Having recently returned from vacation, I am just now beginning to get caught up on reviews of a couple weeks’ worth of comic books that I missed, including the launch of the highly anticipated Star Wars: Dark Droids crossover event from Marvel Comics.
Dark Droids will span the pages of Marvel’s four ongoing Star Wars titles (Star Wars: Darth Vader, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, and the flagship Star Wars series), in addition to a spinoff entitled Star Wars: D-Squad and its own five-issue miniseries, which began on August 2nd. This first issue, written by Charles Soule (Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren), kicks things off by picking up where the events of his previous event series, Star Wars: Hidden Empire, left off. There, the malevolent artificial intelligence known as the Spark Eternal was cast out of the body of archaeologist Dr. Chelli Lona Aphra and into a piece of banned Sith technology, transforming it into a new being that has been called “The Scourge” in behind-the-scenes interviews. And Star Wars: Dark Droids #1 is all about the Scourge gaining sentience, stowing away aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer, and murdering the entire crew. Yep, that’s pretty much all there is to it, and it’s super awesome from start to finish. Backing things up a tiny bit, there is a few pages of exposition (from the Scourge’s point of view) telling the reader about droids’ role in the galaxy… which is almost always a subservient one.
Of course as Star Wars fans we know that organic species can frequently treat their droids as friends and companions in addition to as servants. Well the Scourge knows that too, and even mentions it, but ultimately it doesn’t care. And this is where the fun begins… the Scourge starts by hacking into a KX-series Imperial security droid aboard the Amaxine space station where we last saw the Spark Eternal in Hidden Empire, and then spreads like a virus to every droid aboard the Star Destroyer in a pretty unforgettable sequence that’s presented through the point-of-view of a frightened Mouse Droid. At this point we are re-introduced to Ajax Sigma, the ancient warrior-priest droid who once fought for droid emancipation, and whose neural core was eventually buried in a forest on a remote planet (in the recent Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca comic miniseries). Readers who picked up the Star Wars: Revelations one-shot last November will also recall how a cult of droids retrieved the core and constructed a new body for Ajax Sigma. So there is a bit of prerequisite knowledge needed for those going into Dark Droids, but even if you aren’t familiar with all that stuff, I still think you’ll get a kick out of it.
The bottom line is that this debut issue seems to be settling up a pretty major conflict (or perhaps a team-up?) between the Scourge and Ajax Sigma– the latter of which apparently wants droids to achieve self-awareness through their own means. This is somewhat of a different premise for Dark Droids than I was anticipating, but I’m definitely into it so far regardless. This issue ends with that lowly Mouse Droid, now having been corrupted by the Scourge, infiltrating the Rebel Alliance fleet and infecting the circuits of our old friend C-3PO. It’s a foreboding twist already, and a brilliantly exciting place to start for a miniseries that promises to address many of the questions Star Wars fans have had for decades about the nature of droids and their theoretical sentience. I’m on the record many times over as being a huge fan of Soule’s writing, and the art here by penciler Luke Ross and colorist Alex Sinclair left me breathless in its execution of the writer’s vision for this series. This feels like pretty fresh territory for Star Wars, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to follow along as this story plays out over the next four months or so.
Star Wars: Dark Droids #1 is available now wherever comic books are sold.