Darth Maul – Black, White & Red 1
What is it ? : Maul receives a mission from Palpatine, a transport has gone dark on route to a prison planet, and a broadcast of madness and chaos has been received, he requires a weapon to user against this force.
Maul travels there, studying the data as he travels, the prisoners are part of the Final Occultation, who use energies that flow from the netherworld, the realm of death. Maul senses that Palpatine wants these powers for himself, he also discovers that the Final Occultation is led by three figures.
Landing in the ships docking bay, he exits the Scimitar and is mentally assaulted, but also the docking bay is evacuated of air dragging his ship out, but he manages to hurl his lightsaber against a panel and reactivate the shield and repressurise the bay.
He encounters one of the crew, he eyes mad and staring begging to get her out of his head, and he finds the first of the Final Occultation, Heldi, who attacks his mind. But his mental conditioning allows him to hurl his lightsaber and slice her in half.
Heading into the detention block, he finds an officer who has locked himself in a cell. And the second of the Final Occultation attacks, firing a heavy blaster cannon, Maul parries the bolts, and closes the distance between them, but Vasik is a massive figure and a match physically for Maul leading to a long fight before Maul cuts his throat with his lightsaber.
Moving on he encounters in a large chamber a crowd of figures stuck between pleasure and pain, and he finds the final member of the Final Occultation who intends to use the hypermatter from the ships engines to open a rift in space and spread their influence across the galaxy, bring the pleasure and pain to everyone.
Maul attempts to attack the figure, but the crowd is sent against him, and he is nearly overwhelmed by sheer numbers, so he comes up with another plan and heads to the ships bridge, crashing it into a planets surface.
Maul pulls himself from the wreckage and informs Palpatine that his mission is done, Palpatine comments that the Final Occultation almost broke Maul, but Maul responds they almost broke the galaxy, but whatever chaos they shared with him will remain buried, and he now just requires order . . . .
High Points : As with Vader Black, White and Red the artwork is visually stunning, the use of only the three colours of the title really works with Maul, making him often the only coloured element in a frame, really making Maul the focus of the story.
It's also a view of Maul I'd never considered before, I'd always thought of him as a blunt weapon, as in The Phantom Menace he didn't seem to have any plan apart from being menacing. But here we see him studying records, being thoughtful, and very much being more in line with what we see in his various appearances after Episode 1.
Low Points : But there's really not much to this story, they try to eject him from the ship, but deals with it because he's mentally ordered, he goes against someone who drives people insane, and deals with it because he's mentally ordered, he fights a guy with a big gun, and deals with him because he's a Sith warrior, and then he goes against someone else who drives people insane, and deals with it because he's mentally ordered. We get it, Maul is mentally ordered, he's not the berserker we thought he was in The Phantom Menace.
So what do you really think ? : I suppose this issue is trying to show us a different side to Maul, not only is he a more thoughtful and tactical warrior than we really saw in The Phantom Menace, but he's not the lackey of Palpatines we saw then as well, he questions Palpatine's reasons for doing things, he comes to decisions that he believes are right that he knows won't make Palpatine happy. It makes it more likely that Maul would challenge Palpatine at some point under the rule of two, because while he's Palpatines student, he does have his own opinions and ideas.
Final Words : I'm also disappointed that unlike the Vader series which had multiple stories in each issue, this just has one, so this 4 issue series will only have 4 stories, unlike Vader which had 9 (2 short stories in each issue, and 1 multi part story spread across the series).
Rather strangely, these are also supposed to be horror stories about Maul, and while this one does have horror imagery in the visions that Maul is assaulted with, it feels more conventional sci-fi than horror, something you might see on Star Trek rather than Star Wars.
Score : 8/10
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