It's hard out here for a Sith Lord... 
 Like the other current Marvel Star Wars titles this is set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Darth Vader is on the Emperor's shit list for the destruction of the Death Star. Vader now has to answer to another Imperial officer, and the Emperor has been grooming a group of dangerous candidates to be his potential replacement someday. Now Vader has discovered that the Force-strong pilot who blew up the Death Star real good is named Skywalker which isn't something he wants to advertise just yet so he's been running his own covert operations to find Luke with the help of Dr. Aphra and her murderous droids. 
 I was questioning exactly what kind of stories you could do with Vader that wouldn't either contradict what we know or be useless fluff, but this title has found a lot of interesting angles. The idea that Vader has been trying to discover the identity of the rebel pilot only to learn that it was the son he didn't know he had has filled a story gap. I also like that he's essentially operating as a double agent because he's pursuing his own agenda instead of the Empire's and has to conceal his actions because it still lets him be a murderous bad guy while giving him a goal that we can at least sympathize with and builds some tension with him working both with and against the people around him. 
 Aphra is a great character as the rogue criminal more than willing to do all kinds of illegal things in service to Vader and showing him loyalty even as she recognizes that he'll more than likely kill her someday. BT-1 and 0-0-0 also continue to be a lot of fun as the bad guy versions of R2-D2 and C-3P0. I just wish they could find a way to give them goatees to really signify that they're evil. 
 This is a solid tie-in story that has even found a way to work in some of prequel stuff and not make it suck.