Darth Vader was a serial of comic books within the Star Wars original Expanded Universe. They detail Darth Vader's actions shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith.
Story arcs for the comic series include:
- Darth Vader and the Lost Command
- Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison
- Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin
- Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadowsnote
The series include the following tropes:
- The Alcatraz: The titular Ghost Prison, where the Jedi Order kept extremely dangerous Separatist POWs during the Clone Wars.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe example in The Lost Command. Darth Vader, for reasons strongly implied with dealing with the depths of his guilt for what he has done, often dreams of what his life would have been like had he either killed Darth Sidious himself or had he let Mace Windu deliver the final blow. It shows him as a grandmaster of the Jedi, and having a son, and obviously the Galactic Republic would have remained a Republic and Padme would have still been alive.
- Apocalypse Cult: The Heinsnake cult from Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin worship a prophecy that a Dark Messiah (whom they believe to be Vader) will lead them in plunging the galaxy into eternal chaos.
- A Father to His Men: Gentis will do anything for his men in Ghost Prison.
- Berserk Button: In Ghost Prison, Vader flips out when he watches a hologram of the Jedi council discussing the Ghost Prison, and how they deliberately kept it a secret from him and Palpatine.
- Bold Explorer: Reebo Keen, a Rebel Leader in The Cry of Shadows, helped explore and settle three planets and volunteered to serve on the frontlines before being elected as a civilian leader.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Vader betrays and murders pretty much everyone he works with, except Palpatine.
- Dead Guy Junior: In Vader's imaginary life in Lost Command his son is named Jinn, after his first master Qui-Gon.
- Defector from Decadence: Tarkin's son defected to the side he was trying to defeat because he was disgusted with the fact that the Empire he was serving was constantly committing genocide against several people. This is also the reason why one of Vader's personnel was trying to have Vader assassinated.
- Enemy Civil War: Villain Protagonist Vader finds himself inadvertently tricked into attacking other Imperial loyalists as part of an insurgency Batman Gambit in The Lost Command.
- Exact Words: "You will know of my success when you have Vader's head on your lap. You will not see or hear from me again". Cut to the other guy sitting in a chair, his eyes and ears removed. Touch is the only feeling he has left.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Trachta is not amused when Vader and Tohm decide to blow up the ship full of prisoners after helping them stamp out a coup, after having given his word that they'd be free no less.
- Evil Mentor: Both Darth Vader and Trachta are ruthless authoritarians who act as mentors to Tohm.
- Eyepatch of Power: One of the renowned assassins previously sent after Vader in The Ninth Assassin is a burly Wookiee with an eyepatch (although his exact level of toughness is never shown.
- Frontline General:
- In The Lost Command, Star Destroyer Captain Shale leaves his vessel on many occasions to go into combat at the head of a group of Storm Commandos and is also a Genius Bruiser when it comes to conceiving combat strategies and defeating enemies as part of those strategies.
- In The Cry of Shadows, former Separatist General Atticus Farstar stands within artillery range while shouting encouragement to his men and helping lure enemy soldiers into a trap.
- Handicapped Badass:
- Everyone in Ghost Prison. Laurita Tohm was disfigured from in an accident, and he is shown fighting alongside Vader. Action Politician Trachta has artificial eyes and arms, and naturally, Vader himself IS this trope due to his life support suit.
- In The Cry of Shadows, dozens of amputees and other badly injured hospital patients from a resistance field hospital march, wheel, or crawl toward Vader and stare him down rather than swear fealty to the Empire.
- Hero Antagonist: Except in The Ninth Assassin, the people Vader (the focus of the story) is fighting have far more sympathetic goals and personalities than he does.
- In The Ghost Prison, Moff Gentis leads a ruthless coup against the Empire and doesn't seem to feel that all of their policies need changing, but he is disgusted by their murders and how they use young soldiers as human waves.
- In The Lost Command, Lady Saro and her allies are trying to trick Vader into attacking Imperial loyalists and strengthen their forces to protect the Ghost Nebula from the Empire and live in peace.
