Top Dart: Kieron Gillen selects the best moments from the Darth Vader comic.

The image of Darth Vader as something sinister and merciless is so firmly etched into the collective consciousness that he can be identified by his silhouette alone. The prequel trilogy somewhat tarnished the reputation of the Sith Lord, but the comic from Kieron Gillen And Salvador Larroca once again made Vader an unstoppable force from which the entire galaxy trembles in horror.

There is not long left until the finale: Darth Vader's personal series will end with issue 25. During this time, Vader managed to be a cunning robber, learned about his son and proved to the emperor that it was too early to write him off by elegantly dealing with the creations of a mad scientist who at one time gave him a cybernetic body. And Gillen gave the world hilarious sadistic droids, a brilliant detective and the resourceful Doctor Aphra. Exclusive to Marvel.com, Gillen chose his five favorite moments from " Darth Vader».

Darth Vader #6 - Father and Son

It's amazing how a few words can change history. When Luke learns in Episode Five that Rebel menace Darth Vader is actually his father, the protagonist's world is turned upside down. Gillen decided to show how such a revelation could look from the point of view of Vader himself: having learned that he has a son, the Sith Lord seems to be filled with new power capable of crushing entire planets.

« Jason Aaron was the first to write about this in his Star Wars, but since we have a book about Darth Vader, we have more space, and it is possible to show everything from Vader’s point of view, says Gillen. — At this moment he realizes that the last 20 years of his life have been a lie. “No... I am your father” is one of the most recognizable plot twists in my life. The opportunity to write a mirror version of “I have a son” - it couldn’t be better».

Star Wars No. 13 – B.T. vs. ArtTu

The action of the current Marvel comics on "Star Wars" develops between famous events films. It’s clear that familiar heroes constantly look into the pages, encountering new characters and crazy ideas born in the heads of modern authors. So, the faithful R2D2 had to meet the terrifying BT, to the great joy of the readers.

« I didn't actually write this because the moment came from Aaron's comic during the Vader Down crossover, but I laughed at every stage of production, the author recalls. – I laughed when I read the script. When I saw the draft. During the first sketches and when they painted. I laughed at the pdf copy and when I picked up the comic itself. And now I laugh. The opportunity to see the characters I created interact with the characters from the original Star Wars would have been amazing in itself, but I never thought it would work so well».

Darth Vader #4 – Hahaha! You're on fire and also dead

Besides Aphra, who will be discussed below, the best addition to the Star Wars universe was a couple of antipodal robots C-3PO and R2D2 - Triple-Zero and BT. Designed to wreak havoc, torture and kill people, they love to torture and kill people more than anything else. But thanks to Triple-Zero’s cheerful attitude and BT’s bloodthirstiness, following their adventures is a pleasure.

« This is the first time we see Triple-Zero and BT on a mission to Geonosis, so this is the first time we've had a chance to explore their personalities., notes Gillen. – Using Star Wars translation font to mock the burning corpses of enemies is a great calling card».

« Alternative point from Triple-Zero: what he really wants to do with human blood. One of my earliest character ideas and I'm glad I found a reason to include it.».

Darth Vader #4 – Lightsaber please

Invented by Gillen, archaeologist and weapons historian Dr. Aphra became an excellent match for the silent and stern Vader. Her admiration for the unstoppable power of the Sith Lord helped her more accurately assemble the image of a thunderstorm in a galaxy far, far away. And her intelligence and resourcefulness allowed her to survive next to this guy.

« For such an important element of the series as Aphra, it is quite difficult to highlight any specific moment, says Gillen. – Then I remembered the episode from issue #4 where all the complex details of her character came together. Before that, I wrote it for fun, but as I worked on it, I started thinking about what Aphra would do after the mission was over. And then I realized: she would ask when Vader would kill her. From this was born the central relationship of the series: Aphra knows for sure that her days are numbered, and Vader knows for sure that she knows that her days are numbered. All relationships started from this moment. Aphra constantly hopes that she will die from a lightsaber strike rather than suffocate in the cold vacuum».

« I tried my best to avoid the sexual tension between Vader and Aphra, but despite my best efforts, "Veidafra" was still born in the depths of the Internet. Nature will take its toll».

Darth Vader #20: Thanot vs. Vader

Throughout almost the entire series, Vader, secretly from the emperor, is financing the operation to find Luke. To do this, he even had to rob a special Empire ship loaded with credits, using a cunning plan that is definitely worth filming. But the robbery did not pass without a trace, and now on Vader’s trail is the Emperor’s detective Thanot, who, together with Vader himself, must find the robbers. The clash of the unyielding with the unyielding.

