Star Wars Darth Vader #19 Review: The Shu-Torun War Part 4
By D. Goodman
The latest arc of Marvel’s Darth Vader series heads towards its conclusion, and not a moment too soon.
Star Wars: Darth Vader #19
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Salvador Larroca
Colors by Edgar Delgado
Published by Marvel Comics
Last time in Darth Vader: As the rebellion on Shu-Torun continues to build towards a resolution, Cylo and his cyborg Jedi apprentices stand revealed as traitors to the Empire. Of course, this is nothing Vader wasn’t already fully aware of…
In Japanese anime, when a series based on a popular manga catches up to the source material and has to create new content, it is called filler. Most of the time the filler episodes are inferior in every way to the ones based on the manga and fans generally look at filler as a necessary evil that they just have to deal with until they can get back to the good stuff.
For me, that was what it was like reading “The Shu-Torun War” in Darth Vader.
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Until now Darth Vader has been at the very top of my reading pile each week it came out. Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca have done something really amazing with this book by giving readers a compelling continuing story about one of the more famous villains in history.
What could have been a epic fail is instead a book I look forward to reading and recommend to just about anyone who will listen.
Then “The Shu-Torun War” broke out.
The best way I can think to describe this arc is as filler, nothing more. Nothing has really happened during “The Shu-Torun War” to advance the overall story of Darth Vader in any meaningful way. The characters Gillen introduces, especially Queen Trios, are one-dimensional and immediately forgettable. And worst of all, the story just kind of limps to a lackluster and uninteresting conclusion in issue #19.
The lightsaber duel between Vader and the siblings Aiolin and Morit is over before it begins and it turns out that a little Triple-Zero can go a long way. While an evil version of C-3PO may sound like a funny idea, it can get old really fast.
Looking at it, it almost seems like Gillen decided to just throw something together to kill time. Since Dr. Aphra is currently over in Star Wars, I guess he needed the series to just spin its wheels for a couple months until she got back.
Even the art by Larroca feels bland, stiff and uninspired, which is surprising from the book that has looked amazing from day one.
Thankfully there is just one more issue of Darth Vader filler left and then hopefully things will get back to normal.
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The Bottom Line: Darth Vader #19 brings “The Shu-Torun War” to a close and ends what has to be one of the worst storylines since Marvel launched their Star Wars titles. Here’s hoping we don’t have to deal with any more filler in the future, because I would almost rather watch the Star Wars Holiday Special again that re-read a mess like this.