Dark Lord of the Sith Vol. 2: Legacy's End by Charles Soule, Giuseppe CamuncoliDark Lord of the Sith Vol. 2: Legacy’s End by Charles Soule & Giuseppe Camuncoli

Dark Lord of the Sith Vol. 2: Legacy's End by Charles Soule, Giuseppe CamuncoliCharles Soule’s DARTH VADER comics explore the character’s thoughts, decisions and actions in the immediate aftermath of The Revenge of the Sith, in which the Empire is still consolidating its power and Vader himself grappling with his new identity as the Emperor’s apprentice.

This volume sees him training the Inquisitors (which featured so heavily in the first two seasons of Star Wars Rebels), an elite team of former Jedi who are now tasked with finding and killing any survivors of Order 66. Among the target list that’s assigned to them, one name in particular stands out…

Legacy’s End spotlights a character I never thought we’d learn more about: Jocasta Nu. You know, the librarian at the Jedi Temple who gets a little sassy with Obi-Wan Kenobi in Attack of the Clones while he’s looking for Kamino?

She’s back and quite frankly, she’s awesome. How often do you get to see a little old lady in her seventies (at least) kick some butt? To my mind, not since the three good fairies in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. In any case, Jocasta managed to survive the Purge, and has been diligently maintaining the Jedi Archives in a secure location in the hopes of rebuilding the Jedi Order.

All she needs is one thing: students. For this reason, she undertakes a covert mission back to the secret rooms of the Jedi Temple in the hopes of retrieving a list of Force-Sensitive children across the galaxy. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as both Vader and the Inquisitors move to intercept her…

As with volume one, there’s some great insight here as to how the Empire operated in its early years. We get to see how Imperial officials reacted to the sudden ascension of Darth Vader to the Emperor’s righthand, and Vader’s attempts to hide his true identity. Legacy’s End also gives us a glimpse of how the good guys responded to their initial defeat: by gathering what knowledge they could and preserving it for the next generation of Light Side users.

As ever there’s some beautiful artwork by Giuseppe Camuncoli, who captures the power and formidable nature of Vader, while also providing a glimpse into his mind: whenever he’s mediating, he appears as a black figure veined with red — though there is still a glimpse of the Light in him.

Published in 2018. Collects Darth Vader (2017) #7-12. Jocasta Nu, the Jedi Temple librarian, is making a desperate effort to gather and preserve whatever she can of the Jedi legacy after the purge. Vader and the Grand Inquisitor cannot let her succeed. They are sent after Jocasta by Palpatine, who views her as a particular threat — for her knowledge makes her almost a one-woman Jedi Order, and that must be stopped. So why has the Emperor commanded Vader to keep Jocasta alive? And what secret information will she risk everything to protect? Meanwhile, Vader discovers that an expensive bounty has been placed on his head! Who would dare try to challenge the Dark Lord’s place in the Empire? Darth Vader’s story continues!

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  • Rebecca Fisher

    REBECCA FISHER, with us since January 2008, earned a Masters degree in literature at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her thesis included a comparison of how C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman each use the idea of mankind’s Fall from Grace to structure the worldviews presented in their fantasy series. Rebecca is a firm believer that fantasy books written for children can be just as meaningful, well-written and enjoyable as those for adults, and in some cases, even more so. Rebecca lives in New Zealand. She is the winner of the 2015 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best SFF Fan Writer.

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