Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #4 Review

by Henry Wood

Written by Charles Soule

Drawn by Stefano Rafaele

Colored by Nolan Woodard

Lettered by Joe Caramagna

Edited by Mikey J. Basso, Drew Baumgartner, Mark Paniccia, Grace Orriss & Robert Simpson

After learning the history of his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, Kylo Ren is guided by Vaneé to the planet of Naboo to learn more history about his family. Once there, Kylo Ren learns the haunted history of Naboo and decides to take decisive action to bring order to the home of his grandmother. But what is Vaneé trying to achieve by teaching Kylo Ren his family history?

Regular artist Luke Ross takes a break and Stefano Rafaele, best known to Star Wars comics readers as the main artist for Greg Pak’s recently completed Darth Vader series, fills in. While I didn’t like it quite as much as Ross’ pencils and inks, Rafaele is no slouch and still crafts an intriguing atmosphere that highlights the state of disrepair that Naboo has fallen into since we’ve last seen it. He crafts locations that are eerily reminiscent of ones that we saw in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, giving us a great view of how much time has passed and what has happened in that time.

The story of the book is Vaneé moving through both Palpatine’s and Anakin’s life stories, drawing the obvious parallel between Anakin and Kylo. Vaneé is trying to guide Kylo Ren into being the most powerful version of himself, for reasons we’re not quite aware of yet. Vaneé seeks to get Kylo to embrace the pain and loss he has felt similarly to how Anakin fell to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader. Soule’s story here is clear, he is using Vaneé to draw the similarities and illustrating the differences between Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren is having to do more and more extreme things to prove to himself that he is every bit the dangerous Dark Lord that he believes his grandfather was.

I understand that this series is called Legacy of Vader, but I do wish that this issue covered a little more about Padmé, but I also understand that Vaneé may not have as much information and obsession about Padmé that he had about his master, Darth Vader. On that note, I think is probably the weakest issue of the series so far, but it’s still enjoyable and moves the plot forward and I’m very much looking forward to learning what Vaneé’s motives are as the series continues.