Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #3 by Jeremy Barlow and Juan Frigeri hits comic store shelves today and Maul’s vendetta against Darth Sidious continues!

Count Dooku and General Grievous are now captives of Darth Maul after a fierce battle in the last issue. Maul tries to convince Dooku to abandon Darth Sidious and work with him and Mother Talzin instead.  Meanwhile, the Jedi have gotten wind of Maul’s latest victory and spot an opportunity to take out two enemies at the same time…

It’s difficult to discuss this issue without going into the “surprising facts from Maul’s past” that the solicit alluded to so from this point onward, this review will have spoilers despite my usual policy to write spoiler free.

I keep going back and forth on whether or not this book is falling is firmly into my “I really enjoyed the heck out of this book and need more people to read it” column or not.  For Darth Maul fans, it probably does fall into the “you should read this” column regardless.  However, that “surprising fact” just completely threw me and left me thinking about it and not really concentrating on the rest of the issue.  (Last chance to turn back before the spoilers.)

It turns out that Mother Talzin is Maul’s actual mother or at least so she claims to Dooku.  This doesn’t jive with me for several reasons.  One, we’d already seen that another Dathomirian woman was Maul’s mother and she’d given him to Sidious albeit in the now Legends-status Darth Plagueis novel.  Two, it just doesn’t seem to fit with what we saw in the still-canon-status Clone Wars show.  Granted it was Ventress who picked Savage Opress but I thought we might’ve seen at least some reaction from Mother Talzin since Savage would be her son too.  (I somehow doubt that Maul and Savage are brothers through their father given the strongly matriarchal status of Dathomiri clans.)  While this comic arc was written based upon the show, I’m just confused as to how this works.

The plot point aside, it is a decent enough issue although it doesn’t have quite as much of the chess match manipulations between Talzin and Sidious that the first two did.  Instead, it makes up for it with plenty of Maul taking out his enemies with his lightsaber.  It also has the added bonus of featuring Mace Windu, Aayla Secura, and Obi-Wan Kenobi for a decent number of pages.

No complaints about Juan Frigeri’s art in this issue and only a comment on how his grouchy/grumpy faces for Aayla Secura and Mace Windu are spot on and pretty priceless.

Again though, not much to say about this issue as the relationship reveal ended up being the main takeaway for me here.  For those who are less caught up on issues of character canon and more interested in the action, this will probably go in the satisfied read stack.

I give Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #3 a 3.5/5 for this issue.