for whatever this most recent failing is, the, the rebels have stolen some supplies, and it seems like things are slipping in the crisis and all that. And then this weirdo walks in who, you know, Vader is kind of like lost in reverie. He's kind of like thinking about fighting Obi-1. He's thinking about, you know, chasing Luke in the Death Star Trench. He's thinking about having, of course, just met Luke in the whole Luke.

And having briefly held his lightsaber. And then this weirdo walks in. And this guy is, I don't know, he has like a cybernetic eye and some alien flesh around it. I thought it was at first. His other, his other eye, like, was kind of giving sithy vibes, isn't it? Like, I think that's just a reflection, isn't it? Is it not? No, his back is to the window and he has like a little bit of a yellow shy.

I didn't realize that. That's interesting. Okay. He's really giving some guy. He is. No, literally. He is 100% down. He also looks so much like Bruce McGill.

If you know who that actor is, but he's a character act that shows up in a bunch of things. But he really does look like... Yeah, let me just pull this guy up. He's one of the state attorneys in the insider. Oh, interesting. Okay. The thing that this guy ends up being is the guy who's running

the Vader replacement program that we'll get to in issues five and six or maybe just six. But none of those people are the force. And none of them are Sith. Vader makes a very specific thing of like these aren't Jedi, they aren't the Sith, this is trickery.

And these are the guys being prepared as potential replacements for Vader. I mean, they suck. They absolutely suck. I can't wait to see them get washed over the course of the rest of this book. That seems like what it's setting up. It's very funny to think of them

in like contrasted to like the Sith inquisitors who are so dressed in the Sith you know the all the black and the high collar and the red sabers and you mentioned that the twins look like they're Jedi and there's a one who's like a fake grievous. Like silver-raged Jedi though? 100%.

Like it is extremely like hey it's Quicksilver and knockoff Scarlet Witch running around here and it's like whoo he he where we're Jedi we're going to overcome you. Your day is done, old man. And it's like, what do you all even do?

A hundred percent. They're just hopping around, right? They're just like air dashing. Yes. Yeah, we'll unpack the whole fight when we get there. But like, specifically the thing that I'm curious about as we read this going forward

and in this scene, because again, he shuts Vader down when he says that space station is nothing compared to the power of the force. I think that we have heard Vader say powerfully in the first movie. But, like, does he even give a fuck about this Sith shit in this comic?

Or is he post? Are we looking at a Sidious who's like, oh, we're moving into a post, not just post-Jeddie, but a new era that is not deocratic in any way. Pivot. Pivot. It's a pivot. I think he's pivoting. Well, we get into one of that when we get to the scene. Yeah, but let's think about that. I just wanted to flag that while we were on this.

I also do love the end of this first issue where he's started giving the marching orders to the bounty hunters Yes And he's standing with smoke It calms of smoke rising in the distance And then we get the last panel Him standing amidst a burning Sand People village corpse is strewn

My business here All my business here is concluded This guy sucks, this guy is corny He just has to like make a pit stop to the Tuscan camp and just say what up like what the fuck? He's stressed, man.

He had to blow off some steam here. He's so mad. Yeah. Maybe he was trying to grind out some XP to level up. I don't, you know, I don't know. He went and like did the bad options so he could kill a bunch of guys.

But I think what I do like is kind of corny that he's like doing but the thing is I do like oh, nothing is like nothing is done. He's let go of nothing. Yeah. Which means again, bad implication. for Palpatine when this comes around

because like, hey, Vader hasn't processed or worked through what happened to Shmey. Like, he hits tattooing. Oh, sorry. I got to find a sand people settlement and just lay waste to it because fuck them. Yep. Like, that dude is not going to let anything slide.

Yeah, dangerous. Shoutouts to a guy we know. Obviously, Boba Fed is one of his two bounty hunters who he's here to work with. Did anybody recognize the big wookie? Curstan. He's from Book of Boba. No, he's from this.

He's in Book of Boba. Fat. Black Crescenton, the big black wicket. Yeah, no. His name is Black Cresantin. I don't know why. I would maybe just call him Cresantin, but, you know. I don't know if he's Black Cresantin in Fortnite,

whereas how I know him from having his Fortnite character. Hang on, but if he's going around being like, Call me Black Pranth. Then that's actually hard as hell. Yeah. No, 100% he should be referred to as such. I've made a mistake, which is I've looked at the Wikipedia, and so I know his nicknames. Dr. Afra has specific nicknames for him, including Santee, B.K, and Black K.

Santi is very funny. Yeah. I bet we're going to get more of, unless this is all in the Dr. Afra book, which it might be. But, yeah, shout out of some black person. Okay, Big S. Yeah. Big Z. You're saying because it's, no, no, yeah, it's Big Z.

That's Big Z. That's Big Z. Anyway. Or Big, Big K. Big K. In this case. I'm thinking Sandy. Yeah, you're thinking Sandy.

I'm getting confused. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see. So the next issue, Vader is seconded to work under General Tag. And the thing they are dealing with is imperial convoys are being rated by robot, like drone pirate ships being commanded from somewhere else. But the big thing here is that this is not a happy reunion.

No. Tag, despite being someone who was broadly, from a different angle on a similar page to Vader with regard to the Death Star, is now a man ascendant in the Imperial Service. And he is a traditional military guy. We get a shot of him, staring out of the fleet. Just thinking of all the star,

destroyers he could have. If only it hadn't been, all those resources hadn't been wasted on the death star. But he also has no respect for Vader. And vice versa. Vader sees him as

fundamentally an administrator. He says Tarkin had vision, you have graphs. That's such a cold line and it's such an interesting one. I think we've talked a lot about Vader as the disbeliever in the Death Star? Why do you think he here

finds praise for Tarkin? And what is the contrast between Tarkin and Tag here? I think it's... So to a degree, I think there's a little bit of Tag is presenting himself

as the traditional military man, right? But there's a difference between, like, in some ways, like looking at this through the lens of like modern, imperial power, right? Like, tag is a creature of the Pentagon.

He is a, like, systems and procurement guy. He is a building his fiefdom within the organization. But actually, is he a combat leader? Vader doesn't seem to think so. He doesn't seem to look at, like, as if he's standing the presence of, you know, the second coming of

Nelson or something like that. What he sees is a guy who is looking at quotas for X number of starships to command the galaxy. And, and, And Tarkin reached the conclusion that there was no upward number of starships. It couldn't be done. You needed something to sort of transcend through terror.

Transcend the math of insurgency, to transcend the sheer fact of the limits of resources. Quick thing. Palpatine even says it's not as if it's without precedent to go to the periphery to secure the core. Like this is a comic that is speaking the language of like imperial and revolutionary control. So, like, this series is, is hip to that. And what Tag is seeing is, well, the Death Star has been destroyed. Now the Fleet guys can be back in charge. Yeah.

And the Fleet is going to be the answer to this problem. And it isn't. Like, there's a reason they didn't need the Death Star. Yep. He's very, like, the guy who ran this through his, like, Mill Sim. and like all the numbers added up there. Like there's this one, you know, there's a couple panels where he's talking about, you know,

Vader calls him out and is like, Tarkin have had vision, you have graphs. And he's, like, I have graphs and the command. That's his response. And it's like he, he's not as concerned with the grandstanding, the spectacle of imperial, you know, power here. He's like, this is a numbers game. If we have all of our, you know, chess pieces

and all the right places, then the math shows that we will be able to keep control of the galaxy. Like, as long as the numbers add up, there's, you know, there's no way that we can be beat. It's not about some individual, spectacle, aka the Death Star, or even aka Darth Vader, which he makes a point to say that like Darth Vader is someone to be

to be weld instead of a like, you know, that that Darth Vader is a sword that he will deploy not his own kind of like show of force, like his own kind of pillar of force rather. it's all in addition to what the foundation should be, which is Starfleet everywhere,

numbers go up, and we should be covered. Well, and actually, I think the line that really dams him as a strategist here, and maybe there's also a number of like Robert McNamara for his vision of this, like that we can sort of quantify, like, suppression. But he says, my plans may not be as glamorous or grand, is yours or departed Tarkins, but they work. The Starfleet is a sea. It's endless cannot be beaten and given enough time.

It turns even the strongest rocks to sand. That metaphor doesn't work. Like, it never in history, it doesn't work. It is a completely backwards metaphor. The Starfleet, like any sort of fleet travels the sea. But if we're talking about like imperial control, the people are the sea. They are the ocean. And that is not just like, you know, foundational to, you know,

communist insurgency doctrine. That's just the reality of like, control over larger areas. As old as it is. Where you're not popular. Yeah. Yeah. And so you cannot use assets

like the Imperial fleet and think you are the sea. Like, they are limited forces of power projection. Yeah. Especially when it's a military fleet. It's not even a logistics fleet. It's not, they don't control shipping.

You know, like they control the, they have military vessels. It's not like they have a monopoly on food. Maybe if they were like Amazon and were. And the military, right? And the military. Yeah, if they were like controlling the exchange of information, if all of information structure and all of military enforcement and all of, you know,

food supply and trade routes and fuel and oil, which I mean, I think is the aim, right? Like they're seizing. Right. But they haven't yet. I mean, this is them not having that control. right now, in fact, right? Well, and the other thing is, like, the reason this stuff is doomed is because

nothing can be secured against every threat. Like, the reason like the people of the territory you're operating in, like, the reason they are the ocean, and they're endless, is because, like, no matter where you were traveling, you can always send force, overwhelming force, to a point,

destination. But to get that force there, there's vulnerabilities built along the way. Or when the force isn't there, there's something you left behind that's vulnerable. There's too many places where you can get like picked at and picked off and deal with problems they're going to get worse and worse. And the sheer size of the fleet means it's expensive. It will be dependent on, you know, as we see daily in our own news, these things can get logistically overextended and different vulnerabilities besides combat losses

begin to to open up. And so like Tadge's view here is like, oh yeah, we'll just like build star destroyers as if we're the Zerg or something like this. And we'll have a star destroyer for every problem. Rob, we're going to get to Rise of Skywalker later. We're going to get to the Infinite Fleet one day later. Yeah. So it's a ridiculous metaphor and kind of a revealing one that like, oh, we can just math this out. I think, you know, to bang the drum that I bang a lot here,

I think Vader also knows something about the world of Star Wars, which is that the force is real, and that the force gives a fuck about vision. The force likes a good story. And the Death Star is nothing compared to the Force, but it's still something that can impact the world in big, dramatic, tragic, climactic ways. Destroying all of Alderan at the press of a button can overpower the moment of here. history in the world of Star Wars. It can make the sort of huge cataclysmic moment happen. And Darth Vader, more than maybe anyone else alive in the moment of Star Wars, knows

that the big moment, the climax, is a real force in the world that moves things. It's moved his life over and over again. And if he has to fucking listen to someone who doesn't even have big dreams, like that guy's not a player in history. That's a guy who won't even make it into the movie. You know, like, he's going to be in one scene of when all this breaks down. You know, Darth Vader is a guy who knows he is

not in just history, but he's in the thing the force is weaving together. And the thing the force is weaving together doesn't give a fuck about the size of your fleet, you know? In fact, the thing that I think is so fascinating is Tagdan falls

into this by giving the bad metaphor. He doesn't just say, my plans may not be as glamorous or as grand as yours or the part of Tarkins, but they work. He then has to try to amend with that bad metaphor you keep calling out. If he had just said, my plans aren't glamorous, but they work, our leaders, our larger plans can't be based around any individual asset. I think we'd all be like, damn, tag kind of has it. Like, yeah, you can't base a plan just around the Death Star or just around Vader.

