Star Wars Comic Collector: Two Star Wars: Vader Down #1 Dynamic Forces Exclusives?

Monday, April 10, 2017

Modern Marvel

Two Star Wars: Vader Down #1 Dynamic Forces Exclusives?

Dynamic Forces is a company that specializes in variant and signed comics. They have been providing exclusive Star Wars comics since 1999 when Dark Horse held the Star Wars license. Many of the early exclusives were signed copies or covers that were altered by enhancing the title with gold or holo foil or by applying a special layer to a character on the cover so they would glow in the dark. But they did commission new artwork on some of the covers as well. In this era of variant covers, it only makes sense they would also have exclusives all of which have new cover artwork.

Dynamic Forces released two exclusive covers for the Vader Down one-shot. The standard cover is limited to 15,000 copies and the black & white cover is limited to 5,000 copies.

Star Wars: Vader Down #1ah - Marvel Comics, U.S. (December 2015)
Dynamic Forces exclusive

Star Wars: Vader Down #1ai - Marvel Comics, U.S. (December 2015)
Dynamic Forces black & white exclusive

At this point, you are probably thinking, wait a second, both those covers are identical! And you would be mostly right. Here is a side-by-side comparison:

If you look closely, on the standard cover, Darth Vader has a slight blue tinge and the background has a very subtle brown tinge which is most apparent on the Stormtroopers. I know when I received this issues I thought, why even bother? but then I remembered I bought each issue.

Unless you are holding both issues next to each other, you would be hard pressed to know which copy is which. If the copy still has the certificate, that can help but it is not a foolproof guarantee if someone decides to switch out the certificates.