Return to Vader’s Castle #1-5: Creepy, Kooky, Mysterious, and Spooky

IDW excels at bring out bright colorful versions or continuations of many popular brands. They differ from Marvel by targeting a younger audience, but that in no way means they stories aren’t any less engaging or strong. When they took on Star Wars, it was clear that the purpose was to tell stories from every era and even to re-canonize elements lost by the continuity reset sparked by Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. The Vader’s Castle series exemplifies this. It tells a separate tale from multiple eras each issue in the backdrop of a continuing story taking place in the depths of Darth Vader’s stronghold on Mustafar. Last year, a group of characters found the servers telling scary tales to help cope with the terror of being trapped there after crashing on the lava planet. This sequel series involves Lieutenant Hudd, who was left behind during the previous series. In it, Vader’s henchman Vanee, who had a brief roll in the film Rogue One, tortures the grizzled rebel both physically and mentally by using a pain-inducing machine and telling spooky stories.

The stories themselves seem to be spoofs of popular scary movies, not unlike what The Simpsons does each year with their popular “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episodes. There are five tales revolving around five Star Wars villains, each in a different art style and famous horror elements. This is a great formula for any series. The first was a Darth Maul tale where he represents The Devil himself, followed by Tarkin in a Frankenstein story. Issue three had the ex-Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress in a Little Shop of Horrors story, with Jabba in a living brain tale to succeed it. The final issue is a zombie outbreak involving Darth Vader himself. As stated, each story has it’s own unique art style. These range delightfully from classic pulp art inspired by stuff like Tales from the Crypt to a cartoon story book style. This gives the the series an amazing anthology feel and allows for very unique individual storytelling. This is not new for IDW, their regular Star Wars Adventures comic does the same thing, but they do it so well for each story that it gives a specific flavor to every tale. The Marvel Star Wars series tend to be a bit more homogeneous as far as art style, story structure in the from of continuing arcs, and even timelines. Because of the device of telling many short stories, this series can refreshingly  jump to any timeline from the prequel and sequel trilogies and all points in between.