Canon Comic Review: Doctor Aphra #24

Last issue it looked like all of Aphra’s baggage was finally going to catch up with her and issue #24 is all about every ounce of baggage doing just that. It begins with Tam Posla, who only comes because Aphra has the shape-shifting Lopset look like Dr. Evazan, Posla’s most wanted deviant, though Aphra sits at a comfy #2 on that list due to her hand in his boyfriend’s death in the previous arc. I had imagined the justice-seeking hookspores, who had picked up the trait from possessing the dead Jedi all these years (long story, just go with it), would be attracted to Posla and want to make him its next host, something Aphra was hoping for as well, but even though it attempts to take over Posla, Aphra prevents it by freezing it. She also freezes Lopset-Evazan to keep his mouth shut and not ruin the plan, something he realizes is about to happen too late, though he’s rightly upset about because it plays into Aphra’s mother’s definition of evil (which she shared with him in issue #22), as her choice to set him up like this has taken away his own choice to join Sana in the escape pod. At first Aphra freezing Posla and Lopset felt like surprising moves, as she seemed to have warmed to Lopset so using him and it wouldn’t have been too abnormal for her to have sacrificed Posla to the spores, but as terrible or strange as these moves are, they actually are better for both Posla and Lopset. By freezing Lopset, he doesn’t ruin the plan and is taken away by Posla, meaning he lives another day instead of being trapped on Accresker as it barrels towards the rebel-held planet; And by making sure Posla isn’t possessed, he takes Lopset and himself off the doomed prison to live another day. On the opposite side of the credit coin, this means the hookspores are free from the Jedi, she can grab the saber, and the shuttle Posla delivers gives her and Tolvan an escape route, so ‘saving’ them likely was not be the primary goal. However, while Aphra goes about it in her own, skewed way, she does save both friends and enemies because there is a good side to her, somewhere, which proves she’s better than Triple-Zero, no matter how hard he tries to make her think they are the same like he did in “Remastered.”

Sana Starros and Inspector Tolvan got to air their grievances with Aphra last issue, with Sana showing how done she was with her ex, how she doesn’t think she’ll ever change, so her exit in the escape pod is not only Aphra’s way of saving her, but her time butting heads with Aphra is over for now. She will be jumping back to the Star Wars mainline series in the upcoming arc “The Escape” so I was kind of wondering how she’d get through this story, and by her finally letting go of the hate and grudge against Aphra, she gets to start a new chapter in her life, one I can’t wait to see and happy she gets to have. With Sana/Aphra drama center stage last issue, Tolvan/Aphra drama gets to stay in focus for the rest of the arc and issue #24 lets them both be honest with one another. Tolvan admits she still loves Aphra, despite the latter’s decision to orchestrate everything to ensure she manages to get a hold of the lightsaber once guarded by the hookspores. And, as always, Tolvan makes an astute observation: Aphra seemingly cares so little about her own life, instead placing a preference on what her next score is, no matter the cost. Dek-Nil, her probability droid, is a great example of how she put her life last, trusting an insane droid to crash her way through any obstacles as she went from one artifact to another. But Aphra’s plans here also reveals she cares about other people’s lives over her own, prioritizing their safety in her attempt for the lightsaber, though it might be due to her believing she can just bumble from one disaster to the next unscathed, as she has continued to do up to this point. However, there’s something else, beneath the surface, which is the real reason behind her lack of cares for her own life: she doesn’t want to be Aphra anymore.

