WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars: Darth Vader #6, by Greg Pak, Raffaele Ienco, Neeraj Menon, and Joe Caramanga, on sale now.
Darth Vader's Force choke is iconic, demonstrating his power over others with a mere pinch of his fingers as he closes his unfortunate target's windpipe to strangle them from afar. But what happens when his own signature move is turned against him?
In Star Wars: Darth Vader #5, that very question gets answered, and it gets answer hard when Vader defies his master the Emperor Palpatine and the dark lord's response is to lay Vader flat. There's no question about it: Emperor Palpatine is demonstrably stronger than Darth Vader.
Much of the series deals with Darth Vader uncovering the truth behind his newly discovered son, Luke Skywalker. Taking place in the aftermath of The Empire Strikes Back where Vader revealed his parentage to Luke, the comics help flesh out the background of that knowledge from Vader first discovering the truth from Boba Fett up through his grappling with its implications. The latest series even paves the way for Vader's eventual rebellion against Palpatine in Return of the Jedi by showing Vader's previous defiance of his master and his rage over the manipulations that turned him to the Dark Side in the first place.
His path toward redemption is not a neat arc, however, and the sixth issue of the series begins with Palpatine confront Vader over his insolence. At first, Vader takes on a few members of the Imperial Guard and gains the upper hand by Force Choking three of them at once, only to find himself Force Choked by Palpatine's power, raised into the air, and delivered his lesson in one of the dark lord's signature monologues.
This is far from the first time that Palpatine abundantly demonstrated his superiority to his pupil in Star Wars canon. The novel Star Wars: Lords of the Sith saw the pair stranded on an alien planet fighting together for survival, and even from Vader's point of view he is constantly in awe of his master who exceeds him in his ability to sense the Force, produce powerful attacks Vader himself was not capable of, and navigate the intricacies of lightsaber combat so swiftly it seemed a blur to Vader's eyes.
In previous comics, Vader could Force Choke five men simultaneously to the point of death and even snapped the necks of his victims outright. He could do so over incredible distances or in the midst of combat, and with his other showings of astonishing Force power, this only makes Palpatine all the more terrifying by comparison. Palpatine's own showing of the Force Choke in Clone Wars showcased the ability to transmit his choke even across hologram projections or to incapacitate guards he could not even see, so it's not as though this is the first time his showings with the power proved superior to Vader's own.
In the end, Palpatine crushed Vader's prosthetic limbs while choking him, a further display of his superior use of the ability, and left him on Mustafar to fend for himself. When Anakin was first left limbless on the lava planet it was Palpatine who saved him, so the Emperor is providing a cruel lesson in irony to reforge his pupil's loyalty.
As the quintessential master manipulator, it's not often that Palpatine will get his hands dirty and fight for himself, so it's easy to forget just how powerful he is in comparison to the bloodthirsty Vader. Instances like this go to show just how far the power gap is between them, though, and in their wake, there's no question which is more powerful between the master and the apprentice.