But he has to do this. He does try to self-agrandized his plan. He kind of falls into the way Vader is talking about things. He says he's not a man of vision, and then does the Starfleet is the C comparison? And it's like, oh, well, you're doomed, actually. You're not going to win this one in the end. Well, it's a funny example there, too, I think, of people love the illusion of vision. Mm-hmm.

That the true insight, true, like, paradigm shifting insight is incredibly rare, but people love to think they're in the presence of it. I think it was one reason, like, I think the desperation to believe in that accounts. for a lot of Silicon Valley's, like, credulous press for the last 20 years, that, like, people looked at Elon Musk and thought they saw a genius. People hear Sam Altman, a similarly unimpressive speaker.

Like, this is never someone who, like, you know, crackles with authority. Like, actually, honestly, like, compare, like, oh, is he the Oppenheimer of our age? Oppenheimer did have bars, is the thing. And he also had the ability to build out the Manhattan Project and recruit for it. Sam Altman has investors.

and a shit story. But organizations or structures encourage people to adopt grandiose tones. I've seen it in corporations where, like, people will rise. Just because when everyone else is in the room being like, here are the realities we are up against, here's what is possible with resources. If someone will just confidently go in there and speak like a fucking Oracle, people will, like, tend to listen to that. And it hear it because a lot of people don't know the difference between, like, wisdom and delusion or wisdom and bullshit and will just kind of like the sound of it. And I think you hear it's kind of an example of Tarkin had vision.

It was wrong. Like, as we see in the movie, Tarkin's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. He eats shit for it. Well, except that if there's no Luke Skywalker, he wins. That, it wasn't vision that failed him in this moment. moment or the vision that failed him in that moment was simply, oh my God, they have a pro, they have like a proto Jedi on their side. No, but hang on though.

Except the only reason he gets close to it is because Lou Skywalker shows up and Vader hatches the plan to expose like, if none of that happens. Yeah. The death starts floating around. Where's the rebel base? I don't know. The rebels like start running attacks on that. Like they've, like I think they do eventually figure out how they're going to get this

thing. You think so? You think eventually they find the, they get the plans out somehow? They were doing a desperation raid to try to save their base minutes before it was destroyed. If they have the luxury of picking the day and time to hit the Death Star, I think they have a chance of landing that shot. I think it's an open question because I don't know what does blowing up Alderon do to the galaxy

and who's willing to work with the rebels after that, you know? Maybe it does. Maybe what it does is... That's Farcon's theory is that nobody would be willing to. Right. Like, Leia's theory is you just lost the galaxy. Right. That's the theory.

I think it's a good theory. We hear it echoed in Andor in our world. The United States dropped two atomic bombs and then dominated the rest of the century. And so I think it's an open question of how that would fall out in Star Wars. Yeah, it's a funny thing there is the bombs didn't do it, though. No, but the bomb. You're right. But that's the story that feels like it could follow from.

Do you know what I mean? Oh, certainly. But it just isn't true in terms of like what, like it wasn't, because the monopoly on the atomic bomb was broken within a decade.

But that's the other difference is the rebels don't have an atomic bomb. The rebels don't have a death star as far as we know, right? That's the, you're right. I should not have summarized it that quickly or that simply,

that is of course not, what happens to end up being is actually, uh, there's not just a single side of domination. There's competition. We know all this, right?

But, yeah, but I mean, I guess the question becomes like, you have George Patton or Curtis LeMay, like, in charge the United States in 1945. That's like, we're the only ones with the bomb we can do it when we want. That's right. But even there, the check is, we cannot fire the bombs fast.

Like, nobody serious was like, okay, we can, in the meantime, the Red Army will just roll over the rest of Europe and then we'll see what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so like, it's not an obvious. Mostly because there is no, there is no Soviet analogy in Star Wars. there should be. The hearts are the closest we can't. Right.

And they're not close, unfortunately. Nobody wants a piece of these slugs. Yeah. So anyway, my point being that, like, I do think that there is something to be said about, like, the Tarkin question is open to some degree. He does have vision. He does lose in the end. I'm not disputing that.

But I do think there's possible to read Vader here going, like, what is the world you imagine, tag? Whereas, at least with Tarkin, he could go, I think this is going to blow up in your face, but I see you're dreaming. And the world is a dream world. You know, it's also metal. It's also, you know, this stuff. Because, you know, we're only, what, four or five pages away from him telling a guy,

oh, is your crew not up to snuff? It's not like Vader doesn't talk the, like, grounded, mundane. You have to run your machine well in order to make the war machine work, right? Like, I think that's, is that in the first issue is where he's like, I need an extra day on tattooing. and the guy is like, but it's going to be tough to do that. And he's like, oh, you're saying your engineers are bad? Is that what you're saying?

So it's like he's not concerned with that stuff, too. I shouldn't overstate that. Jabba calls Vader the emperor's cudgel. Yeah, he does. Not flattering. No? And then Tadge is like, you'll be a weapon in my hand. And Palpatine himself says,

you prove yourself to be a blunt instrument. This theme comes again and again. Vader is not a stiletto. He's not a lightsaber. he is just a bat. He's a crude stick that Palpatine can use to bash things and that's all he's good for.

And then you got Tashor leaning into it and crucially, fatally, thinking this is true. Yeah. That because this guy's stock is low and you're sort of catching him at a down moment and the emperor is like putting him in his place that you can then treat him this way.

And that is kind of a mistake Because, like, you know, we see Vader is a more subtle character than that in some dimensions. And boy, for the rest of this issue, are we going to get a taste of how effortlessly he is capable of dispensing with this trap that Tad has tried to put him in? Unai. He gets an adjutant. He gets a little, he gets, I guess, was technically supposed to be an aide, but actually seems to just very clearly be a shadow meant to report back on what his dealings are. And that guy, you know, travels with him to go intercept this automated pirate vessel or track it back to its base where they find a rebel ship filled with destroyer droids. Which is cool.

Fun to see destroyer, retrofitted destroyer droids. Destroyer droids who shoot missiles. Though I will say, this is one of the instances in the comic where I was like, some of the action choreosteeners. choreography here isn't super clear. I don't know if anybody else had this feeling. I got so confused in this part. I was going to ask if somebody could just explain to me what happens here because they're like approaching, they're boarding the ship.

Or it's a base. I said ship, but it's a base, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. On like an asteroid of some sort. Yes. And as they're boarding. Apparently there's this worry for a self-destruct.

Yep. Because they would rather self-destruct than leave their data available that would potentially connect back to other rebel cells and other rebel locations, right? Right. Okay. That's making sense. So they opened the door and the stormtroopers are like, oh, no, we're getting shredded.

What can we do? And Vader says out loud, hmm, a lightsaber strike will only cause the missile to explode. And the officer says, so there's nothing you can do all your reputation and we're help. Probably saying helpless. And he goes, there's always something I can do. Yes. And in that moment, both a droid connects to a port. on the ship.

And then and then I think what happens is Darth Vader reflects the missiles coming out back at that's great. The destroyer droids. The destroyer droids.

I'll say this is so the droid is a secret plan. That is his fail safe. The droid is going out there. This is classic R2 bullshit. Yep. R2 is going to their headquarters to

make sure they can't destroy the ship, but also to make sure there's implicating information about Unai, like found among the documents so that Vader can immediately just 86. Yes. Like 86, this dude and get the shadow off his back. So the droid is just sort of there. It's like sort of comical thing where Vader's in the middle of this like epic, like Star Wars bullshit, like fight. And meanwhile, this droid is just quietly just going about its business.

like dealing with the bigger problem the Tadge has created for Vader. Yes. The thing that's happening in the action sequence, the thing that's confusing, is we see an explosion as they approach the door, but we don't ever see a missile until two pages after that first explosion

when he's throwing them back. So when he says, hmm, a lightsaber strike will only cause the missile to explode, we have not seen a missile yet. But there are missiles being fired at them right then. in like an instant. Like he's saying this in a moment in a moment

of time. Or like the missiles are firing at them and they're blowing up at their feet but they're not getting, you know what I mean? Like we're not seeing the missiles. I think the thing that's missing here is if you look on the page

where he does throw them back, that's the first time we see the missiles. And so you have to imagine that any of the explosions you're seeing are coming from missiles that he can perceive but that for some reason is not captured in a panel.

Up until then, I found some of this stuff and some of the stuff on Geonosis, similarly, like, not confusing, but like, it took me a couple of reads of the page. Like, wait, you've moved past something too quickly. You're not representing everything on the page. I hope that, I expect I'll find it in time. You know, this is, this is real. It's hard to plot comics stuff out sometimes, you know? But, yes. And the key of the scene, though, is Rob, what you said, which is secretly this droid is,

doing a little subterfuge, which is very funny. Yeah, I also feel like, I feel like I saw this a lot with Marvel releases of this era where, um, especially in the early issues, they are not doing anything with panel layout or page layout that could it all be misinterpreted?

