Y’all want to see a page from the comics that Haunts Me™
Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadows #5
Anakin Skywalker Darth Vader: Child Killer is such a Theme in Star Wars media. It should just be a cliché. It’s a very easy shorthand to communicate to an audience that a person is losing or has lost their humanity, and is becoming the embodiment of pure evil, and yet, every time, it makes me cringe.
It reminds me of a fascinating sequence when Vader kills his younger self in a vision in Darth Vader (2015) #24. There’s this really charming exchange where he kills Obi-Wan (again)and gets the last word this time (not that he’d probably been obsessing over what he wanted to have said or anything of course not).
“I’m more powerful with every step I take away from you.” Sure, Jan.
Anyway, the memory of young Anakin Skywalker shows up allllll angry because Darth Vader killed his beloved Master!!
They fight, and of course Vader wins (it is his vision after all). He then says it himself:
“You were a child. I am well accustomed to killing children.”
Anakin Vader knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s done. He is able to admit it to himself, without any self-censure. It’s just a statement of fact. He is an executioner of children. This is the evil of the dark side at play. He’s lost all compassion, all humanity.
It’s very fun to tell stories about ~sexy and morally ambiguous gray jedi~ and easy to avoid engaging with the premise of Star Wars worldbuilding that the Sith and the dark side are evil, and that evil has a real, concrete meaning (aka children die).
I love the comics a lot for not shying away from engaging with Vader’s worst deeds. There’s so much fascinating characterization and worldbuilding going on, and you get to see panels like the first, which can haunt your nightmares! So it’s good times all around, highly recommend
It’s apparently impossible to even open a Darth Vader comic without the younglings showing up hahaha sorry after finishing this post I just opened Darth Vader (2020) #7 and this flashback was the beginning haahah it’s almost like Anakin isn’t over it, or something.
Though that makes sense from this from Darth Vader (2017) #21:
What I find so interesting about this motif is the unsaid implication of what Anakin believes he did. Darth Vader is not only an executioner of children but he believes himself to be the executioner of his own child. I have thought so many times about the murder of the children,and specifically his belief that he murdered his own child being the cornerstone of what keeps him in he dark side and unable to turn back when he has so many chances. The comics further do a wonderful job,like in his force vision of Obi-Wan forgiving him,showing that it is his own self hatred and belief of going too far that keeps him in the dark and under the assumption that there is no going back or returning to the light.
And you show perfectly how it’s a reoccurring theme in the comics that it is the children he focuses on and comes back to again and again. For the audience absolutely,it is the ultimate act of evil that humans abhore,the abuse and murder of children,the ultimate innocents. But I think it further illustrates his absolute self hatred,because as you said he knows what he did,and he knows what he is. And that specific self hatred,Anakin Skywalker child killer,Anakin skywalker slaughterer of his own child,it is the root of his own self agony and loathing that keeps him so firmly planted in the dark.
I love the comics for that further layer of nuance it lends Anakin’s redemption and relationship with Luke. We know why and how Anakin is redeemed,but it is interesting to examine that the revelation that he didn’t butcher his own child like he thought,was the slightest,minuscule lessening of guilt and self hatred that could allow the dimmest glimmer of a thought that a return to the light and redemption was a possibility. With the knowledge that there was one less child he slaughtered,it allowed Anakin the forgiveness he had sought all along,not Obi-Wan’s,who would have willingly gave it,but his own,which he was unable to give and why he stayed in the dark.
I appreciate this show was made entirely by really weird people. But I really like the writer being asked what the takeaway from their vision was and having the answer be “nothing”
