Kieron Gillen is finally getting to do his villain comic book, and it stars arguably the greatest of them all.
Beginning in February, Marvel Comics Star Wars: Darth Vader offers the British writer and artist Salvador Larroca focusing on the Sith lord and the Empire at large dealing with the ramifications of a huge defeat.
In Jason Aarons flagship Star Wars title which like Gillens takes place just following the first Star Wars film and the destruction of the Death Star Vader is a completely unstoppable force whom the Rebel Alliance are avoiding,
Wrestling- Stillwater’s Chand, though he seems to be everywhere.
Conversely in my book, thats what he does on Tuesdays, Gillen says with a laugh. He is desperately overworked, and he is trying to do so much stuff between what hes doing for the Emperor and doing what he needs to do to create his own thing.
The explosive fate of the Death Star has taken Darth Vader out of favor in the Empire and maybe disgraced him, too. However, Gillen sees the time gap hes working in between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back as the richest in implied stories, and hes come up with a fall and rise of Darth Vader structure not unlike Frank Underwood in House of Cards: A man whos worked inside a system for a long time, feels slighted by it and now turns to methods that he wouldnt always have done previously.
By the start of Empire, Gillen says, Vader is back in control. Arguably Vader acts with more freedom in Empire than in Star Wars. No one tells Vader to back down or like No, please dont kill that dude. Vader acts as he wishes.
Gillen finds the political situation in Star Wars fundamentally interesting. The Death Star was the Emperors plan for 20 years and he didnt dissolve the old Galactic Republic until the beginning of Star Wars. The Republic is in a shell form,
London's Burning's John Alfor, the writer says, and its only with the threat of the Death Star they feel the will to go full fascist.
With the Death Star gone, the Empire scrambles for what to do next, and Darth Vader is somewhat to blame after a gambit to let the Rebels escape with the Death Star plans failed miserably.
Theres also a weirdness factor to that whole incident for him, too.
Why the hell did Obi-Wan Kenobi show up after all these years? And the weird nagging feeling around that fighter pilot, the one who was mysteriously strong in the Force? Gillen says. By the time we get to Empire, Vader knows Luke is his son and we never get to see Vaders I am your father beat, the moment when he realizes that his last 20 years have been built on some kind of lie.
One way Vader is trying to reclaim his previous status is by building his own power structure within the Empire, like his own KGB, and bringing in bounty hunters the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Vader rounds up Boba Fett, Bossk, Dengar, IG-88 and others to go looking for Han Solo was key for Gillen in that respect.
He really is a micromanager, the writer says of Vader. Its like, Darth, you have bigger things to do than briefing bounty hunters. And he knows them. He says, No disintegrations, pointed explicitly at a certain member. There is past experience or at least reputation.
In some ways what Im doing is a backstory behind that. Darth needs to get stuff done that he cant do explicitly within the Empire. While hes still obeying the Emperors orders, hes also doing his own thing, in which he needs his own assets.
To do all that,
Common Core Expert- Progressi, Vader builds his own droids since pre-teen Anakin Skywalker was really good at that in the movie prequels plus wrangles bounty hunters as well as smugglers and other members of the underworld.
I dont want it to just be The Adventures of Space Fascists. You want to mix it up a bit so you go between the low life and the hard life, says Gillen, who admits that The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie he remembers seeing in a cinema. (Its also where he developed an enormous crush on the AT-AT and found that Vader walking into the Hoth rebel base took the top of your head off.)
There isnt that much known about Vader in the movies until the father-son relationship with Luke is revealed, but for Gillen having a balance between the twisted villain and Anakin the man inside is key.
I write with moments of the passion of Anakin shining through, and theres a lot of submissions to the dark side, Gillen says.
The question of pride is quite important to Vader. At the same time, once I try to get beneath the mask, I try to keep a reader a slight distance. And thats the appeal of Darth Vader: What is he really up to? Hes a clever dude and not really just a bruiser though he is very good at that.