Like it is all like extremely linear. Uh-huh. And I've never figured out if this was a move, like, partly because of like comics readers and the increasing prominence of like electronic distribution in comics or if it was also a recognition that like especially for these things that got like wider release uh and would would be reaching like a wider audience you had people who maybe didn't read comics regularly because there is sort of a skill like your you're more involved page layouts following where the action is and they really don't mess around with that stuff at all

not until like the third or fourth issue here where you start seeing them break from this like just series of letterbox panels that we're going through. I did I did say speaking of things I can't figure out what's going on here at all. This one on this page where like it looks like they're making their escape but there's a there's a triptych up top. Yeah. And the last one I have no idea what I'm looking at. It's like Vader's cape leaving frame. That's right. And a hole. Yeah. So It is self-destructing, and it's them, he's like calmly walking out down a hallway. You know, it's like, oh, no, the command center is blowing up in panel one. Panel two is, there's explosions all around them in one of the hallways and even one of the stormtroopers is like, oh, no, it's explosions.

But he's calm and cool and collected. And then third panel is him, like, calmly walking out, you know, through the docking port is what I think that's supposed to be. Okay. On to the stolen vessel that then they fly away. But yeah, it's one of those ones that's like, I can see it really clearly Cinematically where you can imagine Vader slowly walking and turning Moving toward him so it doesn't seem like he's gotten to safety It sort of seems like, well, that's just gonna follow you onto the ship, dog

Yeah, no, he gets out, don't worry about it, he's fine Yeah, it's fine And then importantly, what's he doing the bottom panel of that page? He pats the little droid on the head Because he loves droids, as we learn. Sort of. Well, yeah, you're right. what he does is trusts

droids seemingly and he takes note of what he's heard which is that apparently someone named Afra made these droids so or provided these droids to these rebels and then yeah it turns in the dead or dying

or soon to be tortured to death Unai the adjutant who was assigned to him and says oh we found all this evidence showing that he was our leak damn that's a shame I do think the little moment, the fact that he trusts an astromac, I do love these little elements of like, that's still Anakin. That's like, too much.

It's like he gave him an astromac and he can accomplish anything. And yeah, he does send it on a self-destruct mission there at the end. But like, I think he's also telling his next stop is basically to find a little sidekick version of himself. Like Dr. Afro is, what if Anakin didn't get picked up by the Jedi? True. Do we think Dr. Afra is a reference to Afra Ben? Oh, I hadn't even considered that. Afra who?

Afra Ben, a playwright. That seems likely given Kieran Gillen's whole thing. You know? I guess I don't know what all of, I don't know Afra's whole name. I guess I shouldn't look it up. I'm not going to look it up. Don't. I won't.

I won't. I'm going to click away. She's just Dr. Afra. I do know that in your interest, How did you describe her? Who knows? Let's see. Do you remember?

I know one word. It was goth, Indiana Jones. There you go. He said goth, Indiana Jones. In dreaming of the character, Gillen wrote, the core idea came when walking around the Lucasfilm offices. We passed a large Indiana Jones display, and I just thought gender and ethically switched to Indiana Jones.

That would work well in Star Wars. I mean You got it You got it That's what she is Is this her first appearance This is her first appearance Okay

This is where she's from Are you clear What's clicking into place for you? No I was just like Because it's a name that I had heard before Like when she appeared on the page I wasn't sure of like Is this a tie into a different thing

Right I'm supposed to know this character From another comic or The book series or whatever else Right No, she, yeah, she ends up having her own book series. I actually have that omnibus because it was recommended to me and I never read it. But I have it right over there.

Or, you know, I read like the first two issues and then they got distracted. Maybe I would now. I like Dr. Afros, to be honest. This character, you mean? Yeah. It's not all hits, but it's a really high, I think it's her, she's on base a lot. You know what I mean? I think I get why she's here.

Hey, the expectation for OCs is on the floor. It's on the floor. It's on the floor, 100%. I'm mostly having fun with it. If you're on A.03, how often are you like, here's a major character and an important relationship with an original character? How often does that get your toe a tapping? Not ever, basically. And real, real low hit rate.

She's, okay, let's, what's her vibe? What's her deal? For people who aren't reading along because they don't want to go track down these comics because they're expensive in physical form, et cetera. Oh, my God. I was like, dude, I was sitting there being like, do I want to read this electronically? or do I want to pay this person $300 for the omnibus? And I was like, I do not want to pay someone $300 for this omnibus. The thing that I ended up doing was not getting the omnibus, not getting the individual trades, but getting a, this is also, there's like three ways you could buy this physically.

You could get the, I mean, there's four ways. You could theoretically search out the floppies, the individual issues. No, I'm not doing that. Absolutely not. Two, you could get the omnibus, which is huge. is the one big, you know, complete thing. Three, you could get the whatever five individual trade paperbacks. I ended up getting the two bigger volumes.

There's a volume, Star Wars Darth Vader volume one, Star Wars Darth Vader volume two. That's what I found to be the most cost effective way of doing this. That's still often used or back, you know, not back ordered, but like old stock. And so that's also slowly falling down. But it is more available from normal places. You can get that new, both of them, for 20 bucks, if you can find it somewhere. But like, I'm looking right now, it's 1804 on Amazon, you know. So it's not like it's impossible to find.

If you are someone who wants this physically, it is also available digitally. I have it digitally and I have it physically because I wanted to be able to look at it on my screen while I'm talking. That's what the money is for. So, you know, but just want to make sure people knew if you are someone who wants to collect it, you have more than one option for how to do it. So anyway. And it looks pretty. So. Yeah.

I think the art, we haven't really talked about that besides me complaining about the action choreography. I think this looks pretty good. I think it looks. I think, again, it works for me because we're not looking at real people's, like. I think like I think it really sings In a lot of the details of Vader's You know his like mask and in his like general you know his clothes and everything. I think it sings with like a lot of the different

Like alien species we you know when you see the in in Java Palace like the sort of background of of his entourage is like really good. So it's got a lot of nice texture to it. I'm loving the texture of it all. And I like these covers a lot. They're fun. The covers are great.

There's a really good. Issue 6 has a top 10 sheave for me. I mean, that is sheave himself right there. That is everything. Agreed. Agreed. The art gives me a little bit of a quality of like, when you're looking for someone to commission and you see someone that says like no mecks,

no furries, and you hire that person to do like a really good portrait of Carrie Fisher. You don't hire the guy who could like draw the best Darth Vader helmet you've ever seen in your life to do really good Mark Hamill fan art. And both of them exist here. And, you know, the interest difference in illicit. illustration is there, I would say. In that you're saying, you're saying here, the spaceships look good.

Darth Vader looks good. The spaceships look good. Darth Vader always looks good. Like the way the lighting is on his armor all of the time. It's amazing. The droids look really good. You don't think Dr. Affir looks good? I don't think the facial expressions always look the best.

Well, hey, y'all. That's just honoring Star Wars. in the belief, cast dynamic performers. Maybe that's true. You've got me there. Do you like Dr. Afrid doing her Catherine Zeta Jones shit

on these lasers? Yes, okay. So we both thought it. Oh, yeah. Oh, shit. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Allie and Natalie, does that mean anything to you what we just said?

I don't think so. I know who California Jones is. Austin, we're too young. They might be too young. Okay. I mean, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with talent on yourself?

I'm going to link the scene. This is from entrapment, which was, what, late 90s, early 2000s? I don't know. I only saw the trailer. And then tell me, I'll tell you what I remember about the trailer was this. Yeah. This is entrapment, which came from 1999. This is...

That's entrapment. I don't want to be free. There you go. This is directed by John and Meet at Amiel. Amy L. I don't know this director besides this. Is that true? Do I ever not see anything else? Anyway, it's a, it's like a heist movie with Captain Zeta Jones and Sean Connery.

And she has to get through this laser grid. You've seen this. Okay, so, so this for me is Vincent Cassel in Oceans 12. When he does the caperrera through the museum laser thing. Right, right, right, right. Doesn't Tom Cruise also do this when he gets lower to get the, he drops the knife and Mission possible. Yeah, but his assing it out like this.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. Vincent Castel, I think, is bringing the same amount of, like, sex appeal in the movement. Yes. You know, I think there's a correlation. The correlation there. But she literally does the trick in this, in this comic, which is, Captain St. Andrew Jones blows, like, some powder from her compact to reveal the physical laser.

It's just that movie. So there is, so in the 90s, laser grids like this show up fucking everywhere. And there's so many movies where people use gas or powder to reveal the laser grid. And I think it starts to show up in a bunch of games too. I think under Killing Moon has a defeat the laser grid bit. So I think this is an homage to like, like, this entire era of heist movies. Yeah.

Have these laser grids. And also, but here's what I like. every time they show up, you're like, well, that doesn't fucking work. Why do you lay them out that way? You can just step over it. If I had that many laser,

I would just build a fucking laser grid wall around the thing. Just put a wall. Yeah, good fucking luck. You can't get through it. And here, she gets to the thing. And then she gets caught on her way out because it looks like,

and I think, I think implication is the grid is moving. Oh, interesting. It is sweeping. Because if you look at the position when she gets caught, oh, you're right. I kind of see it.

The angles have, changed. They have. And so she just botches the timing on the way out. And then she has to Indiana Jones her way to the exit. Right. Which she does, literally rolling out of the chamber as the door slammed shut. Yes. And then she's surrounded by droids. By droids. I will say, I don't know that I love her microdroid, her droid swarm. What do they call it? A microdroid dust? Yeah. That's right. That's too, that's not. That's true mission impossible to me. That's like, that to me is like, yeah, that's like the fantasy, like, spy tech that, you know, is just so ridiculous.

Electronics can't be that small in Star Wars. That's the whole thing for me. So for people who are reading, she releases this dust that can kind of reveal the traces of the lasers for her to dodge through. and the dust is made up of like a swarm of presumably millions. Actually, hang on. She is a collector of old machine. She says it's antique. She does say it's antique.

Yeah. Okay. And okay, so here's the other thing. Kieran Gillen's a huge Warhammer guy. And I think the Warhammer vibes, as we're going to go along here, begin to increase with like, oh, these factions represent armies. But also this galaxy exists on the bone. of other eras and civilizations and she's out there haunted.

