Darth Maul, in my experience, has been a character better taken in small doses. While many complain that he was “wasted” in Episode I, I’m of the mindset that if we had been given much more of the character his mystique would’ve grow thin. However, with the character’s re-emergence in the last season of Clone Wars, the character is back with his cybernetic legs and ready to slice him up some Jedi. Luckily, Death Sentence #1 manages to walk that fine line between exposing the character and keeping enough hidden behind the curtain so that the illusion isn’t spoiled.
Writer Tom Taylor quickly sets up Maul’s current predicament – he and his brother Savage Opress find themselves with a massive bounty on their heads – while managing to re-establish why Maul is such a badass in the first place. If you’ve been waiting for Maul to spill some blood, this is the book for you. The level of savagery that he displays is beyond even a Sith Lord to some degree, as he doesn’t merely settle on the act of killing itself, but goes about it in a much more flamboyant and sadistic fashion. Meanwhile, Taylor balances this out with the Jedi trying to take control of the situation and a dangling mystery of just where Obi-Wan is. The result is a fast-paced but engaging romp through the Clone Wars era that you probably never knew you wanted to see.
The art of Bruno Redondo is more traditional Star Wars fare than we’ve seen in other recent launches like Ghost Prison and Blood Ties, and the book is all the better for it. The storytelling is fast-paced and matches the script beat for beat, meanwhile achieving the necessary likenesses for established characters like Maul and Mace Windu. Redondo’s action sequences do have a bit of a freeze-frame quality to them, slowing down the blaster fire and lightsabers to a degree that makes the imagery feel like snapshots instead of flowing action. However, there are some instances that this works to the book’s benefit – like a particular explosion in the final scene that finds Maul and Opress infiltrating the facility of the man that put the bounty on their heads.
The only other problem with the artwork is that Maul and Opress are cloaked nearly the whole time and often drenched in shadow, leaving the reader a bit confused as to who is who. It can be figured out through dialog on occasion, but in general I wish there was a clearer indicator of which character was which that didn’t require me to stop the scene to backtrack.
In all, Death Sentence is a nice surprise for Darth Maul fans, and the first issue should particularly satisfy fans of the TV show until it finally returns in the fall.
Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter, or find him on IGN. He will love Star Wars until the end of his days.
Source : ign[dot]com
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