STAR WARS: DARTH VADER: DARK LORD of the SITH, VOLUME 1 - IMPERIAL MACHINE (graphic novel) by Charles Soule






Published in 2017 by Licensed Publishing.
Written by Charles Soule.
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Cam Smith

Synopsis

Imperial Machine is the first entry in a four-part series about Star Wars' most iconic character: Darth Vader. 

The series starts with the last scene of Episode III - the moment where Anakin Skywalker truly becomes the infamous Darth Vader.

But is he really and truly Darth Vader at this point? No, he has only started his long trip to being a Sith Lord and the Emperor is ready to train him.

The Emperor's training mostly consists of Vader going out to figure it out the hard way. For example, Vader has lost his light saber and Palpatine sends him out to take the light saber of a Jedi in combat. Then, Vader must corrupt the crystal inside, which makes it glow red. 

The problem is, there are hardly any Jedi left thanks to Order 66 and the other events at the end of Star Wars: Episode III.

My review

This was an engrossing story. Palpatine is abusive as a teacher - so abusive that you almost feel sorry for Vader. Then, Vader does something completely evil, reminding the reader of who he really is.

There is one very intriguing moment - a "what if?" moment when Vader begins to corrupt the stones of his light saber...

The art is fantastic, the story is excellent. Great work.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STAR WARS: DARTH VADER: DARK LORD of the SITH, VOLUME 1 - IMPERIAL MACHINE

Link to my review of Volume 2 of this series.
Link to my review of Volume 3 of this series.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

STAR TREK PICARD: NO MAN'S LAND: AN ORIGINAL AUDIO DRAMA (audiobook) by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson

Image
Published by Simon and Schuster Audio Originals in 2022. Performed by a full cast, including Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd. Duration: 1 hour, 39 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Set immediately after the Star Trek streaming show Picard: Season One , the audiobook  No Man's Land is an adventure featuring the characters Seven of Nine and Raffi.  With the collapse of the Romulan Empire comes the rise of local Romulan warlords who are trying to assert their control over the Romulan territory and, just as important, lay claim to the Romulan brand.  A Romulan who has taken the title Emperor is conquering/leveling various planets in an attempt to establish himself as the successor to the Romulan Empire. It looks he is heading towards a planet that is secretly holding a massive collection of written materials, museum pieces, and other cultural relics of the collapsed Romulan Empire.  There is a mad scramble to remove the relics, led by an ancient, kindly professor of unknown or...
Read more

FINDING JESUS: FAITH. FACT. FORGERY: SIX HOLY OBJECTS that TELL the REMARKABLE STORY of the GOSPELS by David Gibson and Michael McKinley

Image
Published in 2015 by MacMillan Audio. Read by Peter Larkin. Duration: 7 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Finding Jesus is not a deep book theologically, but it does take a balanced look at 6 things that are associated with Jesus and a few related topics and is respectful of the faithful while doing its exploration. If you are expecting a book that is out to burst religious bubbles, this is not your book. The topics are: 1) John the Baptist. Who was he? Is he in the historical record? Are the relics of John the Baptist in scattered across Europe actually him? The James Ossuary. 2) James, the brother of Jesus. Who was he? Was he Jesus' half brother through Mary or a step-brother from a previous marriage of Joseph? Is the James Ossuary (a casket to hold bones) that was discovered a few years ago real? 3) Mary Magdalene. Who was she? Was she a disciple or simply a follower of Jesus? Why is she not mentioned after the four gospels? Was she the wife of Jesus? Was she really a re...
Read more

GANGSTERS vs. NAZIS: HOW JEWISH MOBSTERS BATTLED NAZIS in WARTIME AMERICA (audiobook) by Michael Benson

Image
  Highly Recommended Published in 2022 by Tantor Audio. Read by Gabriel Vaughan. Duration: 8 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Flag of the German American Bund In the United States in the 1930's there was a small, loud, enthusiastic, and growing group of Americans that were great fans of Hitler and the Nazi party. They were largely ethnic Germans and formed organizations that sported Nazi symbols and mimicked the big rallies that Hitler had in Germany. They also mimicked the overt antisemitic speech exhibited by the Nazis. The most successful of these was the German American Bund (German American Federation). There were a lot of small groups but there were two larger organizations with a different take than the Bund. The Silver Legion of America  (Silver Shirts) had a spiritualist take on hate. Father Coughlin  was a literal Catholic priest who brought a "Catholic" view on antisemitic hate and anti-interventionism from Detroit. He had a massive radio audience that was ...
Read more

The Secret Scroll by Ronald Cutler

Image
Not good, not bad Published in 2008 by Beaufort Books. Some have reviewed The Secret Scroll very harshly. I am unwilling to do this, despite my opinion that this is not really a good book. I give it 3 Stars. As I told someone else, it is neither drek nor a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's kinda like watching an episode of Matlock - it beats watching nothing but it sure isn't To Kill A Mockingbird , despite being set in the south and having courtroom drama. Positives: -The plot moves along at a quick pace. -Lots of action. -The bad guys are truly bad. -a love story. -I was interested in seeing where Cutler was going with his depictions of Jesus and Paul. -The short (2-5 pages) chapter style makes it an easy book to put down and pick up again. Negatives: -It is set around a scroll that is discovered by an American archaeologist that is supposedly written by Jesus of Nazareth. Cutler makes the text of such a scroll accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with ancie...
Read more