Like she's at a quarantine world, a lot of these things. Yeah, this is a quarantine world. She is a character who gets access to technology that nobody else in Star Wars has because she can go to like precursor civilizations or like people, the empire, just like fuck it. Like the Embarons also clearly have a different tech basis

than everyone else. Don't see that shit anywhere because bad things happen to the Empirons probably. Yeah. And I've just checked. I was trying to see if it was a reference to something else. It's not, but it doesn't really show up ever again. It also shows up in the Dr. Afra audiobook or something, but that is it.

So maybe what we're going to get is like she has a bag of tricks where she shows off a cool thing once and then that's it. We don't see it again. If that's the case, I'm kind of down. Because I think it would be cool to have a bunch of antique relic droid things that she could pull out. That's kind of fun. I mean, here what she's stealing is an evil droid mind. and then she puts it into a C3PO unit or into a 3PO style

protocol droid. Because what Vader has here is literally like hey guess what? Vader went out and got himself a daughter. Oh, an afro you mean. Yeah, I thought you meant in triple zero. I thought you meant that the droid. Yeah, no, I see. No, like this is like, oh hey, like you're you're basically an orphan

who's running around. like putting together old droids for your own nefarious or just curious purposes. Oh, look at this. You've got like a protocol droid besty, but it's a little bit evil. And like this is Vader sort of being like if Vader had a family, he would have been out in the garage with Leah like offering lessons on like rehabbing droids. And here he gets a little taste of that. What if he had said, you remind me of a boy I know. His name is J. Bo Hood.

Oh my fucking. He also modified. This is Jaybo Hood's daughter. I see. Of course. Of course. Of course. What if it were?

Oh, that would drive me crazy. Because, like, is she doing bits? Yeah. When she, like, a bows to him and says, you're, okay, you're what I've been waiting for my whole life. I was like, is she being mind-tricked here? Or is she just, like, doing a silly one? She's doing a silly one.

She's doing a silly one. She's, she's. So Giren has said, like, I needed to have a character who could make jokes because comics are not always serious. And she doesn't, Darth Vader is not going to make jokes. He might sometimes be darkly funny in the way he responds to a situation. But comics readers like jokes. And she gets to be that for me effectively. I'm really paraphrasing here.

But that was the gist of it. And so, and specifically what he was saying was like when she got her own comic, what was interesting is like, As the central character, she can't always be quipping. And so she gets dialed down a little bit. But in this comic, she is constantly doing little bits and gags. They're not really quips. I shouldn't say quips, but there are jokes. She's joking with Darth Vader.

They have a funny dynamic. Like, how did you find me anyway? And we get him just silently regarding her while a super cut of him just rag-talling people and giving him information. Yep. Unfolds. And she says, I probably don't want to know. I don't want to know.

But there is an element of like, Vader to a degree also self-aware of like the path he carves through the galaxy of like, this is just how it exists. There's a lot of her writing that it feels like it's trying to fill in like blank space, which is like something that you don't always get in comics. Like comics are allowed to be silent. Right. To have this character that feel like it's always trying to fill in that blankness,

with dialogue at first was kind of grading. But, like, I do, like, having it be a character trait instead of just, like, a writing trait or something. Right. The idea of, like, having to interact with Dark Vader and, like, you know, actually be in the space. I can see that coming from her. Yes. To have it coming from, like, the structural need from the comic. At first, I was, like, it was just hard to feel out at first.

I think I'm coming around on her, but I was very much. much like when she's doing the like multi-page like here's how I want you to kill me because I'm just like yapping thing I was like what do we get again that's that's where she won me over okay that that is like that scene really that scene really lands for me we'll get to it in a second yeah first we have to hear her say the evil this is where I was like oh she's evil Indiana Jones where she meets the little the little person who runs the little curator yeah who rules Utani Zane who is like, this thing

that you've gotten is you can't, this is a quarantine world, it's been quarantined for centuries and she goes, yes, because if people like you, small minds who just want to hide beautiful things in storage or a museum, it should be in an armory which is an incredibly

fucked up version of it should be in a museum. It's like literally like, I know he had this idea and it was like, it should be in an armory that's fucking so funny. I can't I can't wait to make her say that, which is an insane thing to think. Like, this, like, what's the, what's the Halo world or the marathon, the bungee word for it? Rampant to ramp.

It's a rampant AI. And she's like, hmm, we got to get this shit back out there. We got to make the meanest motherfucking droid we've ever seen. Deploy this shit immediately. And so they activate triple zero, a red-eyed 3PO. Uh-huh. I tell you know he's evil. That's how you know he's going to do his greeting.

And then once she immediately hands him the override command, he's like, okay, don't shake my hand. That's right. I was going to electrocute you. Sorry. And then what I love even more is, then they activate BT1, a Blastomac prototype. And its backstory is it seems like this was a Skunk Works project by Tarkin. The second they activated it, it destroyed the base. So we're doing IG88 from Tales of the Bounty Hunters

Where this thing is turned on Merks everyone You know what else we're doing? You know what else we've learned? Is that Tarkin was running the Imperial D squad. Oh my God. Because both of these things were part of Because he's because doesn't Triple Zero also say I was also a product

Yeah, I was also a product of the Good Sir Tarkin's initiative And so an entirely fluent with all internal tests languages. That's why she needs him. She needs him so that she can reactivate BT1 who only responds to this, you know, skunk works test language that he's been programmed in. And so both of them were part of Tarkin's secret, like, assassin droid crew. That motherfucker was doing evil D squad. I, you know, they're making me like Tarkin more.

I got to tell you. They're making him goofier for sure. And then, yeah, BT1 has, like, a rocket launcher and, like, it looks like a gatling laser cannon or something. It has, like, a strap of ammo attached to it, but it still just looks like a blaster. And flamethrowers. It's so goofy. But I don't hate it. It's so useful.

It is useful to have this stuff that's kind of comic reliefy be the sort of stuff in the middle pages over and over again, because the front pages and the back pages of each issue need to be Vader-Brute. And so you kind of like go, oh, Vader. And then you go, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, funny droid shit. And at the end, you go, oh, Vader, you know. And there's a little bit of like, Vader needs a friend. Vader needs a friend. And so what they have her doing, the issue ends with, like, how do you feel about

genosis? And he says, I have no feelings about genosis. And then the second they land, she starts asking, you know, ever been to geonosis, Lord Vader, and he starts having the flashbacks, and he tells her, cease you're probing. And she explains, I'm a rogue archaeologist. Got to expect me to probe a little. Yeah, uh-huh. Okay, two things about this.

One, in the first Afra chapter, issue three, that she mentions the droid gatra. And I was like, oh, I hope we find out who this guy, droid gautra is. But at the beginning of chapter four, she says, the droid gautra heard about a surveillance. surviving Ginoza and Queen with a droid factory. They wanted me to liberate it from the evil carbon-based oppression. But we can always steal it for us, eh? It's an organization.

It's not a droid. They're a droid rights organization. And they originally were supposed to be in Star Wars 1313, the canceled Choracont game that I know Allie is a... Bring it back. That was going to be part of that game, was going to be a droid rights like revolutionary organization.

Was that Patrice Desolay or was that Amy Hanig? I think it was Patrice Desa. I think it was the pre-Amy Henning one, Hennig one, not the, not, oh, what was her thing called? It had like a more dramatic name than 1313. Are we sure that wasn't her?

You're probably right, but it's not too late. Her thing was Project Ragged. He might be able to. Her thing was rag tag, which this was not. 1313 was, I think it was the Patrice one, but maybe I'm wrong. No, it was not the Patrice one. It was the Dominic Robillard and Matthias Warch one, which I don't really know those folks, so apologies. This is an era where Star Wars are really dedicated,

or the people licensing Star Wars games really dedicated to not making Star Wars games. It was like we're going to bring in big name, creative talent. We're going to put some like really enticing concept art and maybe even like vertical slice trailers out there. Then we're never going to do anything with it. Yep. Uh-huh. Well, here they are on Geonosis.

Following up to an episode of Rebels, I have to remind you, we did read these spoilers on the episode. Oh, I remember. You remember. Okay. They're out there. I was like, oh, this had a really pathetic end for that for that queen.

Because the Rebel's episode is like, hey, we did it. We gave the Geoenotions a new lease on life. That's right. That's right. Oh. I want to point out, Rob, did you see the memory that he had of being on Geonosis? It's of them exchanging a little smooch.

Yeah, do you remember what Pad Bay said? I want to die since the day we met. It was, yes, it's not I wanted to die, but it's, it may be, is it worse or is it better? It's, I've been dying a little bit each day. Oh, yeah. But yeah, they send the droids in to probe the tunnels. They see some fucked up looking battle droids who have like, like, faux wing attachments. They're not real, they're not wings that you could fly on, but they're like sort of geonotion style.

appendages. And red eyes so you know they're evil. Thank you. And red eyes so you know they're evil. And BT1 burns them all to a crisp. I thought it was really funny when he's like, hello, sirs. I presume you speak Junos and hive mind,

a language I am more than fluent in. Alas, I have nothing to say. BT, if you will, BT kills everyone. Oh, no, actually, a few words. do spring to mind. And then he, like the speech bubbles, I guess, in, in Gino's and hive mind. And he says, ha, ha, ha, you are on fire and also dead.

Like, there's something about him that works where, where our friend from Cotor 2, HK, did not at all. Like, I don't know why he's working for me. maybe because I'm in a comic and not like hearing his voice doing all the you know inflection and bits and everything

and I think the comedy is just a little bit funnier but yeah HK just keeps bringing things to a hall so it's part of it's just the way Cotor delivers things where it's like hump the brakes for having an HK scene and HK's going to talk to the camera like

I think Cotor has made a different era and it's like you're going through a space and HK is sort of like yamering alongside you and like observing things in the world I think it kills I um there's one line in here towards the end of this issue

after they recovered the droids that did read like HK and me it's when he says hmm this is like they're upgrading the droids or they're working on the droids restoring them hmm not perfect teething issues nothing that can't be fixed and we could always try

my enhancement methods masters and I was like oh that's HK voice that's HK voice and other than that I think it was pretty not bad but like you're not not good but I think solid I'm fine with evil R2 and C3PO fine you know what? Fine you know

that's funny I'm completely on board yeah like you said I think it's I think it's the fact that they're they're not that the, that the important moments don't have them in it. That's right. Like the moments where, you know, Darth Vader is brooding or is, you know, thinking about things. It's funny to think of, though.

