Dark Droids: D-Squad #1
“RETURN OF THE DROIDS”
The SPARK ETERNAL has merged with an ancient droid intelligence to become something new and terrifying. This scourge is corrupting droids on both sides of the galactic civil war.
Among them is the protocol droid SEE-THREEPIO. Under the control of the Spark, Threepio attacked his friend and counterpart ARTOO-DETOO and jettisoned him out of the Rebel flagship, ”Home One”.
With his communications equipment and circuits damaged, Artoo floats helplessly in the infinite vacuum of space….
Writer: Marc Guggenheim
Artist: Salva Espin
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Colorist: Israel Silva
Cover artist: Aaron Kuder
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: September 20, 2023
Opening any comic with R2-D2 has to be considered a winning move, but to see him tumbling aimlessly through space, not so much. That’s where we start the opening issue of Dark Droids: D-Squad as Artoo, who was ejected from Home One in Dark Droids #2 by a controlled C-3PO, tries first to communicate with friends, only to find his antennae are damaged, then to try his jets (which in true original trilogy form are missing) and finally to activate his fire supressant system which we saw in The Empire Strikes Back which jets him off at great speed right into an asteroid field. he bashes from rock to rock until he finds a starship hidden in the field and uses his magnetic grappling hook to connect to the ship and pull himself inside.
There he finds WAC-47, panicking as he tries to steer. Turning he sees Artoo, who explains the situation, how he was ejected from Home One where WAC-47 is flying to with a cargo of hygenic sheets, and unable to communivcate with the outside world he activates the hyperdrive and blasts them away to Iego, where he explains what Threepio did. Artoo needs to get back to Home One asap, but WAC needs to get the ship repaired first.
Luckily, because there are after all only 1000 characters in the entire Star Wars galaxy, Artoo turns to his right and sees Chopper, and the two start squabbling until WAC breaks it up, acting as mediator and explaining to Chop how Artoo needs to help Threepio. Chopper is on a secret mission, and reluctant to share the details WAC explains how during the Clone Wars he was part of a team with Artoo called D-Squad. Chopper appears to be less than impressed, but tells them of a holovid circulating about a homicidal protocol droid which looks a lot like Threepio. Artoo is in as bad a mood as Chopper, and trundles off to find a ship, co-opting a pilot droid aboard a GX1 to take him to Gallios, where the pilot makes very clear he wants Artoo gone. Instead, he messes with the axial motivator, meaning the ships going nowhere and exits to find the droid he’s looking for – the Threepio-looking Triple-Zero, who’s about to embark on a homicidal spree.
The issue also has a second story, the first part in the Book of Ajax as we see the legendary droid revolutionary fight for the freedom of droids, battling the Jedi until defeated. We see its globular core found by Han Solo and Chewbacca, and eventually his journey to the Colony of the Second Revolution where its neural core is housed in a new body and Ajax Sigma begins to preach the lesson of peace. Many of its droid brethren want revolution and vengeance to be free, but Ajax believes they already are free. They are on a world most ignore, and he hopes to build a safe and free collective. The droid who challenges him – the same droid named Symon who found his neural procesor and helped build him – clearly disagrees, and as Ajax leaves to return to Kligson’s Moon he asks another droid Deera to keep an eye on him.
He tells the story of arriving on the moon to find settlers, who knew of his legend and who were afraid of him, attacking in numbers to overwhelm him. They failed, and we see he’s telling this story to Luke Skywalker, who ignites his yellow-bladed lightsaber and attacks, prompting Ajax to retreat back to Mechis III where he confers with Deera, telling her of his weakness and fear of a new theat approaching.
For the Dark Droids storyline to require this spin-off bodes well, with the four main titles and the Dark Droids limited series all up and running, and told from the point of view of Artoo this is chock full of character and sass. Yes, the convenience of these characters randomly bumping into each other is beyond eyebrow-raising – being in the same region let alone the same sector / system / planet / continent/ country / city / street is too dizzying to calculate, yet it happens all the time – but set that aside and you’ve got a fun issue using silent movie era Laurel and Hardy level charades to convey what’s going on, and with the characters on show here it works better than it probably has any right to. A solid start, and with the addition of the Book of Ajax second story we have some interesting galactic history to delve into.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Guggenheim, Marc (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 23 Pages - 10/25/2023 (Publication Date) - Marvel (Publisher)
