Writer Charles Soule and artist Will Sliney tell StarWars.com about capturing the subtle emotion and sweeping mythology inherent in Ben Solo’s epic journey to the dark side.
To tell the tale of Ben Solo’s fall to the dark side, the subject of the upcoming Marvel Star Wars comic The Rise of Kylo Ren, writer Charles Soule and artist Will Sliney started from a framework developed by Lucasfilm after a lengthy conversation with none other than J.J. Abrams. The director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had created the Knights of Ren for the first film in the sequel trilogy, and the pair knew their story had to fit between two fixed points in the Star Wars timeline: the destruction of the Jedi temple that sent Luke Skywalker into exile and the arrival of the fearsome dark warrior who appeared on Jakku at the start of The Force Awakens.
“And then it was about creating a story that felt epic and above all emotional for Ben Solo,” Soule tells StarWars.com. “Because this transition, this turn to the dark side has to be as good and stand at the same level as some of the other big turns to the dark side we see,” including the fall of Anakin Skywalker, who was transformed into the infamous Sith Lord Darth Vader.
Soule previously delved into Darth Vader’s past with another Marvel comic, Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, an epic story that kicked off as the machine-enabled man was lurching off Emperor Palpatine’s operating table at the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.