Whatever. Sorry. Thank you, folks. You hadn't seen. I've seen it before. I've seen it before. It's every couple years ago. Thinking about this since I saw

Suicide Squad the other day. There's almost something chilling about the character of the Joker, someone who finds the thought of crime to be funny. Almost as if he's having a laugh. That's him. That's Triple Zero. Yep.

That's Triple Zero. Oh, oh, oh. I'm surprised I didn't give him with like a 3O or like a 3PO style thing, but they just Tripio. Yeah, he's just 3.0. He's three out.

Yeah. So, yeah, they fight off the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, she's her brood being stolen from her. Oh, it's so sad and pathetic. And the world, boom gets used more than I thought it would get used. It's, it's brutal. She's like, she's making babies, but they're not, they're, she's making droids in the shape of geonotions because she's immortal.

She can't die, but she's hooked herself up to the droid factory. So that she can still produce. Her species as far as we know is extinct. Yeah. So, like, this is a, like, a bird singing a song that can't be heard by another bird. Like, it's, it's bleak. It's really bleak. And they come and they sort of, like, do a rip and run of all her, all her droids.

And when we get revealed something here, anybody else pick up on this? The ship, Vader's personal ship, lifts the factory up. Anybody spot the ship? What ship is it, Rob? Or Natalie? It's the, uh, right? That's an Abu group. The Nibu space yacht.

It's not just anyone. It's Padme's ship. It's the one she left on Mustafa. It's the one she went to Mustafa in. He's not okay. He's not okay. He's not okay. He's not okay.

Like, like I said, he needs to stay angry. Like every time he like needs to go home from work, he's fucking just has all the reminders he needs to get back in the zone. That's right. And specifically, Afra is like, hey, are you sure your ship

can lift this thing? This whole droid factory? Like, it looked like a pretty little thing, but, and what Vader says is, do not worry. She has certain enhancements.

It's stronger than it looks. Which is like, is he talking about himself there? Is he talking about Padme? Is he talking about just the ship? But that means, has he been working on the ship? secretly for 20 years and like giving it top of the line upgrades.

It's his little garage project. Man. Bro. Dude. Maybe he had a P4, a P4DM3 AI in there. Oh my God. You hit us with the LEIT. I didn't do, do, do, do, do.

I just got combo in there. Oh my God. Oh, the ship that's so fucked up. Yeah. I like Afra's weird ship, by the way. The Ark Angel, which is also... It looked like a bug. It does look like a bug.

It's also an Indiana Jones reference with the Ark of the Covenant, the Raiders of the last Arators. The Raiders. Yeah. Intentionally. A.R.K. spelled that way. It is the Ark Angel. Yeah. But I like it shape.

I like the, it has like a weird. It looks like it's like a saucer and then like the nose of a shuttle pointed downward instead of outward. This is kind of weird, but I like it. It's cool. And I like him having this like, I like them building up this secondary force in this opening thing, right? Like we kind of blew past it, but when when they first talk, you know, about working together

and stuff, what he explains to her is like, I'm on. I'm on the back, my back foot at this point. You know, like, I need, he says, there was a time I had armies at my beck and call. That time has passed. I need resources of my own private resources. I think that's like a really fun, again, a detail I think we've all thought about when we've talked about these movies just now, right? We've talked about, oh, Vader's looking for Luke without, without the emperor maybe

knowing all the way. So filling in this stuff works for me pretty well. And I think the characterization is just good, which helps a lot. That said, what I, what I've found if I bought this individual comic? And I was like, I guess this is a comic where they just killed the Geocean droids and steal. Okay. Sometimes, sometimes I'm really glad I don't read individual floppies month to month anymore that I really do just wait until there's big. I could never, here's the, I can never do it.

I did it for a little while. Because they're so short. They are so short. And it's like, that is not, it's, it's, it's not. a meal. I need the meal. Well, you would build a meal every week with a pool list that was like, you know, 12 comics. This is the thing is it got expensive

so quick, unless what you wanted to do is read comics for 12 minutes instead of for an hour, you know, so. I just never understood, like, because the trades were right there. You go to the same comic book shop. There's the trades. And you know, the snobbery of it

was so much, oh, you're buying the trades? Yeah, I am. Because it has the whole fucking arc. Yeah. You don't want to talk about it as it's coming out. It's a different lifestyle thing, right? Like, it's like, I think about, you know, I had a lot of fun. You people lined up to get the, getting the weeklies?

Absolutely not. Geez. There are definitely things I loved reading week to week. But it became, and I will say, like, this is a situation where I'm glad I'm reading this in the big omnibus or in the trades. I, if I was reading this week to week or month to month, I probably would also be reading the Star Wars comic because what if there's more instances where the two

stories cross over and that isn't what I want to be reading but it would have compelled me to do it and because it's short. Fuck it on week two I'll get the Vader comic and on week three I'll get Star Wars like that's how they get you. I'm glad we don't have to do that for this show. I'm glad

that there's no part of us that's like well wait a second should we also be reading the Star Wars comic alongside it? You know unless someone writes it and says that comics actually no even if that happened I don't think I'm going to do it. So, or at least not to cover it. I just want its own thing.

Yeah, I just want to do Darth Vader as its own thing. Yep. Rob, you really like the scene at the end where Afra is like, listen, I know what it means to work for Darth Vader. Kill me quick when it's time. She wants the lightsaber through the neck. No warning. Doesn't want to know what's coming. Just Tony Soprano lights out.

And doesn't want to be ejected in the space. specifically not ejected into space, a thing we see her helping to do to other people in the next issue. But like, I like it in part, because I am a sucker for this again. Like, there's a reason I probably watch collateral more than any Michael Man movie. It's like Vincent and Max is such a, like, these are two characters where sort of there's an implicit pending betrayal for the entire thing. But may, what if? Yeah. Maybe not.

Maybe if this connection we formed can be real. Like maybe we can both see this out. And again, the elements in which, you know, she sort of functions as a, both like a surrogate daughter, but also just a representation of like who he used to be, right? And in some ways, like, you can read a lot into his silent impassivity while she sort of makes this pitch. and then making the decision that he is, you know, for Vader, huge step. Not going to kill her. Not going to kill her.

There's something she says that I think did hit for me or made me curious. It didn't necessarily hit for me. It made me go, huh. Because I haven't read the whole Afra trait or her arc, her whole book. And so I maybe had been misunderstanding who she is. I had been thinking of her as being in the sort of scoundrel world. the sort of scum and villainy world of Star Wars. But so she says something here that made me go, oh, wait, is she like a dyed-in-the-wool imperial

believer? She says, you know, you can trust me, but you shouldn't. I am a walking, talking, stupid risk. You need to win, Lord Vader. This is for a higher cause. When you need to do it, do it. And lightsaber, please. And I was like, oh, she, she's like,

bought in to Darth Vader. She wants Darth Vader to win. And I don't know what that means yet. Does she want the empire to beat the rebels? Does she want Vader to beat his rivals inside of the empire? Does she want, you know? To me, it is so clear he's doing something off books that's for him. Right.

That she like sees a lane through which. So I don't think it's like, oh, that you're, you depict the true empire. Like, there's some other lane that she is working in that what he, he is doing somehow suits it. But I'm curious what that is because if she's like, I'm willing to be a, I'm willing to die in service to you and whatever your aim is. I, I'm curious

to see if we find out what she believes is that aim. Besides just, he's willing to do his own personal shit. So, this was the turning point of the scene for me too. I was like, what are you getting at here? What a weird thing to say? It seems like such a unique

perspective that we've seen in Star Wars. It's sort of like the when you're first exposed to, like, force users outside of the Jedi Sith dichotomy or whatever. Like, what does it feel like to be, like, a citizen in Star Wars who's, like, really into the empire? Like, we've not really seen that very much. Especially someone who is...

She's not part of the empire, or she's not an imperial... She is now, but she isn't, like, an imperial soldier. She didn't come up through imperial intelligence. She's not... You know what I mean? She's not part of... She's, like, pure civilian, civilian. who like, despite that,

feels like there's something within this organization that, like, is the right call. But also provided... What is her higher cause? Like, I'm so curious... Right. When she says...

She just wants to free all these beautiful antique war machines. I guess so. And turn them loose to see what they do. I do wonder if that's part of it. I do wonder if the fact that he is... You know, Tag was describing him as being like the lightsaber,

a singular weapon from an older time. I wonder if there is some sort of archaeological, you represent an age that's lost, that's behind us now, part of this. I'm curious. I don't think we have enough yet. I think we'll continue to try to see this as we go forward.

But, like, that was the moment, Ali, for me, too, where I went, oh, there's, there's an edge to this that I didn't expect at all. She isn't just,

she isn't just Indiana Jones. She's Indiana Jones who believes strongly in something that isn't just, she's not just like the scoundrel of the book. She has, something else going on too, and I'm very curious to see what that is. And that's when we knew we'd end up reading the Dr. Afterdocks. I mean, maybe. We'll see. We'll see how this leaves us.

Maybe we get to the end of this and we're like, well, that first three is great. This is a Spielberg watching, like, Rise of Skywalker. But what about Dr. Afra? I mean, I will tell you this. Just from reading this, I'm shocked we don't have a Dr. Afra show. Like I Yeah Yeah

I instantly was like Such a such a like no brainer I'm just really surprised Like and again Maybe the rest of the stories don't get there But like I My initial read on her was like Oh she seems

She seems ready for the Disney Plus TV show Maybe they're just not touching this era But no they just need to figure out Who the main male character is going to be So that they're not having a female led show ever again I know some stuff about Dr. Afra. Actually, I've just remembered that will make it be the fact that they'll never make that show. So that's all.