This was quite the revelation, a truth inspired by the arrival of the greatest threat to her life: Darth Vader, whose silent, dramatic, and deadly entrance brought shivers down my spine. Chelli Aphra tells Tolvan she’s spent her life thinking being smart and being good at things could keep people from wanting to hurt her as she’d be too valuable, but it’s her smarts, her knowledge which has her life in the biggest trouble, as Vader is on Accresker because Aphra knows about his plan to supplant the Emperor. He thought he had killed her…right up until Tolvan made a direct call to him last issue revealing Aphra’s survival because she thinks his arrival could prevent the jail’s planet-bound death, as the Empire would halt the process if he was aboard, and allow them to escape. For quite some time now I’ve hovered between believing Vader secretly knew she would survive him throwing her out the airlock and him having no idea she survived, 60/40 respectively, but his swift response and personal journey to Accresker seems to suggest her survival was a surprise. So when Aphra says she doesn’t want to be herself anymore, it means she doesn’t want to have the knowledge which keeps the threat of a second murder-by-Vader attempt hanging over her head, as he wouldn’t be making the same mistake again and will make sure he finishes the job. In a way, her dying would almost be a preferable outcome, as an Aphra without her morally gray personality would never be any fun, so I can’t wait to see how the Bor mind-rewrite goes…or if it goes at all, with Vader interrupting it maybe or letting her live with her knowledge of his plans for some strange reason, like he admires her wiliness or something. One can hope.

Though I imagine it’ll be interrupted by someone else who also cares A LOT about what’s in Aphra’s head: Triple-Zero, who arrives on Accresker in true, grisly (but funny) muderbot fashion. His entry leaves Tolvan in true horror of the murderbot, something Aphra warned her about, though her reaction is a great reminder that for all Tolvan’s own problems and disaster tendencies, it’s how most people should react, not like how Aphra sees a skill set to use to get what she wants. Trip and Bee Tee are on Accresker because Aphra’s mind also contains the decryption key for the data within Hivebase-1, which Triple-Zero had her steal to gain access to his earliest memories, and it’s another reason her knowledge makes enemies of her, though this knowledge she has because she made the choice to blackmail back the murderbots to gain her freedom from them. This makes for a great juxtaposition between Triple-Zero and Aphra, as he spent most of the previous arc, “Remastered,” lamenting what it means to live without having access to one’s earliest memories, making the supposition one can’t be their true selves without all their memories as, “Half an artist is no artist at all,” a quote from issue #16. As he struggles to make himself whole, retrieving a collection of memories of murderous deeds and endless torture, Aphra is making the choice to abandon her memories because half an artist is going to be a good enough artist for her (she does leave herself a lightsaber which should give her Bor-remixed self a nice start), as the full artist comes with too much baggage for her to fully escape from. Her choice is a cowardly way out, an attempt to sneak out of trouble, fixing the resulting problem, not the issue that created it. The real issue is how she flits from situation to situation, focusing more on the score than those around her, making choices for them because she doesn’t think they’d be as creative/successful as hers, and it produces enemies along the way. If she stopped to care a little more about those around her and the outcomes of her actions, she’d be less likely to always be in such a situation where her life is on the line again and again. Chelli Aphra would still be a fun character that way, but I bet she’ll find some way to meet that fix halfway with some type of compromise, keeping her, as usual, another step away from disaster in her own morally grey way.

Simon Spurrier continues to bring all of the series’ threads together in “The Catastrophe Con” arc, and had this been the end of the Doctor Aphra series (thank the Maker it’s not!), it would’ve been tied up with a neat, complete bow. The irony of Aphra trying to delete her memories and Triple-Zero trying to regain his an excellent touch, following up on the previous arc and naturally progressing the thread, while a confrontation between Aphra and Vader has been brewing for nearly 2 years now and my anticipation of how it all goes down in issue #25 is through the nebula. The art team of Kev Walker (art), Marc Deering (inks), and Java Tartaglia (colors) continues to be my favorite for Aphra’s misadventures, as I feel like it really fits the tone of the series. Panels like Vader’s arrival on Accresker, Triple-Zero’s calm singing in the fires of his and Bee Tee’s destruction-laden arrival, and Tolvan’s horrified reactions have both humor and menace, with the haunting colors really setting the mood for all of Aphra’s baggage coming to take their pound of flesh.