Star Wars Adventures: Tales from Vader's Castle #2 Review

by NumidianPrime on October 10, 2018

Writer: Cavan Scott

Artists: Derek Charm and Kelley Jones

Letterers: Robbie Robbins and Tom B. Long

Publisher: IDW

 

The second issue of Tales from Vader’s Castle picks up where the first left off in the present day story. Lina Graf (from the author’s previous Adventures in Wild Space series of junior readers books) continues to lead her team of rebels after they crashed on the surface of Mustafar. One of her team members starts to doubt her and begins to tell a cautionary tale set during the Clone Wars on the planet Bray, involving Obi-Wan Kenobi, Adi Gallia, and Count Dooku. Dooku has allied himself with a creature called Ravna that has the ability to turn people into a kind of werewolf/vampire and it’s up to the Jedi to stop them.
 

I didn’t really enjoy the creature in this issue. Ravna felt kind of awkward to me, like they just transplanted something that we consider to be spooky in the real world into the Star Wars universe. I don’t think fifteen pages, once you account for the present day parts, is really enough to introduce the concept properly so it didn’t end up feeling like Star Wars to me. There are plenty of creatures and ideas in the Star Wars universe already that are spooky and would fit the series that could be used for these stories more organically in my opinion.
 

The art isn’t really too distinctive or notable. The same artist, Derek Charm, does the art for the present day sections while the stories have different artists each issue. Charm has done art for Star Wars Adventures before and I enjoy his style enough but there isn’t anything that particularly stands out about it. The art in the story isn’t as good, it was mostly just average and there were places where it took me out of the story. I especially didn’t really like the design of the native aliens.
 

I did have some fun with the story though. It was cool seeing Obi-Wan and Adi working together and I enjoyed Dooku. I’m also pretty interested in the present day plot. Mustafar and especially Vader’s Castle itself is an interesting location, and I’m already familiar with Lina from Scott’s past work so I’m liking seeing more of her. I do enjoy a lot of Scott’s work so I’m still looking forward to what other stories this series has to tell.
 

Our Score:

7/10

A Look Inside