We'll get there. Is this canon, though? Yeah, this is- This is- This is- This is Canon. He was told specifically this is the new canon. Like, this is one of the first Disney-era movies, or not movies, comics, that is explicitly on these.

like this comes out just after they make the separation from expanded universe to legends and this is new canon explicitly the thing that like is supposed to have happened off screen now I'll try to find that exact quote for you I should have written down here in the in the notes but I did read this so

here it is here it is here it is here it is I get to do the story of Darth Vader from the end of the first Star Wars film to the start of Empire Strikes Back. It's a big story, too. It's not just that I want to write Darth Vader. It's that I get to write the story of Darth Vader, and it's all in canon.

As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, this is what happened. So, it is canon. Okay. I was just reading it, I was like, this clone stuff, which we're about to talk about, because it's the next chapter, was like, this is really sequel trilogy stuff, right?

Like, is this, am I? I also believe that this is the start of Papatines. Oh, yeah, clones will do it for me. That ends up being... I had the same thought, Allie. I had the same thought of, like, if I was reading this comic at the time,

and then I saw Rise of Skywalker, would I have been like, holy shit? That's the project that... I keep forgetting his name. Silo. Silo. Silo 5. It's really silo? It's really silo.

C-Y-L-O, right? Silo I keep going to say Silon or Silo. So too close to Riloh. Oh, too close to Riloh. That's Raylo. It is Raylo.

It is Raylo. It is Raylo. It is, yeah. No, it's Kylo, though, right? It is Kylo. It is Kylo. Kylo. I'm sorry, I'm all

Kylo. I told MK this morning, I mowed the lawn yesterday. And I was like, oh, my God, I have laky eggs. And that's what my brain does. now. So it's like, it's close to

Rylo. Rylow 10. This, okay, so this does come out before the Force Awakens. So that means

someone did go into the theater and hear the name Kylo Ren and go, oh, like Silo? Could they be related? Do you think anybody

like watched, like, was like, I know, I know exactly what's going on here. Darth Sidious is going to come back because he

was making those clones in the in this Darth Vader comments. Yes. Well, okay, the other thing that you don't know, we haven't talked about this explicitly is like, actually we've already read the Thrawn books, the Thrawn trilogy, which has clones from the Clone Wars, right? But like the Force Awakens, or sorry, not Force Awakens. The Rise of Skywalker is not the first time that we've had to deal with. What if Palpatine cloned himself in this fucking, in this Star Wars franchise?

Dark Empire. We're talking about Dark Empire. We're talking about, isn't there even another EU thing back then where there was another Palpatine clone? Or is it just Dark Empire? It was, I think it was just Dark Empire. Children of the Jedi has a Palpatine child that he has with an imperial concubine. Right. Oh, hell no.

This imagined sheave as like a, like an emperor who had a harem. Hmm. I don't like it. That sounds right. Yeah. Anyway, so. But oh, yeah, what if silo four or five is tied to Snoke? It won't be in this comic.

But what if eventually they make that connection? It would suck. Yeah. I want this to never touch. This is the dilemma. This is us talking about, like, how good it is that this stuff feels like it's nicely in a bottle and not necessarily touching too much of the other stuff. Anyway, he interrogates this guy.

Yep. Because Chrisan brings him in. And it just, it starts that, hey, they're training your replacements at this base. Yeah. And to go to the base, it's a big, it's like a, what if Nar Shadal was on the back of a big, like, prehistoric fish creatures swimming through space. Yeah. They land on it. We redo the opening gun battle of Star Wars New Hope.

It is. But with this time a little twist, instead of Vader coming through the blast door, the droid comes to the blast door, and then Vader blows through the concrete, the rock or the flesh? I think it's the flesh rob. The critter of this living asteroid. And all these dudes get sucked out in the space. And Africa goes, ooh, that's what you get for not wearing magnetic clamps.

Or she says burr, because she was complaining about how cold it was if you get sucked out in the space in the previous issue. so it's cool seeing battle droids his new battle droids walking with him yeah they're pretty swaggy they're not the they're not the roger rogers of the past let's be clear they're they've gotten your daddy's battle droids they're cool and then yeah they fight through the the hallways until they get to a dojo they use the word dojo they sure do you this by the way is where i started to get like real Warhammer vibes of so you're like okay you're in the vibe you're never allowed to mix

these kits for these reasons like the the battle droid army can't have a Jedi if you put a Jedi with the battle droid army the entire game balance is fucked Jedi fight with this army but for the purpose of the story we're gonna plank Vader right to what if you had high level battle droids and holy shit it's an army without weaknesses yeah wrecking shop of these imperial guardsmen I was, if you did it at the, at the full strategic level instead of the tactical or skirmish levels, Rob, it would be fine because then the battle traitors would just be an auxiliary unit instead of, you couldn't combine the two armies, but you could have an auxiliary of battle droids next to Stormtroopers, that'd be fine. I spent too much money on Warhammer for one year and, oh well. Yeah, yeah, then I went to grad. Then I spent too much money on grad school instead, which was way more expensive.

So. And then, yeah, we meet the silo crew. We meet the would-be replacements, starting with the twins or the siblings. I don't know if they're actually twins. But I think they'd call the twins, right? Yeah, Morit and Aeolin. Aeolin?

You described them as Silver Age Jedi. Is that because of their goofy-ass headbands or their blue tunics? It's everything. They're too shiny, the tunics, the hairdoos. The hairdos. The, like, cape robes that they're wearing. Yeah.

Everything is like, yeah, to me, it's all pure, like, Silver Age comics. Like, this kind of even feels like he's raiding Charles Xavier's, like, Jedi Training Lab. Yeah. Like, is school for dubiously gifted OCs. And they're not gifted, right? They close the door behind. him and he goes, the door, that was not of the force. That was trickery.

The force is weak with you. You are no Jedi. You are no Sith. And the guy goes, that's the last thing I'd want to be. Jedi, Sith, their history. Your turn, Aeulen. And then his sister comes in and says, my brother speaks crudely. I'm a great admirer of your kind, Lord Vader, in your time.

And then they, you know, the fight stops because Silo 5 shows up to stop them. They have like a green and a yellow lightsaber. Yeah, that was interesting. I figured they'd both be yellow because of the sort of non-Jedi, non-Syth. But interesting choice to have her wield a green lightsaber. Silo 5 reveals himself to be not Silo 4, but Silo 5 to Darth Vader. I guess he had a kill switch that prints a new version of him.

That says he's like a Mickey 17 situation. Oh, yeah, he's like a Mickey 17 situation. Where he can be printed. I like that he says, I've created a personality map small enough to be simulated efficiently. Add memory banks and plug-in calculation systems, and I am an immortal system. It's very funny to me that he's like, I made myself simple enough to be simulated efficiently. Like my personality, I'm boring as hell.

I don't know about nothing. I'm not good at anything except this. I don't have a good personality. I don't have a big personality. That's for sure. I sand it all that shit off. Do not bring this guy to a party. No.

Oh, my God. Could you imagine? But he does represent. He says, I'm something new and far from human. And it turns out so are all of his people. except they're all kind of retries on past ideas because you have these two guys, you have the siblings who are like,

not Jedi, not Sith, lightsaber wielders, who seem to have like cybernetic enhancements that let them do things like, like they seem to be able to summon the, summon flame like wizards or something, you know?

Um, you have a Trondotion who's just actually another, like, AI matrix inside of a Trondotion body. You have a, Amon Kalamari, who is, is like grievous's body

Take 2, which is pretty goofy. And then you have a like a mad scientist woman named, what is her full name? It's very funny. Toulan void gaser who has these floating drones

that are sort of like Gundam bits or funnels that like fly around her. I mean, I guess they're like Star Wars drones. Star Wars have training drones, have training droids, like the ones that Luke trains on in a new hope. But they're like dozens of them that can like independently shoot or

I think in one shot it looks like they have lightsabers even. So I, it's a goofy. It is, Rob, there is an X-Men quality to them. There is a like superhero 70 superhero squad energy to them for sure. Yeah, there's just something

so weird about their designs that like this sort of insistence on using silhouettes that we're familiar with. Yeah. And like, even the, like, mad scientist woman is basically wearing a black and parol uniform. Like, there's not really a big deviation there. And I, like.

But Dr. Strange love glasses. Yes. Yes. Specifically. Yeah. She has that shit on. I'm just saying I've seen that outfit before. And it's just, like, from a design perspective, I guess it's kind of fun and it's familiar.

But, like, from, like, an in-universe aesthetic. perspective, it just seems really, like, I don't know what's being told to me about the personality of these twins and what they think about what they're wearing. And they have, like, you know, they have different opinions on how cool the Jedi are, you know, what they actually are. But, like, they haven't broken from that aesthetically. Is that, like, from Silo? Is that from Palpatine? I think this is. Yeah, I mean, I think that you're hitting it, though, kind of, right? Which is, like, Silo is saying the future is not like the past

Vader you were the blueprint this is the real deal like you were the the blending of and this is even what Palpatine kind of says you were the blending of man and machine and the force right and this new the future is new

the future is is these people who don't hew to Jedi and Sith it's not grievous who has this particular history it's just Moncal you know it's combining It's combining Admiral Akbar with General Grievous.

It's these kind of post-human, he describes himself as being more than a human. But all they are is echoes of the past. For us, the reader, we can see through that rhetoric and be like, you're just Basque, the fucking Trandotian bounty hunter with neon claws. You two are just like Jedi from the old Republic comics who don't even get that shit off the way that those characters did. We can see through that because Vader. Is the guy going, no, the old ways had something.

We're losing those old ways. It really increasingly feels like one of the stakes of these comics is that even the emperor is saying like, is saying kill the past, actually. It's saying like everything before us is wasted and useless. We have to build something new and imperial that isn't tied to the Sith or the Jedi and is tied to some new thing. but all this motherfucker can do is make bad copies of stuff we already know. So I think your friction with that is supposed to be the read. My read right now is that that friction is meant for you to pick up on and for Vader to pick up, pick up on. Because he's like, these are jokes, you know.

Yeah. He knew General Grievous. But one of them has him on the back foot. That's true. When one of the twins just cuts the dude open. Yeah, it's the Tradotion, which interestingly is, of course, the one who, is just the AI matrix that can be reapplied to another body, right?

So you didn't even, they didn't even really kill that one. They just wasted that one's body and he'll show up, I'm sure, in six issues in, because they tease that you could even put him in a rancor body, right? So, I bet we get that.