« Vader's invulnerability is one of the author's biggest challenges, admits Gillen. – It's very satisfying to watch him destroy his enemies. And create enemies that you want to see destroyed. The brilliant detective Thanot is an exception to the rule. An extremely worthy man who follows Vader's trail and drives him, with the help of his intellect, into a corner. Having trapped the Sith, he insists that Vader kill him. Comics can have an endless budget and make amazing things happen, but sometimes all a good story needs is two strong characters and dark room».

« And a lightsaber, you understand».

The Clone War is over. The Jedi are defeated. Palpatine became Emperor and finally had the opportunity to subjugate the entire Galaxy to his will, using the power of the Sith to do this. Jedi Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side of the Force. Succumbing to Palpatine's promises to protect his pregnant wife Padmé from death, Skywalker betrayed the Jedi and became the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Defeated by his old friend and former mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader was left to die on the fiery planet Mustafar.

Rescued by Palpatine and equipped with cybernetic armor to keep him alive, Vader is brought back to life only to learn that his wife is dead. Now in Vader's life there is only anger, pain and the newly proclaimed Galactic Empire...

Marvel's new comic, Star Wars: Darth Vader, opens with the birth of Darth Vader as Palpatine announces the death of his wife. An enraged Vader shouts that Palpatine promised to save her, to which cunning fox replies that “in anger you chose the wrong path.” After this, the newly proclaimed Emperor decides to test Vader's strength by slightly invigorating him with high voltage voltage. Vader phosphoresces like an electric eel, but the suit turns out to be well made. "Where's your lightsaber?" - Palpatine asks casually, continuing the electrophoresis session, and Vader replies that he was lost in the fight with Obi-Wan. “That sword belonged to another person, a Jedi,” Palpatine is upset and begins to throw lightning at Vader. “And now you are a Sith.”

With that, Palpatine takes out his red lightsaber and waves it in Vader's face. Vader, who does not have such a sword, immediately wilts and kneels before the greatness of Palpatine. But Palpatine had no intention of humiliating Vader at all - he only wanted to make him understand how he differs from Kenobi. “You are my friend,” he told Vader, “and I hope that we both never find ourselves in a similar position again.”

After this, Palpatine promises to show Vader something and brings him to a place where they can witness a solemn event on the occasion of getting rid of the Jedi. The herald is Mas Amedda; to his pathetic cries like “We will never fear the Jedi again!” Stormtroopers bring Jedi lightsabers and throw them into the melting pot.

“Do you know why our swords are red, Lord Vader?” - Palpatine asks his companion.

Darth Vader admits that the Jedi somehow didn’t talk much about this topic. Palpatine pointedly notes that "fools prefer to hide what they are not too sure about." They allegedly did not want to face the dark truth - for which they paid. The point is that Sith lightsabers are literally are bleeding. And the same effect can be achieved from the crystals used for Jedi lightsabers. Kyber crystals are, in a sense, alive and, like any living thing, they feel pain. With the help of forces Dark Side The Sith can transfer their pain to the crystal, and in agony it begins to exude a bright red color - the color of rage.

Vader, meanwhile, begins to understand why Palpatine didn't just give him one of the Jedi swords. “The Sword of the Sith cannot be obtained,” he says. “It must be obtained.”

Palpatine is pleased that Vader is learning so quickly, and sends him to some unnamed planet in the Middle Worlds, where he left a gift for him - a modified TIE fighter. Palpatine tells Vader to carefully study everything around him, trust the Dark Side and find a Jedi who will become a weapon donor for the newly-minted Sith Lord. More precisely, Vader only needs the crystal, but for the Jedi this does not change the situation.

The author of the comic is Charles Soule, the artist is Giuseppe Camuncoli. The drawings are excellent, and the storyboard is done very cinematically: the comic is viewed in one breath, like animated film. There are no complaints about this part of the comic - one can only complain that the first issue turned out to be too short. The plot is still difficult to assess; Moreover, almost the entire issue consists of dialogues between Palpatine and Vader. The theme with living bleeding crystals, to my taste, smacks of the occult and Harry Potter, which I personally don’t really like. But Soul is not the pioneer here; this idea was used in the novel about Ahsoka. The quest about finding the sword, in my opinion, looks somewhat popular and far-fetched for such a rational and pragmatic world as “ Star Wars" Vader could make a new sword and pick out the crystal for it from any Jedi sword that Mas Amedda threw into the melting pot - logically there is no difference between this action and taking the sword from a living Jedi.

Soon we will have a new series of comics about Darth Vader from Marvel Comics- this time from writer Charles Soule and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli. The story picks up right from the end of Revenge of the Sith - from the moment when Darth Vader approaches Emperor Palpatine and together they look at the Death Star being built.

