Star Wars: Doctor Aphra vol. 4 — The Catastrophe Con

Doctor Chelli Aphra is the “Star Wars” equivalent of Indiana Jones with more flexible moral standards.  When given such a character to write you’d think that most writers would settle for having her find a lead on an old Jedi/Sith/Republic artifact and come up with some clever moral/physical complications for her to overcome in pursuing it.  Simon Spurrier is not “most writers.” No, Spurrier is the kind of writer who will look at that premise and wonder be about bringing the character face-to-face with the awful choices she has made and seeing how she responds to it. While also looking for an old Jedi/Sith/Republic artifact or two.

That’s what “The Catastrophe Con” is all about as Aphra finds herself stuck in Accresker Jail.  Which is a mass of derelict starships held together by a gravity attractor and towed around by a ship to wherever the Empire needs the pillaging services of disreputable prisoners.  The interstellar archaeologist has been doing her best to get by until her first escape attempt goes predictably awry. Fortunately with the assistance of her newfound shapeshifting friend Lopset she finds a way to make one call out of the prison, to her conflicted Imperial paramour Inspector Tolvan in the hopes that she’ll be able to get her out.

Problem solved, right?  Well, Aphra is still a very wanted person as a result of everything she got up to in the previous storyline.  From murderous protocol droids, to self-righteous morally-upstanding bounty hunters, to the Rebel Alliance — who are extremely pissed at her for encrypting the data she stole for them and the price tag she attached to decrypting it.  So much so that they’ve recruited the services of the best smuggler in the galaxy — who also happens to be Aphra’s ex — to snatch her from Accresker as well.

The majority of “The Catastrophe Con” is what you’d expect from a sci-fi action jailbreak story.  You’ve got distinctive prison with unique methods of keeping its prisoners in line. Creepy Force-related stuff happening in the background with an attractive item to distract Aphra along the way.  There are also lots of plans to escape from it that go awry at just the right time to complicate things. There’s always the problem of that last bit happening so often that it tries the reader’s patience along the way.  That it doesn’t is a testament to how well Spurrier has constructed his story in that every new complication flows seamlessly and cleverly from the last.

If that was all this storyline had to offer then we’d probably be left with a fun but forgettable piece of “Star Wars”-branded fluff.  It isn’t, because Spurrier also wants to dig into the larger ramifications of Aphra’s morally capricious character. This is touched upon repeatedly throughout the storyline via her conversations with her exes and new friend Lopset.  We’re constantly reminded and shown evidence of the title character’s propensity for making choices that put her and her friends at risk, yet she’s been just clever and charming enough to escape the consequences of such.

That all comes to an end in a way where the return of a certain tall, dark, and ominous figure from her past winds up being the least of her worries.  In fact, things actually get real dark for a “Star Wars” story. For those of you who thought that seeing Luke hang from the bottom of Cloud City in “Empire” was as hopeless as things got, what’s done here is arguably worse.  I don’t want to even hint at the things done here for fear of spoilers. I’ll just say that some of the bad things that are done by and happen to Aphra are going to have consequences that will extend directly to the next volume and whatever ones that follow.  And that the connection this arc has to “A New Hope” was well-played.

That all of this works as well as it does is also due to the spectacular artwork from Kev Walker.  He’s really turned in some impressive work during his time on “Doctor Aphra” and it’ll be a shame to see him go after this arc.  This is because he invests a lot of detail in making a crazy jail like Accresker make visual sense and it’s a small joy to take it all in from page-to-page.  What Walker is also good at is selling the emotions of the cast as well. The web of relationships in this series gets quite tangled, so it was impressive to see how the artist manages to get the nuances of their conflicts just right.  Particularly with Aphra’s descent from despair into near-shell-shock in the final issue.

All of this is to say that “The Catastrophe Con” may not be for fans who want their “Star Wars” stories to get really dark.  I was surprised by where Spurrier took the story here, but ultimately appreciated what he did. The darkness in this story didn’t come through as a “ruin my day” kind of thing that made me dread re-reading it prior to writing this review.  In fact, I was able to appreciate the hints Spurrier dropped regarding the last-scene twist he springs on the reader. There’s also the fact that all of this makes sense as it digs into Aprha’s character and shows us that she’s really kind of messed-up inside.  It’s not what I expected to get when I went into this volume, but Spurrier and Walker managed the impressive trick of making me glad that I got it by its end.