Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red #3: The Id of a Sith Lord

Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red #3, the next installment of the tri-colored anthology series explores Maul’s loyalty to Darth Sidious and the path of a Sith Lord. This theme is a common direction in both the Legends & Canon stories exploring Maul’s time as a Sith Lord, and like those other works, this issue does the same but explores it in a new and different manner.

Schultz begins the story with Maul training on the lower levels of Coruscant, much like the sequence in the Legends novel, Nightstalker, immediately pulling the reader into the action. It is also in this sequence, that Maul, seemingly without thinking, questions SIdious’s orders, setting up the story’s overarching theme of Maul questioning his current path. As the story moves forward, Schultz expertly unfolds the backstory of Maul’s target, while allowing the internal monologue of Maul to play out at the same time, yet remaining connected to the story.

It was great that Schultz took the time to provide the backstory of Maul’s target in a way that it organically felt like part of the story and let the art fill in the gaps, without resorting to an exposition dump. It’s in the backstory that we learn how and why the Devaronian Coir Cion has been marked by Sidious for termination by Maul. Given the limited space to tell this part of the story, everything the reader needs to know is presented, while providing fans with a cameo of Mas Amedda, the Vice Chair of the Galactic Senate.

The relationship between Maul and Sidious is on scale with what one would expect, especially in the panels at the end where the two Sith Lords are meeting following the mission. The only thing the issue could have used more of was digging deeper into why Maul, according to Sidious, hesitates before fulfilling his mission. While it would have been nice to see Maul question his mission or purpose with the Sith a little deeper, as mentioned in the solicit, it leaves an air of mystery to Maul’s character that works, even though this thread is expanded on in other stories in the franchise canon. In short, it is a nice examination of Maul without becoming to deconstructive in nature, which might be too much for the casual Star Wars fan.

The artwork by Leonard Kirk works well and captures both the action and detail and allows Mossa’s use of the three colors to jump of the page and not distract from the overall reading experience. There are some panels where Maul or the aliens look off-model but not enough to take one out of the larger story being told.