- Practically everyone in the city of former Separatists and more recent dissidents in The Cry of Shadows (Lima Starcourt and her co-councilors, General Farstar, Kaddak, various unnamed hospital patients, etc.) embodies ideals of bravery, democracy, and mercy toward their enemies and just want to be left alone as Vader tries to subject them.
- Hero of Another Story: A montage in The Cry of Shadows features a group of four Jedi as part of a Rebel force that Vader defeats soon after Hock joins him, with their exact motives, organization, and how they survived Order 66 being unrevealed.
- Hope Bringer: In The Cry of Shadows, Clone deserter and Rebel Kaddak inspires the city he comes to defend to believe that their resistance means something, and even in the face of near-certain defeat, citizens cheer his name without fear as he stands against the Imperial invaders.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: As a test of loyalty, Vader forces a reluctant Lt. Tohm to execute a wounded Separatist cyborg. As Tohm draws his blaster, Vader orders him not to waste ammo, and hands him a metal pipe.
- Intrepid Merchant: The client from The Ninth Assassin is a trillionare mining magnate who prefers to conduct important deals face to face and is calm and perceptive for most of a dangerous trek through a jungle to find someone he wants to deal with (although in that case, it is an assassin to kill Vader rather than someone he wants to make money for him).
- Kick the Dog: Vader has plenty of moments of excessive brutality toward prisoners and civilians throughout the series, to remind you just what kind of man he is.
- Kill It with Fire: Gentis's motivations for causing a Military Coup stemmed from witnessing several soldiers and officers still being cremated by the dozens even after the Clone Wars were over.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: Downplayed in The Cry of Shadows. Renegade Clone Kaddak is said to be a muscle-bound brute who has mutilated his own face, and that is how his adversary Hock pictures him until they finally meet face-to-face and Hock learns Kaddak looks like any other Clone, besides maybe a more dignified visage.
- Meaningful Name: Rebel Leader Lima Starcourt from The Cry of Shadows is a former lawyer.
- Military Coup: Gentis orchestrates this in Ghost Prison, although he isn't completely unjustified in deciding to do it.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Several of the fiercest Ghost Prison fighters either have four arms or two arms and multiple tendrils.
- Mythology Gag: In Ghost Prison 3, Vader tells Laurita Tohm that he killed Anakin Skywalker, similar to how Obi Wan Kenobi, in A New Hope will tell Luke that Vader killed his father (which was technically true).
- Overshadowed by Awesome: The Ninth Assassin that tries to kill Vader was very good at his work. He killed 18 trained mercenaries without a sound, was able to tail Vader and knew where he would be in many locations, easily killed a member of the royal guard and easily moved through a Death World while following Vader. He may have been up there with the likes of Boba Fett when it came to being a Badass Normal. Unfortunately for him Vader was an Empowered Badass Normal with excellent fighting skills and the force to back him up. Guy put up a decent fight but Vader still killed him without any serious trouble.
- Rank Up: During the coup, Laurita Tohm goes from a newly minted Lieutenant to a full Admiral, as a reward for his service.
- The Reveal: The circumstances behind Trachta's injuries and cyborg state are finally revealed in Ghost Prison 3.
- Redemption Equals Death: Averted, although fans of the Star Wars franchise should realize that by then: Vader in Lost Command 5 attempts to collapse the entire temple as a means to atone for his sins as Vader. Unfortunately, the Force would still see to it that he survive, with Palpatine even digging him out.
- Ship Teasing: Laurita and Volta, an ex-Separatist sniper. Until Vader kills him, that is.
- Start of Darkness: Lost Command serves as this to Grand Moff Tarkin. While he was by no means a saint beforehand, the comic's end implies that his more monstrous tendencies were the direct result of Tarkin losing his son.
- Tyke Bomb: Ghost Prison implies that a lot of the graduates had only attended the Imperial Academies for a few months instead of the years normally needed.
- Taking You with Me: Vader's assassin attempts to do this to Vader when he was curb-stomped by Vader in Lost Command 5.
- Together in Death: Admiral Garoche Tarkin and Lady Saro were last seen holding on each other while the Atoan Cathedral was demolished with them inside.
- Uncertain Doom:
- In The Ghost Prison:
- It is said that the remaining followers of Gentis are rounded up and executed, but the general whose recruitment to the plot was shown in detail earlier on is not explicitly shown.
