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Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: Apr. 16, 2014
In the former-clone trooper Hock's final story he finally comes to terms with who Vader is and what this new reality of “the Empire†really means.
Hock, shot down over a separatist city, is now locked in hand-to-hand combat with Keddak, the inspiring fellow former-clone trooper. As he fights and as the separatist forces cheer him on, Hock realizes why this Empire will never win - because people will never stop fighting them to be free, that for all their might the Empire can't possibly extinguish the spirit of freedom and the resistance to anyone that would impose limits on it. He sees it now, that he's just fighting for survival while the separatists are fighting for an actual cause.
And, as Hock is about to witness, that matters little to Vader who seems to be fighting something else entirely. His utter ruthlessness shocks Hock out of his stupor as Vader strikes down the separatist fighters in the infirmary, defenseless but defiant to the last. This is something new, something horribly wrong, to Hock's sensibilities.
Hock leaves this all behind, choosing, as he says, to “cultivate life instead of death.†But he's still haunted by what he did and the pure menacing evil of the Empire embodied by Darth Vader. He writes this whole series out as his confession, choosing at the end to burn it, to remove it entirely from existence.
It's a rather anticlimactic ending to this series that sought a new perspective on Vader. That character's thoughts are prevalent more so early on but lessened as Hock comes into his own along the way. Tim Siedell's story finds its compassionate core and finally lets its protagonist get there, leaving Vader to remain as enigmatic and awful as ever and that's a deft touch. Gabriel Guzman's artwork is consistently up to the task and conveys this drama in a very lively, real fashion. A great ending note to an interesting series in the Star Wars universe and worth checking out.