SOLDIER BOY by Michael Shaara

Image
  Published in 1982 by Pocket Books (a Timescape book) Back in the 1980's Simon and Schuster had a division called Pocket Books that specialized in paperback books. Pocket Books had an even smaller division called Timescape . Timescape published sci-fi books, including some of the earliest of the Star Trek novels so they were quite a successful line. Soldier Boy is part of that Timescape line. Michael Shaara (1928-1988) Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels . Shaara had knocked out a few novels before then, but none were about the Civil War. Instead, a great deal of his writing was sci-fi. He started out selling stories to magazines in 1951. This book is a collection of 14 of those short stories. If you read this book, I recommend reading the Author's Afterword first. He wrote commentary on every story and I used those notes as an introduction to each one.  Like all short story collections, they vary in qu...
Read more

THE EYES of the DRAGON by Stephen King

Image
Originally published in 1984. Published by Penguin Audio in 2010. Read by Bronson Pinchot. Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged The ancient kingdom of Delain is ruled by a good king, but not a great king. He is a widower with two sons and an ancient, yet seemingly ageless, magician adviser named Flagg. His oldest son is Peter - a son who shows all of the signs that he will be a great and good king in the future. His youngest son is Thomas, a young man who is a lot like his father. Thomas is very jealous of the well-deserved attention lavished upon Peter and often turns to his only friend - Flagg. Flagg is very powerful, long-lived and an omnipresent dark force in the royal palace. In reality, he is more than a mere magician, he is a malignant force that seeks to create chaos and disorder above all else. Flagg is a frequent character in Stephen King books, most notably in The Stand and The Dark Tower series. This book is his second appearance in King's work. Flagg poiso...
Read more

THE KINGDOM, the POWER, and THE GLORY: AMERICAN EVANGELICALS in an AGE of EXTREMISM (audiobook) by Tim Alberta

Image
Published by HarperAudio in December of 2023. Read by the author, Tim Alberta. Duration: 18 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged. Tim Alberta is a writer for The Atlantic and also an Evangelical. He grew up in the faith, but is very troubled by the tendency towards Christian Nationalism. He was inspired to write this book after an incident at his father's funeral at the church he grew up in.  Alberta embarked on a cross-country exploration of the intersection of Evangelicals and politics at Christian Nationalism - and how this combination is changing Evangelicals and they way they are perceived. Alberta does not come at this as an outsider. As I already noted, he grew up in the church - and still belongs to a church. To me, this is important. I read another book with a similar theme ( The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism ) that just didn't hit the right tone and answer the right questions because the author was coming from the outside. She didn...
Read more

THE DIRECTOR SHOULD'VE SHOT YOU: MEMOIRS of the FILM TRADE (audiobook) by Alan Dean Foster

Image
Published in 2024 by Tantor Media. Read by Stephen R. Thorne. Duration: 7 hours, 1 minute. Unabridged. Alan Dean Foster is a prolific sci-fi author. He has written over 50 sc-fi novels, but he is probably most famous for his numerous novelizations of sci-fi movies and TV shows, such as the original Star Wars movie (ghost written for George Lucas), Alien , Star Trek: The Animated Series , Krull , and The Last Starfighter . The Director Should've Shot You is the story of Foster's experiences as the man who Hollywood turns to to write novelizations of sci-fi movies. He talks about how that system (usually) works, the odd experiences, his interactions with directors, producers, and faceless stuidio executives, and his various thoughts of the strengths and weaknesses of the various projects.  My experiences with Foster as a young reader start with his two Star Wars books that he wrote when George Lucas  and his team were finishing the original movie. As I noted, he ghost wrote th...
Read more

STAR-SPANGLED JESUS: LEAVING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM and FINDING a TRUE FAITH (audiobook) by April Ajoy

Image
Published in October of 2024 by Worthy Books. Read by the author, April Ajoy. Duration: 8 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Star-Spangled Jesus is the story of April Ajoy and her spiritual evolution since the political appearance of Donald Trump in 2015-2016.  Is it weird that a politician caused a spiritual evolution?  No, not in a world of Christian Nationalism. For the most basic definition, I am going to say that it is a belief that a person can't truly be an American if they aren't Christian and their rights as an American should reflect that. Also, this is precisely what happened to me, so I get it. Trump shocked me out of the Republican = Good Christian mindset because of the simple reason that he is so overtly antithetical to so many Christian ideals and is proud of it. If the previous paragraph offends or confuses you, you will hate this book.  Ajoy's pre-2015 Christian experience was much more conservative than mine and more intense. Her father was a conservative p...
Read more

SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
  Published by Hourly History in 2020. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time in. The long history of India is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of ignorance. Subhas Chandra Bose was one of those people for me. I had heard of him, but only described as sort of an "anti-Ghandi". He wanted independence as much as Ghandi did, but thought the non-violent protests were a waste of time. Subhas Chandra Bose was not only willing to fight - he thought it was the only way India would be free of English rule. Bose was born in India but formally educated in England. He was poised to take his place in the bureaucracy of colonial India. But, he rejected that offer and became active in the independence movement.  As World War II loomed, Bose saw it as an opportunity to free India. He approached the Fascist powe...
Read more