Darth Maul – Black, White & Red 1

Darth Maul – Black, White & Red 1 is the first issue of the 2024 canon comic anthology miniseries Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red. The issue was written by Benjamin Percy, illustrated by Stefano Raffaele and Raul Angulo, and published by Marvel Comics on April 24, 2024.

Publisher's summary

DARTH MAUL STARS IN HIS VERY OWN HORROR BLOCKBUSTER! A prison ship – transporting a cult known as the FINAL OCCULTATION – goes offline, and DARTH MAUL is sent by PALPATINE to investigate. What he finds on board is the stuff of nightmares!!! It's up to him to stop this profoundly dark and unstable force that wishes to bring chaos to the galaxy.

Opening crawl

"GHOST SHIP" 
Before the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader, Darth Sidious trained another
disciple in the secrets of the Sith Order. This apprentice was a mysterious warrior of Dathomir,
who left a path of death and destruction as he made his way through the galaxy….

Plot summary

Sith Lord Darth Sidious informs his apprentice Darth Maul that he requires his immediate action, as a transport containing their enemies has gone dark on the way to a prison planet. He shows Maul a transmission from the ship, which shows a strange, terrifying alien and sounds of people crying out in pain. The sounds make the mind feel as if it's being torn apart, and Sidious explains that it is the stuff of nightmares and legends of dark magic.

Maul is sent out to secure the ship and bring the prisoners in for interrogation, and whilst on his ship the Scimitar, he reviews the details on the upcoming mission. The prisoners belong to an order called the Final Occultation, which is aided by chaotic forces flowing from the Netherworld of the Force. They know of the Sith, and plan to expose them before they can rise to power. As Maul lands and studies their three leaders, he worries about his master's true intentions with this cult as they are an extremely dangerous force.

Landing on the ship, Maul is immediately knocked down by an unseen force trying to tear apart his reality. The hangar's barrier is shut off, causing Scimitar to be sent adrift into space, and nearly sucking Maul and his lightsaber along with it. Maul uses the Force to cause his lightsaber hilt to press a button, reactivating the shield. He then activates the remote piloting system aboard the Scimitar. He recovers and ventures off into the dark hallways of the ship, and finds that the air is sporous and tastes of rot. Approaching many dead bodies leaking blood, one still alive and panicking grabs Maul on the leg and claims that "Heldi Cerebron" is in his head. The floating cult leader approaches them. Maul starts to become infected by the spores and hallucinates being picked up by the tentacles of Heldi, but calling upon his training, he is able to hurl his double-bladed lightsaber and slice the creature in half. The man thanks Maul, but when he pleads for help, Maul only walks away and continues on through the ship.

Soon in the detention block, Maul finds many twisted and broken bodies littering the floor, and he finds a survivor who has locked himself in a cell for protection. He warns Maul to do the same. Just then, Vasik Aldritch, a massive, strong brute and the second leader, begins to fire upon Maul with a laser cannon. Maul easily blocks the laserfire with his lightsaber, but points out that while Aldritch may be slow, his body is as dangerous as his gun. Using disorder to fight Maul's precision, he forcefully kicks the Zabrak back and smashes into the survivor's cell, grabbing the crewmember and hurling him at Maul. Maul slices the man in half, but his lightsaber is shot out of his hands. When Vasik picks him up, Maul uses the Force to summon his lightsaber back. It cuts the hands off of Vasik, allowing Maul to perform the killing blow.

Moving on, Maul follows the screams and cries pitched with exquisite pain, and he eventually finds himself in a large and open reactor room. Filled with cultists, the third and final leader approaches Maul, adopting his own visage. It then peels off its face, revealing a skull underneath before vanishing into smoke. A secretly scared Maul swings at the air while the ephemeral creature says that Sidious has the wrong ambitions because he wants to use the dark side to control, and Maul as his apprentice has the same binary mindset. The voice says that the light and dark sides are the same and are merely the ways of order, whereas the Final Occultation wants anarchy since chaos is the true system of the universe, not order. Calling itself an "emissary of chaos", it explains that when Sidious had them imprisoned, they began a summoning ceremony that will soon be complete. Using the hypermatter particles from the ship, they will open a rift of madness that will echo screams through the galaxy, and all will live on a red boiling planet. As the creature transforms into many terrifying images, he tells Maul that someone like him who knows and controls pain so well could become one of their priests. However, Maul believes that what they worship is a prison, and when the Sith goes for the attack, the leader orders for the cultists to destroy Maul.

As the horde come charging at him, Maul realizes that this is all madness and they will overpower him, so he flees back through the ship. Securing himself in the bridge, Maul recognizes that while Sidious had wanted prisoners, the danger of the Final Occultation is too high to risk interrogation, so he decides to end them by piloting the ship straight into the surface of a nearby ice planet. Returning to the Scimitar, which has touched down close by, Maul contacts his master and explains that his task is done but not in the way Sidious had hoped. Maul explains that this cult should not have ever been taken prisoner and should have been destroyed upon capture. When Sidious claims that the Final Occultation nearly broke Maul, the Zabrak responds that they nearly broke the galaxy. As he departs, he thinks to himself that his only confusion is that such madness could even exist, and he now sees the need for control more than ever.

Media

Explore all of Wookieepedia's images from this article subject.

Cover gallery

Appearances

Wiki-shrinkable This Appearances list is incomplete. You can help Wookieepedia by expanding it.
By type
Characters Organisms Droid models Events Locations
Organizations and titles Sentient species Vehicles and vessels Weapons and technology Miscellanea

Characters

Events

Locations

Organizations and titles

Sentient species

Vehicles and vessels

Weapons and technology

Miscellanea

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Marvel-TemplateLogo Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red (2024) #1 on Marvel Comics' official website (backup link)
  2. ↑ Darth Maul – Black, White & Red 1 places itself during the time period during which Darth Maul was under the tutelage of Darth Sidious. Star Wars: Timelines establishes that Sidious took Maul from his home on Dathomir in 40 BBY, and dates the end of Maul's apprenticeship to Sidious during the Battle of Naboo to 32 BBY. Thus, the events of the comic must take place sometime between 40 BBY and 32 BBY.

External links

Black, White & Red
Darth Vader
1: "Hard Shutdown" part one · "Inescapable" · "Dissolution of Hope"
2: "Hard Shutdown" part two · "The Endless Mercy" · "Power"
3: "Hard Shutdown" part three · "Annihilated" · "Diplomatic Impunity"
4: "Hard Shutdown" part four · "The Inhabitant" · "Return to Hoth"
TPB
Darth Maul
1 · 2 · 3 · 4
TPB
Boba Fett
1 · 2 · 3 · 4
[edit]


In other languages