Greetings, Marvel faithful! The world turns ever on, the news keeps coming, and we are here on another Wednesday with The Marvel Rundown, The Beat’s regular review series of what’s new and notable from the House of Ideas. This week, we turn our eyes once more to a galaxy far, far away with the a spotlight review of the premiere issue of Charles Soule’s and Luke Ross’s Star Wars: Legacy of Vader! But that’s not all. Stick around for the Rapid Rundown review of of titles including The Avengers #23 The Ultimates #9. Oh, and how about that Fantastic Four trailer?
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Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #1
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Luke Ross
Colorist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover: Derrick Chew
The Star Wars sequel trilogy has been controversial, with uneven quality and mixed reception from film-to-film. But no one can deny that one of its strongest aspects was Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. The conflicted Ben Solo’s journey raises more questions than it answers, leaving plenty of room for tie-in media to flesh out the character’s motivations. It’s a tall order to tell a story about the character without Driver’s powerful performance and all of the characterization he brings with his mere physical presence. Marvel’s first attempt, the prequel miniseries The Rise of Kylo Ren, was a disappointment in how little it added to what was on screen so I was eager, but skeptical, to see what they would do filling in the gaps of a more fully formed version.
Though it doesn’t bear his name in the title, Star Wars: Legacy of Vader does Kylo Ren justice. The same chilling darkness and complexity writer Charles Soule brought to Darth Vader is here in spades. Combined with Luke Ross’s stunning art and Nolan Woodard’s bold colors, Legacy of Vader #1 is one of the best Star Wars issues that Marvel has put out in its 10 years. Soule has proven to have a firm grasp on the original trilogy characters, in particular Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker. But Kylo Ren is a different character altogether, a child desperate to prove he is a man, a boy haunted by his past and desperate to move beyond it. Where Vader’s rage was a scalpel, Ren’s is a hammer. Where Vader’s Darkness had all but snuffed out the light inside him, Ren’s light continues to flicker in the dark.
Soule’s script explores the compelling vacuousness of Kylo Ren’s motivation: There is no reason for him to have turned to the Dark Side other than his own fear that he could not live up to the legends of his parents and uncle. He becomes a galactic fascist to prove he deserves what he feels ashamed of having. Anakin Skywalker was a boy born into slavery, thrown into galactic war, and mutilated at the hands of his father-figure. Though Ben Solo worshiped Vader’s legacy and dark deeds, he was never able to understand what motivated Darth Vader or made him so powerful. Here, Soule riffs on one of the memorable lines of The Last Jedi, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to,” and makes the distinction between Vader and Ren their relationship to the past. Kylo Ren cannot untether himself from his history because there is too much that ties him to a sense of conscience. Ren seeks to move forward by ignoring who he was before he embraced the Dark Side. But Vader was fueled by the hatred and pain of his childhood.
Legacy of Vader picks up immediately after the events of The Last Jedi, with Kylo Ren having just murdered Snoke, fought his mentor Luke Skywalker, and failed to snuff out the Resistance. He returns to the First Order and presents Snoke’s body to his troops, pinning the murder on Rey, and declaring his new title of Supreme Leader. But he quickly recedes to brood in isolation, where he throws a violent temper tantrum.
Luke Ross’s art is fantastic throughout this issue, and not just because of his ability to capture actor likenesses and still give expressive body language and emotion. Ross bears out Soule’s themes of Kylo Ren’s past haunting him. In a two-page sequence, Kylo is surrounded by visions of Luke, Leia, Han, and Rey. They weigh down upon Kylo’s shoulders and eat away at his presence on the page. The inserts are arranged haphazardly, falling down from the top left to the bottom right of the page like river rapids he cannot stop from flowing. The layouts throughout are full of this dynamism–the action scenes later on are similarly arranged with overlapping, angular, fraying panels. Kylo Ren’s spirit is constantly at war with itself, his mind scattered and his emotions tense and frantic. Ross’s storytelling reflects that lack of peace. Woodard’s colors amp up the emotion and flashes of anger with the use of red as the character’s rage consumes him. VC’s Joe Caramagna dances through the erratic layouts, subtly overlapping panels and moving the balloons in natural rhythm to keep the pages totally legible.
It’s been a while since I’ve been so excited for a Star Wars project. This is the kind of story that expands, enriches, and builds on the source material and is exactly the kind of intimate storytelling comics are uniquely suited to.
Final Verdict: Buy
The Rapid Rundown
- Avengers #23
- I jumped back into Jed MacKay’s Avengers run this week with Avengers #23 and what I found was a pretty entertaining time. Mind you, I am coming into this story ICE COLD as I haven’t read much of the book since the first arc and this story seems to be mid arc with Kang. I mention all of this because I want to commend MacKay for writing an issue that is in the middle of a long run and still accessible. It helps that the issue is largely a heist comic with Black Cat teaming up with Kang to steal a McGuffin from the Grandmaster and I am a sucker for heist comics. MacKay does some interesting things with the plot structure by starting the issue in media res and interspersing it with flashbacks to show how Black Cat and Kang got the gang together. Standard for most heist stories, but still fun. Also, Technet shows up in this comic and that is a wild pull. Joyboy, the giant baby that turns people into their deepest desires, attacks Iron Man and that is a sight. The art by Farid Karami is fine. The action shots, while stiff at times, are clean and easy to follow. There’s some solid visual gags put into the story with Technet running around. The colors by Fedrico Blee really go a long way in making this book look good. It is very much Marvel house-style but it looks good. Overall, Avengers #23 is a fun romp that I enjoyed, but it didn’t leave me wanting to read more. -JJ
- Ultimates #9
- Every issue of Ultimates continues to set the bar higher on what a modern superhero comic can be. Deniz Camp every issue pushes what a modern comic in this genre can be. Sometimes that means formal experiments like issue #4’s Ultimate Doom origin story or clever rethinking of classic Marvel characters like Hawkeye or this universe’s version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. But in every issue, Camp redefines what superheroes should be in a world run by fascist dictators and power hungry oligarchs. Issue #9, with guest art by Chris Allen, introduces Ultimate Luke Cage. Here Camp transplants the origin of Cage being a wrongly convicted man to this horrifying new reality. The twist being that this Cage has spent both his youth and his adult life being passed through a draconian prison system. Like the Doom origin issue, Camp and Allen play with time here, alternating every page between past and present. The effect allows readers a greater understanding not just of this Luke Cage but how The Maker utilizes the prison system in his universe (spoiler: it’s just as exploitative as the one we have now). How Camp and Allen fit Cage into the idea of superheroes as resistance fighters is where this issue gets really exciting. It’s just further proof that this run on Ultimates continues to show what smart superhero comics can be. – DM
Next week, ALL HAIL DOOM!
