This article is a preview of WIRED magazine 01.16, our Star Wars special issue featuring J.J. Abrams, on sale from December 10 2015. Follow ourStar Wars: The Force Awakenshub page for all of our web, print and behind-the-scenes coverage.
Darth Vader stares out of a Star Destroyer window, having just heard the name Luke Skywalker for the first time. "I have a son," he seethes, the glass cracking with rage. "He will be mine. It will all be mine."
It's a dramatic moment -- but one you will never see on screen. Instead, you'll need to read Marvel's Darth Vader. Set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, it's one of several new Marvel comics tasked with filling in the gaps created when Lucasfilm somewhat controversially reset the Star Wars "expanded universe" in 2014.
"The difference between Vader in those films is enormous," says writer Kieron Gillen, 40. "He's just discovered the last 20 years of his life have been a lie. 'I thought I killed the woman I loved, but she had a son who has been hidden from me.' That's about as Greek tragedy as it gets."
Gillen, best known for independent comic The Wicked + The Divine, was signed up after Marvel (owned by Disney, like Lucasfilm) won the licence back from Dark Horse Comics in 2014. Writing Darth Vader came with strict guidelines as to what the galaxy's most infamous absent father can and can't do. "I found out as I went along," Gillen says. "I know the period, though. I'm not going to have a story where Vader goes DJing for six months."
So, just how do you take on the biggest badass in the galaxy? "The trickiest thing is walking a line between understanding what drives him and humanising him too much," says Gillen. "I don't do internal captions for Vader. You just see a lot of panel flashbacks and a lot of him staring into the distance. It's all implied. This is why [Vader's accomplices] are kind of fun. You should be scared to be in the same room as him."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
