MLGG: Pop Culture News, Reviews and Interviews

Doctor Aphra has succeeded in capturing Luke Skywalker, with the aid of her amusingly sadistic protocol droid, Triple-Zero. Help is on the way, however – with Han and Chewie searching for Luke, but also Leia and the Rebel forces determined to take Darth Vader down once and for all.

Halfway through Vader Down, we take a step back from Vader’s clever and terrifying rampage, with this issue mostly focusing on the Rebel’s droids vs those on the more villainous side.

There’s some great sequences with Han interacting with Doctor Aphra – and Chewie even gets his moment in with a droid too. The cliffhanger feels a little ruined by the otherwise excellent cover art, however.

The art is again mostly decent, but there’s a weird over use of explosions and a definitely over designed enemy droid who’s packed with far too much hardware for its frame. It’s not a massive issue, though I did find it somewhat distracting; the explosions and fire in particular are just ridiculously overdone.

Yet the story itself remains strong and compelling; I keep coming back to the fact that Vader had never been seen on proper rampages until Rogue One, but Vader Down did get there a year earlier.

This issue has the spectre of Vader looming over it for most of its page count, with an effective use of him at the end.

This is a Star Wars crossover done right; far from the bloated and pointless excess of massive, continuity stretching events such as the painfully dull War of the Bounty Hunters, it seems that – like the Dark Lord of the Sith himself – it knows when to move, strike and retreat back into the shadows.

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