Well, in Vader's point is I had him. I didn't need your help. That's right. And you took the kill away from me, in fact, right? I can't wait for these people to get killed. They are going to get killed in a really funny way. I can just feel it. It's going to be like really embarrassing for them and like not epic.

It made me wonder, do you think we'll get the Inquisitors here in this book? Because they're kind of Vader's version of that. No, they're not. Are they? I guess they are. They die on core. Sorry, where do they die in rebels? The Sith Temple of...

You had it. Malicorn. Malicorn. Malicorn, not Corvod. Yeah, Malichor, of course. Right here where Kray's temple was. Damn. So, like, the Inquisitors were wiped out there, like, literally a couple years before the, the, the, a new hope.

Maybe they'll bring us more, but yeah, like, to a degree, they, these are, like, sauceless inquisitors. And then we get to Vader saying their abominations, this is a heresy. Yeah. This is a heresy. The word heresy, I was not expecting that. Like, is that how anyone has thought of Vader previously? Is someone who would use a term like that here?

Well, and so again, like, when he fires back with everything is of the force, and for me, I was like everything was of the SIF. Because for me, I think what Palpatine is kind of giving away here is that I actually don't believe anything. Right. To me, to me it is like, this isn't some philosophical grand statement where like droids are of the force, machines are of the force, and the inanimate is of the force, no, it is that whatever suits him, and I think for me that's why I substitute the SIF, anything useful, any sort of power is for him to grasp as a SIF. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with us. We don't, anything that is useful as of the force and we are force wielders

and therefore I'll wield it. And Vader, I think, still has enough Jedi in him that the force is a life force. It is a universal, like, stuff of life, stuff of creation. And to turn away from that is to turn away from the actual source of our power. Like, we are not, and I guess this is maybe where Palpatine's thinking is. He's kind of in the, or it's sort of implied here is he is in the process of substituting the divine for the material. Right. 100%.

The, the, the death star is his new lightsaber. This is the philosophy, yes. Yes. That he's adapted, that Tarkin philosophy that we were talking about is, in some ways, the emperor's philosophy, a force projection. of moving past, I mean, force projection, force projection. The book also makes that pun earlier and does call it out by moving going, because they call a force multiplier. But yeah, Rob, like, I think that you're right.

And this is the thing that's so fascinating is like, does that, Vader, is part of the way that Vader has made sense of leaving the Jedi and betraying the Jedi, is that he's kept the religiosity and said, I know. The Palpatine has shown me the truth of the force. The truth of the force is the way of the Sith. But he didn't have to give up the religiosity. And so it's been easier for him to sit with his deeds because he believes strongly still in a Jedi style system of belief. And that now he's being confronted with this idea that like, oh, Palpatine's arbitrary in his administration of theology.

And once that's arbitrary, you don't have the excuse of having been on the right side of God effectively, of the right side of the force. for when you did all of those things. You know, something visual in all these. Did you, did you pick up on this? Did anybody pick up on this? As Sidious is talking to him, we get these Vader-like speed line close-ups. It's like he's being force-pushed in these panels. This is like the bottom right panel of the one of the page where Palpatine is saying

that he was a disappointment on Mustafa. And then on the next page even, when he says that he was, he had been. worthy of the name Vader and he's hoping he'll continue it. There's like these lines hitting him as if like he's being shaken by the idea that Sidious doesn't that Sidious isn't tied up

in the same system of belief that he is. You know? Well, and distances opening up between them throughout the scene where like the final shot is very much, like it's almost like God, the end of the affair and the graduate.

The final shot where, where, Mrs. Robinson is telling Benjamin just get out. And she looks so small and lost in that frame. Might be a split diopter shot. The absolute, the goat of the things are fucked up shots. But like, there's a bit of that where Palpatine is sort of dismissing him. But also maybe he intentionally hears put Vader in his place, but like too well, right? that he's opening up this psychic distance between them

where on some level, Vader needed to believe in something. And what Palpatine turns around and gives him here is complete cynicism. That the force is whatever I say it is. Whatever force, whatever power I can wield, then that is of the force.

There are no teachings that I have. actually believe in. There are no sources of power that we have to master or train. It is whatever is useful. And today I find useful this group of retreads. And the other part of this is Vader coming terms with the levels of betrayal. And we haven't even hit the big one yet. Well, that's why I was just thinking. But Vader says, they've been training for 20 years. Yes. All this, all these years, you were considering replacing me. The timeline matters to Vader. Yes. The second he woke up and all he had was his master and surrogate, like, adoptive parent, she was already spitting up this program to move on from Vader.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I mean... And where was Vader going to move on to? He has nothing. He has his wife's ship. That's, that thing is like, Vader burned every bridge. There's nothing.

And Palpatine is immediately like, I'll get another one. Allie, what were you going to say? Yeah, there's just something to like trying to bridge this opinion from Anakin to Darth Vader in this like heresy. This is blasphemy. I have this like full faith in the force sort of thing in that like I don't know that I felt like that for Anakin in a way that like, you know, any, any attempts at like, you know, know, easing his anxiety from, from Obi-Wan or for Yoda by being like, trust in the force. When you lose people, they're going to go back to the force. Like, this is a thing all over around you.

You should be willing to let go of things because you have the force. Like, Anakin never felt like that. And, you know, Anakin also lived this life where he was trying to have a grasp around everything around him. He felt like the force was something that he could massage into the power that he was told that he had. He was put on this pedestal and he believed it about himself. But like, I feel like, you know, losing all of that, the tragedy of what actually happened to him was sort of this wake of call of like, oh, this is something the force did to me, right? Like, or if I had had that

faith then, I would have made these different choices. And now I am living in the, the aftermath of what the power of the force is. And therefore, I, like, am subjecting myself to. it. And him, like, that is a broken, like, sort of relationship line. Yeah. Between him and Palpatine. It is, like, over, he's like, the thing that is important to my life and that guides me is the force and not Palpatine anymore. And, like, Palpatine moving away from, like, where the force bubble is on this, like, map is just, like, not a good call in Palpatine's eyes, but, I mean, you know, Palpatine is always going to make it work, so whatever. But it's just like, it's really the, like, the, like, I hope that this comic goes more into this later as we sort of get closer to, like, the Anakin of it all.

Of just being like, oh, he did not have that faith before. This is something new in his life that he's come to. Born again, Vader. Like, like, truly, like, he went through this terrible tragedy and his priest got him through it. and now his priest is being revealed to be a fucking liar about a lot of it. Yeah, I think the funny thing is I think it's the thing that's kind of lost when we meet, like I don't think the prequelts will. He sells us much on Anakin as a person who believes or even understands things quite well, right?

Like, Anakin is not getting confirmed. Like he's been the one kid, so why aren't you getting confirmed? It turns out I actually kind of failed the test. I don't actually I don't actually understand this stuff. So, but I do think this is so of a piece with what we see in a new hope

where Vader is now, and I do hope we fill in this gap because the thing I can sort of imagine is Vader was used to hunt down the Jedi. Obi-one says this, that Obi-1 turned and like, he was the instrument to slaughter of the Jedi. There's no more Jedi.

There's no more Jedi. I haven't really been Jedi around quite a while. Now, Calcastus, yes, yes, yes. But effectively, the Jedi not been an active threat. And Vader is, like, haunting the Death Star like Banquo's ghost, right? Like, they don't really, they don't treat him with respect. There's a degree that he's already fallen out of Imperial favor, that the Emperor views him as, like, thank you, you've been useful. Go hang out on the Death Star, but, like, the space station is the future. Like, once this thing is up and running, we have no need.

of this. And somewhere in all this, it sort of seems like Vader has started, like, being surrounded by this technological supremacy and all this has started to really cleave to this idea of, no, I'm in touch with a true wellspring of strength here in the universe. It's the force.

And what I'm surrounded by is technological hubris that the emperor is feeding. And to degree, again, there's the broken promise of like the emperor hanging, dangling, Darth Plagis in front of in front of Anakin.

The recipes, file not found. Yeah. It's funny because even that's, it's described as a force technique, but it's also kind of positioned as technological, right? Because it's like, oh, the Jedi don't have this. I have this. Or someone else. That tech is out there somewhere.

It's a technique instead of being a technology. But it's still kind of a tech. If it's a thing the Jedi don't have access to in that way. It's a way of interacting with the world. Even there, it's dangling technology in front of Anakin, you know, a forbidden way of touching the world. It kind of does go back more and more. Like, the emperor has always been this.

Vader was too close to see it. And he sees it now. And the thing that I was going to say before is like, imagine if this conversation doesn't happen. Imagine if he doesn't find out, find this stuff out before the Boba Fett conversation. does what follows. I know we're filling in gaps, so obviously it's not the cases it all is going to go back

to what happens in the original trilogy. But it feels like part of what's being set up here is like he's already doubting the emperor now in a way he wasn't in issue one. And then he immediately finds out this other betrayal. Not only were you training replacements

for me for 20 years, but also you've been hiding the most important thing in my life from me. You know, you may as well, you may as well have my son at that. You know what I mean? You may as well have already taken my son from me. Well, in these last six pages, like, this is the shit where...

They're so efficient. Fett gives him the name, and we just see Vader staring out of space, not reacting. Fett walks away. And then the flashbacks. I do love how well-rendered the movie scenes are in this comic. Like, all the, all the snapshots of the movies are good reproductions, I think, for most part of the shot, but also, like, evocative in a way that is, like, its own distinct thing, right? Like, Vader's memories of him being brought back to life on the slab, basically. That's not how that shot looks in the movie,

but it is a really cool picture, like really cool illustration of that moment. But, yeah, Vader's just revisiting it, and the thing that he lands on, the thing that causes him to, like, like, crack the glass is Palpatine's answer about Padme. Yeah. She died.

You killed her. You killed her. And then he called, and I came to that to be the end of the issue. So this little call afterwards was a surprise to me. Where he calls him and the emperor is like, I sense your anger, great anchor.

Have you something to say? Some proud, defiant words? Or are you wise enough to know your place? Again, hubris here. Because he doesn't know what Vader just found out. He thinks Vader's calling him over this other shit. He's doing a victory lap over their last dark. That's exactly right.

