Popverse's top stories

• Matt Mercer is aware of (and humbled by) Critical Role's place in D&D history
• One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda is the guy you have to thank for Netflix’s super-cute Chopper
• Watch the Hell’s Kitchen Returns: Daredevil: Born Again with Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Elden Henson, & Wilson Bethel from Chicago's C2E2!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…Darth Vader took on an army and didn’t break a sweat. Star Wars: Vader Down was one of the first major crossover storylines Marvel Comics published after regaining the Star Wars license in 2015. Set between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, Vader Down finds Darth Vader marooned on a planet as the entire Rebel Alliance attempts to take him down.

It doesn’t go well for the Rebels.

The storyline, which ran in Jason Aaron’s Star Wars title and Kieron Gillen’s Darth Vader, sees Vader acting as a one-man army against everything the Rebels throw at him.

“I think we had a lot of fun with Vader,” Star Wars writer Jason Aaron says during a panel at MegaCon 2026. “Kieron [Gillen] did too in his book. For whatever reason, I’m not sure what this says about me, I think if you look across my 20 years of work, I’ve written a lot of crappy dads, no slight against my own father, but clearly that’s a dynamic that tracks with me. Vader’s probably the world’s most famous crappy dad.”

Aaron proudly reminded everyone that the storyline predated the iconic hallway scene from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which wouldn’t hit theaters for another year. “With Vader Down, that was our first big Star Wars crossover where my book and Kieron’s Darth Vader crossed over, and it was fun getting to write all those characters from his book, like Doctor Aphra and the evil droids. But the main appeal of that crossover was getting to see Vader really cut loose. This was before Rogue One had come out, so I hadn’t seen anything like that.”

“I mean, the first big, oversized book of that is just Vader by himself alone against the entire Rebel army and pretty much just wiping them out. First, it’s a big space battle, and then he winds up crash landing on this planet where he’s just facing an entire army of guys, and no hesitation, no backing down, and Vader in complete confidence just turns on his lightsaber and says that line.”

This moment, seen in Star Wars: Vader Down #1, contains one of the most reposted panels in all of Star Wars comics. Staring down the Rebels, Vader says, “All I am surrounded by is fear. And dead men.” Jason Aaron says that line has overshadowed almost everything he’s done in his career.

“At this point, it feels like that line will be on my tombstone. The first line of my obituary. I don’t know card games, but there’s some Star Wars card game, and somebody gave me the card for it, and it’s that line.”

Aaron also shared his original idea for the storyline, which had Vader marooned in the vacuum of space. This was rejected by Lucasfilm. “I loved getting Vader to cut loose. There was some stuff they wouldn’t let us do. They kept kind of a tight rein on what he could and couldn’t do. So, it would have been wiping out in space. Like, I wanted his ship to blow up and he’s just kind of jumping from ship to ship in space. But I’m still super happy with the stuff that we did get to do in that book.”

Keep in mind, this was two years before Vader’s daughter Leia would jump from ship to ship in space during Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It must be a Skywalker thing.

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.