- Although only Shonn Volta is shown getting an Imperial commission, only fourteen of the other thirty-two remaining prisoners from the Ghost Prison are shown boarding the booby-trapped shuttle, although some of the others may have died in the battle.
- In The Lost Command:
- At the end of the first issue, Vader is preparing to drown several local prisoners when Lady Saro appears and offers to bargain with him, but it is never shown if her bargain included Vader sparing their lives.
- Many of the soldiers helping Saro, Garoche, and Shale are alive when last seen, but their fate is unclear after the Empire plans to continue attacking the sector and will show no mercy to any Rebels they find.
- In The Ninth Assassin:
- Three of the first eight assassins hired to kill Vader are dead and the other five have vanished. The majordomo of the ninth assassin is confident those five died and wouldn’t have quit the job and fled with their advance payments, but the sheer formidability and infamy of Vader may have caused at least some of those five to chicken out of following their contract.
- Rather than kill the Apocalypse Cult, Vader merely takes the device that sustains their home, leading to natural disasters that destroy the moon, but considering that some of them had a means to travel off world and cause trouble elsewhere, they may have been able to flee the moon before its destruction.
- In The Cry of Shadows:
- A Cerean Jedi shown being arrested and captured soon after Order 66 faces likely execution or torture to become an Inquisitor, but his exact fate is never shown.
- After cutting one Jedi in half during a montage scene, Vader shoves three others off a cliff, but it isn’t a very high cliff, so their fate is ambiguous.
- After Hock tries to stop the final massacre, it is unclear if Vader kills all of the Handicapped Badass hospital patients who try to stand up to him or just some of them.
- General Farstar is the only Rebel Leader not shown being killed, although some of his allies only hear static when they try to radio him at one point.
- In The Ghost Prison:
- Undying Loyalty: Implied to be Vader's current setting towards Palpatine in the early years of the Empire, as heavily implied by the ending of Ninth Assassin. The entire plot to assassinate Palpatine was, in fact, orchestrated by himself, to test Vader's reaction and intentions. By going to great lengths to pursue assassins endangering himself and his Emperor (and never even considering taking advantage of Palpatine's seeming limits/weakness), Vader demonstrates the extent of how he will enact Palpatine's will—while also affirming that he will never plot against Palpatine. Of course, down the line things go different.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Vader and Tohm have all of the Separatist POWs who helped them fight the anti-Empire officers killed off with a bomb on their ship. Then, Vader decides to kill of Tohm too lest he become a rival for power in the future.
- Un-person: In The Cry of Shadows, it is mentioned that the civilian leaders of the Rebel city include poet Phootla Veer and lawyer Lina Starcourt, both of whom had their once-renowned accomplishments censored and erased from history by the Empire, with the memoirs the narrator is considering writing being one of the few things which might preserve knowledge of them.
- Villain Cred: Vader has nothing but respect for the Ninth Assassin's skills and compliments him during their "fight", even offering him a chance to join the Empire to put his skills to good use. Of course, the Assassin refuses the offer even within an inch of his own life so Vader cuts him down like any other foe.
- Villain of Another Story: In The Ghost Prison, the inmates of the eponymous prison were elite assassins, kidnappers and military commanders for the Separatists (including at least two fallen Jedi) who terrorized the Republic during the Clone Wars but are used as reluctant Boxed Crook allies by Vader and/or are victimized by him throughout their page time.
- Villain Protagonist: Darth Vader, the protagonist, is one of the evilest people in any scene.
- Villainous BSoD: Vader suffers from an immense loss of purpose throughout the end of Lost Command.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Vader, obviously, but another character in the series was the main antagonist in Ghost Prison, Gentis, who seeks to improve the Empire with a Military Coup.
- What You Are in the Dark: In The Lost Command, when Vader tries to kill Saro (who Vader has accused of manipulating Garoche for morally dubious purposes) by making a building collapse, she shows no anger and terror about what is happening and instead calms Garoche, reaffirming their bond, and that she is happy they had some time to be happy together, proving that she really did reform and love him and doesn't see him as a pawn.
