The newest issue of Star Wars: Darth Vader from Marvel Comics inches us ever so closely to the launch of the upcoming Dark Droids miniseries by having a group of droids rise up against the titular Dark Lord of the Sith.
Darth Vader Vol. 3 #36, released today, begins at the droid-run settlement in Hutt Space known only as Zee-Nine City Seven, which was first seen in issue #13 of this same comic. But now a group of droids, all of whom have been wronged (or even killed, on multiple occasions) by the Dark Lord of the Sith, have gathered to enact a revenge plan against the villain. The only thing is, all these droids happen to currently be allied with the Galactic Empire, and as the point out, Vader is the outcast in this particular situation, having recently run afoul of Emperor Palpatine. The leader of this uprising is named Ought-Six, the former captain of the Droid Crush Pirates of Bestoon, and he’s joined by Gee-Ninety from the Assassin’s Guild, the devious torture droids Triple-Zero and BT-1, Imperial forensics droid Zed-6-7, and even Arex, a droid destroyed by Vader just after the rise of the Empire (in writer Charles Soule’s Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 2). Anyway, all of these forsaken droids gather together with a bunch of others and attack Darth Vader, who has been accompanied by rogue archaeologist Dr. Chelli Lona Aphra and Sith assassin Ochi of Bestoon to the planet Ringo Vinda, where they have acquired the Zaly Shield– an artifact capable of focusing Vader’s Force powers in the wake of the Fermata Cage having been opened and making the life-fueled energy field go haywire galaxy-wide.
If all of that sounds complicated, that’s because it kind of is, but I have to say I’m really appreciating how so many story threads have been coming together and paying off in these Star Wars comics set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. And speaking of interconnectivity, this narrative specifically is directly feeding into the Star Wars: Dark Droids crossover event, which begins later this summer, so I’m digging that foreshadowing as well. There have been plenty of conversations over the years about whether or not droids qualify as sentient beings in the Star Wars universe, and it’s been addressed in some of the media here and there, but I suspect as though Dark Droids will tackle that topic head-on. It should be an interesting remainder of the year in A Galaxy Far, Far Away on the comic page, but in the meantime writer Greg Pak and Raffaele Ienco are still doing a bang-up job relating just exactly how Darth Vader and his cohorts fit into all this. By the end of this issue, Dr. Aphra has escaped (to go find Luke Skywalker in the current arc of her own title) and Vader has defeated his robotic enemies in order to reconstruct them into an fearsome army of his own. How will that tie into the tale of the warrior-priest droid Ajax Sigma, who is soon to rear his ugly head in these Marvel comics? We’ll have to wait to find out later this summer.
Star Wars: Darth Vader #36 is available now wherever comic books are sold.