It's actually a really clever storytelling. The Palpatine, again, if Vader didn't get this information, you could almost imagine Vader being like Palpatine, turns out my son is alive. That's right. But he is a rejected child. His surrogate father figure has already revealed, I didn't have viewed you as my child.

I viewed you as a tool. I already had your replacement ready to go. 20 years ago. And then he gets this information. Now it's like, oh, I have a mortal enemy. Yeah.

And it's not just, I have a replacement for you. I have replacements that don't look anything like you. I have replacements that look like stuff that is like, it's making fun of you in your era. And Vader suddenly has a line on a mini me on a chance at someone who maybe even reminds him of himself. Because then the final actual page, or then at the final page, the second, the final page, is him looking out of the cracked window, remembering Padmei on Mustafa, remembering, or remembering, yes, is it Schme? Is that Schme's funeral?

No, that's pregnant Padme. Was he there for that? I guess maybe he got the Zoom link. Maybe he got the Zoom link. Maybe he got the Zoom link for pregnant for Padme's funeral. maybe he could sense into the force. Then we get... Yeah, right?

Hang on. Oh, no. That's a really badly drawn Padmay, isn't it? For a second, I thought that was his mom. That's what I was saying, is that... But you're right, that's like a key shot from Padmay's funeral. So, I don't know. The funeral, but off the left.

Oh, no, that's Padmay at the foot of the ship. Okay, we need a different... We need another pass on that. You know, sometimes it's time to ship the damn comic, unfortunately. So, yeah, I don't know how he sees this, but then the third one is, of course, the Death Star Trench Run. And then the fourth one is, of course, from the comic we didn't read from Star Wars one, Luke with a man. Why is this here? Because, again, I wish that comic didn't exist.

It's so bad. Like, if, imagine that panel was Luke screaming when he sees a Juan dying? And I would be like, oh, a New Hope is such a good movie. And that was such a good scene. And I love this comic. like, yeah, it's only. Nope. No, again, it's the answer

that it's like, oh, you're going, oh, shit, six months ago, I read that comic. And that's not true for us. And it's not going to be true for us. It never will be true. We're just out of the ecosystem. But, you know, we speak from our perspectives

and it's all we can do. That's true. Unfortunately for us, it's not 2015. That's right. Right. You're not. wrong. Many things I would go back to. I mean, not that it was

that much better, but you know, didn't know. Damn, if we could go back. You just go back. We can change some things. And also, again, like, Vader clever in a way that, like, you know,

it's honestly taking a polygraph, right? I am angry. You would not have me otherwise. My anger brought me to you. I want you to know I will not fail. And I understand us precisely. That's right.

I was like, oh, they gotta get into counseling. I understand us precisely. Yeah, but the,

you're a marked man. Like, just like straight of calling his shot. Oh, yeah. That's why. It's wild.

It's so good. This is something's this last, this last shot of him staring out through the cracked glass at the Imperial Fleet,

it will all be mine. It's really, you know, I really wonder, how like if Sidious is sensing anything

in this moment like does sit is Sidious at all there's a part of me that wonders if Sidious is kind of interest in non-force oriented technology weaponry assets

if like it's it's distracting him enough to not really be tapping into where Vader is at in this moment. Like is that kind of, is his obsession with just imperial control

by whatever means necessary? Is that creating enough space between him and Vader for Vader to kind of have these feelings about, in this realization about his son to kind of fly under the radar? I wonder how connected Sidious is to the force in general.

In general. Like how often is he meditating on the dark side? I don't know. Like it feels like it's up to whatever interpretation or, you know? Well, and I think just through our conversation here, through what we see here, I almost feel like the sheave we get in return to the, Return of the Jedi is maybe already like moving on to a different plan again, right? Like this is.

He's divested from the force. Yeah, this is him at his most material Where I can solve all my problems Through political and military force And Return of the Jedi He started to feel like Oh, I do have a problem here That I can't solve with that

Like shit, the force is back That kind of feels right That like oh Christ that prophecy Was still floating around out there Yeah Like again like Vader's faith in Oh this stuff is all real And return of the Jedi feels like

Palpatine having that late-dawny realization like fuck it's real I gotta get back ahead of this yeah yeah yeah he doesn't have it anymore it's been a minute

it's been a minute since he had to play by those rules he played the masterfully in the end of the fall of the republic right is like again like he know he understood the way the currents of the force he understood the currents of history and knew how to play them

and play the Jedi and it didn't help that the Jedi were like completely bombing it, you know? Yeah. But the, God, the way it's, it's so palpable here that, like, Sheave is, again, like, he's a sadist. And he likes Vader's pain. He likes his hurt.

And so he gets on this call and he can't even see, like, hey, this guy's just got an incredibly fucking dangerous to you. It doesn't matter to him because it's like, look at, look at what I inflicted on this little creature of mine. Well, and that's the thing is until this moment, Vader has gone, of course he is a, is a, as a Satanist, of course he wants to hurt me. Of course he wants to bring me into pain. Pain is power.

Power is truth. You know, this is our dogma. This is our belief. He's belittling me to make me angry. It's good when I'm angry. The force responds to anger. With anger, we can control the force. That's what's good, you know?

And he's learned yesterday for the first time or hours ago. Oh, he actually doesn't believe any of that shit. Or he's, he's so loose in his application of it that he's willing to, like, let the fucking super twins be part of the plan. He's willing to put a bond... What's how passionless they are. They don't give a fuck. They don't believe in anything.

You know, there's a little bit of Cold Warrior Vader here who's, like, living in the 90s. You know, we're... Not to get us back to sneakers as always, right? But, like, there's a little bit of Palpatine is the one who's like, The war is over. We put all that shit behind us. And Vader is like, we used to fight for real things in this world.

Where did the belief go? Where did the passion go? You're telling me we're fighting over ones and zeros now. We're fighting over, you know, on one hand, he's fucking tag, telling him that the future is just having a lot of ships. And now, like, he goes to the emperor, and he's like, well, the emperor is, of course, the source of all truth in the galaxy. And he says that the emperor is like, we can put a computer chip in this trans ocean and give him later. laser claws. And he has to be like,

what the fuck is happening anymore? My best friend is this woman who steals from museums or something? Like, I don't, what am I supposed to do? And then, like,

a shot through the dark, he learns he has a sun. And like, oh, my God, can you imagine the power it must have in his mind or in his heart to make,

oh, there's a canvas out there in the world ready for me to try to paint a better galaxy. And not better isn't good, but better is in I can get things, there's a sort of, you know,

restoration fantasy happening inside of Vader's mind in this moment, you know? Which is kind of interesting too, because that also disappears. Like that vision of, yeah, he makes the pitch to Luke will rule the galaxy together, like father and son. But it really does feel like by return of the Jedi, that's not really, his heart's not in this program. Yeah. Like him here, like he's staring at the fleet, a planet in the distance, clenched fist. He sees the galaxy in his grasp.

He can take everything that was taken from him and he can take what Palpatine possesses, all the material power of the state, the resources of the galaxy. He's going to take it all. Somewhere in this arc, Vader is going to abandon that as his vision. The stakes are really going to get much more personal as like, I want my son. And kind of in whatever capacity that he'll have me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven't read these. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, like I really feel like Luke is this, like, is this thing that he can do right in terms, not in like, do good things. but, like, can be the right, the right version of a Sith or the right version of the chosen one or the right, you know, like, I just think there, it really feels like there's this draw to him as I can make him into what I should have become. Well, I think, because we'll see more what his vision is, I think, as we go for these comics, but I think, maybe even superseding that Vader's position

is this guy for whom like again his story ended 20 years ago and the rest has kind of been this awful post script of everything he sacrificed for his family his wife his child admittedly he did it to himself but regardless

like all the things all his hopes and ambitions for the future just died lost all of it and he's been in this post script where nothing ever happens again the Stover book this is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker forever. Yeah. And that forever is just this ellipse going on into, like, infinity, except now, Boba Fett

says the name Skywalker. And Vader realizes the story never ended. It's still out there. Like, the postscript is over. He's been in the timeout. But that wasn't the end. And now that story begins to propel forward again with narrative force behind it, with Vader's sense of like force like predestination.

But I think that for me the biggest change is not just that like I can get my son back and I can fix everything and and he's this canvas. But I think most importantly like Vader's a guy who's been asleep. Yeah. You know? And this this first, these first six issues are Vader waking up. Yeah.

In the back of the Omnibus, Gillen has like a little notes about first each issue. and then eventually each trade or each arc. He does note in issue six that this scene originally was written for the Star Wars number six, the other version of it that I posted

in our internal chat. But he says, we had more time, we had more space to devote to it and more room to contextualize. I suspect if people are going to choose anyone's sequence from the book to keep, it would be this one.

I'm really pleased with what everyone did with it. My original draft was actually a little chattier to hold people's hands through the final sequence, but a note from the Lucas film about doing it visually made me beat my head against the table. Of course, that's clearly what we should do. As I've said many times, the first movie I recall seeing in the cinema was the Empire Strikes Back.

The apex of that is the I Am Your Father's scene. That I got to write the inverse of that. The implicit, I have a son, is something that simply astounds me. It's a good job to have this writing Darth Vader thing. Shoutouts. Oh, that's really sweet. I'll have to make sure I read these for the future things. I'm sure there's stuff in here that's really interesting.

But I did not see them back here the first time. So, good first run, good first swing at it. Yeah, I'm really impressed. I'm having a good time. Same. Excited to continue. Glad there's a bajillion of them ahead of us. So, yeah, there's a lot.

We've got lots to read. Yeah, do we just want to do the next one, given that we went three hours on this? Maybe they won't all be this dense, but I'm one. to now play out the thread. Yeah. Let's do the next run of six. Let me just make sure. I'm just going to make sure it is six.

Seven through 12. You got it. Yeah, I think after that it might get tricky because the thing after that is only three issues. And so we'll visit that next time. But for now, let's just read book two, Shadows and Secrets Issues 7 through 12 of the Darth Vader 2015 comic.

Woohoo. All right. And until next time, please. Jedi secrets revealed Until the next time Please rate and review us on a podcast platform of choice And remember that even Darth Vader Has days like that AQUID comic

Where you can only just come out asking Guess who just got yelled at That's right Darth Teodor Darth Teodor Darth Teodor