Star Wars: Doctor Aphra vol. 6 — Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon

Back in the first volume of this series, we got to meet someone who had a big influence on Aphra’s life:  Her father, Korin. Seeing him in action was a real “This explains a lot” moment for her character.  Korin was only half of the parenting equation for Aphra, as we haven’t heard a whole lot about her mom (besides the fact that she’s dead).  Writer Simon Spurrier, and a whole lot of artists, look to fix that here as we finally get to know Aphra’s mom. Which is only part of a story that includes Imperial Public Relations, an emotionally fraught reunion, ancient Jedi artifacts, “LORD,” and of course an unspeakable Rebel superweapon.

The quasi-cliffhanger ending of the previous volume isn’t even addressed here, because we all knew Aphra was going to survive that shot, right?  Now she’s back in the artifact-hunting business with urchin-turned-ward Vulaada in tow. Their latest job together involves stealing an old cloak for a mysterious buyer who’s willing to pay 200K credits for it.  Getting the cloak is easy enough, but while they’re being chased out of the temple by killer droids, Aphra spots something even more valuable: The Farkiller of Oo’ob the Apostate.

It’s a sniper rifle based on lightsaber tech, and something that her dad was always after.  There’s no way that Aphra isn’t going to pass up adding this to her collection. Before she can sell it, though, she’s found by the Rebellion with her ex-girlfriend Magna Tolvan leading the charge.  Rather than settle old scores, the Rebels want to recruit Aphra to their cause. Especially since they could use the Farkiller to make this superweapon they’re building a reality. Problem is that Aphra isn’t too keen about anyone, Rebel or Imperial, having their own superweapon in the galaxy.  However, it’s not immediately clear what she’s going to do about it when just about everyone in the galaxy is gunning for her.

So where does Aphra’s mom, Lona, come into all this?  Interspersed between the present-day scenes of the title character trying to work her way out from under the Rebellion’s thumb are scenes showing what it was like for the two of them growing up.  This would be after Lona realized that her husband was completely obsessed with his work and couldn’t be bothered to spare any time for them. So she took Aphra to a remote planet on the Outer Rim where they managed to eke out a small life for themselves.  Until the raiders showed up.

The interesting thing about Lona is that she’s not presented as being that much better of a parent than Korin was.  She may have plenty of pearls of wisdom to share with her daughter and help shape her worldview, but Aphra was not cut out for a life of living off the land. Even if our Doctor may have had the complete attention from this parent, it was the kind that suffocates rather than nurtures.  An upbringing balanced between agrarian boredom or adventurous neglect — no wonder Aphra turned out the way she did.

So it’s no surprise that her inability to balance out her adventurous impulses has gotten her into hot water with both the Imperials and the Rebels.  That’s what the rest of vol. 6 is all about and Spurrier has some interesting things to say about both sides. Even though the Rebels are ostensibly the good guys in the “Star Wars” saga, he shows some of them to be all too eager to make the hard choice to kill a few innocent bystanders in order to stop the Empire’s reign.  It’s not unreasonable to believe that they’d have a few leaders who would go this far, even if everything’s not as it seems in the end.

That’s because the real threat here is propaganda.  Specifically, the kind that’s being spread by the Empire’s PR division.  We got a glimpse into how they operate in the previous volume as the Doctor sowed chaos throughout the Imperial-ruled planet of Milvayne and they tried to spin things as best they could.  Here, we get a much deeper look into their operations and how they’re actually vital to the ongoing expansion of the Empire.

This is all Spurrier building up his pet idea, but it largely works for me.  It makes sense that an organization as large as the Empire would have some kind of people on hand to manage public opinion, keep order, and entice/force new planets to join them.  Where the writer might lose some people is in the gentle absurdity that the concept brings with it to the “Star Wars” universe. I honestly loved the reasoning behind why Emperor Palpatine had to go —  he’s just not loveable enough — and the explanations given behind how the planets are brought in are amusingly dark. Still, this kind of humor with a satirical bent is a bit at odds with the straightforwardly jokey and or goofy humor the franchise usually traffics in.  So this might not be to everyone’s tastes.

It’s still not as big a sticking point for this volume as the art is.  Where previous volumes have managed to keep a single artist for their entire lengths, vol. 6 falls down hard on that front.  Four different artists contributed to this volume — Wilton Santos, Caspar Wijngaard, Andrea Broccardo, and Cris Bolson — with only Broccardo managing to illustrate a full issue.  Most of them do decent work, though I’ve seen better from Wijngaard and Broccardo, though the fact that it took this many artists to complete this volume is a little depressing. In that it suggests Marvel saw the timeliness of “Aphra” as something to be solved by throwing as many artists as it needed at it rather than giving one of them the time needed to make it look good (or at least serviceable).

Still, the overall story is good with plenty of twists and turns as Aphra tries to find the best way to save her own skin.  It all culminates in a climax that is probably too talky for its own good as it settles for having two characters tell us all about how their schemes played out.  There’s still cleverness to be had in the talking and it leads to a great last-page cliffhanger appearance from a character who already had one killer cameo in the story before this.  Given how she came into the “Star Wars” universe, it looks like the finale for Aphra’s (first) series is going to wrap up by coming full circle for her in the worst way possible. Which means it should be highly entertaining for us readers to see how she gets out of this one!