Soule seems to have become a highly sought-after writer for Star Wars comics, having penned Lando, Obi-Wan and Anakin, and the still-in-print Poe Dameron. In a telephone interview with an IGN.com correspondent, he described his new story as "Darth Vader: Year One", drawing associations with the comic book "Batman: Year One" from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, which tells how Batman turned from a loner rebel to the Dark Knight we know today.

“The comic begins literally a second after the end of Revenge of the Sith,” Soule explains. “Darth Vader is in his armored suit, the same one in which he spent the rest of his life - in fact, most of it. He wakes up and realizes what happened. He wakes up and screams: “No!” - exactly as shown in the film. Then there comes a time when he tries to get used to the new conditions. We will watch him learn to be who he is: in to a greater extent machine than man. We will follow in his footsteps and witness many truly exciting moments from those early days that will later become engulfed in myth and legend.”

One of these moments will be Vader's creation of his first red lightsaber.

“The first arc will be mostly about Vader trying to create a red lightsaber for himself - because at the end of Revenge of the Sith he lost his blue Jedi sword,” Soule says. “He lost his limbs and Obi-Wan took his sword to eventually give it to Luke. So at the beginning of the comic we are introduced to a character we can't imagine without his famous, epic red lightsaber - but he doesn't have one yet. What better way to start a new big series than with the search for a magic sword?

“We want to explore the mythology surrounding lightsabers to some extent, and it should be interesting,” Soule continues. “I feel incredibly lucky to be able to talk about this. For Vader's [story], it will be like finding a big missing puzzle piece."

The comic will be the second series about Darth Vader from Marvel. The first was a series from Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larocca, which ended with issue 25 and told about the events that took place in the period between A New Hope and the film The Empire Strikes Back. That comic showed Vader falling out of favor after the Rebels destroyed the first Death Star and gradually regaining the Emperor's favor. One way or another, in the new comic, Vader is presented in a completely different period of his life, which radically distinguishes this comic from the previous one.

“I would like to note that Kieron’s comic shows a man who has already come to terms with new reality and just does its job, which is not the case in the new Vader comic," Soule says. "The passions in the new comic are very bright in terms of the hatred and anger that Vader feels and the things that he's trying to come to terms with. He is trying to understand himself, whereas in Gillen's comic he is more like an old crocodile who has lived for many, many years and has no enemies or rivals left next to him. Of course, there are poignant moments in the book, but overall Vader is presented as a man who is absolutely confident in himself and in the place he occupies in the galaxy."

“In our comic, we're going to try to turn everything on its head, remove the gold from Vader and see what happens,” Soule explains the difference between the two stories. “Now he is a man who is far from sure what will happen to him next. He doesn't know whether he will be alive in two weeks - or in 40 years. He has no idea what his daily life will consist of and does not know what his goals are. We will try to understand what his life will be like without Padmé, to imagine what it is like to be a Sith Lord: all this is a new sensation for him. The new sensations also consist of openly exploring the Dark Side - without shame, without fear of being caught, without the need to hide it from the Jedi, he can plunge into this area as deeply as he wants.

Concerning minor characters, then, of course, we will see Emperor Palpatine (this is Soul's favorite character in Star Wars), but, besides him, we will also see the Inquisitors from the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the events of which take place not so many years later after the comic. Soule also said that while many characters died at the end of Revenge of the Sith, there are still many familiar faces that could very well appear in the pages of the comic. He didn’t go into details, although he assured that we definitely wouldn’t see Luke in diapers.

Camuncoli is best known to readers for his work on The Amazing Spider-Man, but now he's ready to lend his skills to a character who appears to be the polar opposite of [Spider-Man].

“I try to imagine Vader as someone like Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise. This is his debut. We partially saw what it ended up being at the end of the movie Rogue One. But in Rogue One he has been doing this for many years, and our Vader is at the beginning of his journey. He's trying to get used to his armor - it's something completely different from fighting like a Jedi, which is what he's used to - doing somersaults and all that," Soule says. "I'm familiar with almost all of Camuncoli's work for Spider-Man - better artist and it's hard to imagine. Spider-Man is very flexible, he is a real acrobat. And so it's very interesting to watch the way [Camuncoli] draws a character like Vader: methodically moving forward from scene to scene, like a locomotive. It's not that he isn't fast or strong - no, it's just a completely different style of movement. An important point It's also about being able to convey emotion through actions so that you can look underneath the mask and understand what he's thinking and feeling. You'll want to feel that rage. When he looks at you, you'll want to know if he's about to strangle you, or if he just wants to ask you something - but this man has no facial expressions. His face is hidden under a mask. However, fortunately, it is drawn by Camuncoli, who knows how to do everything right.”

The first issue of the new comic is due out in June 2017.