– Spoiler Review –
In Doctor Aphra’s “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” arc (issues #32-36), as Aphra takes on a ward (but don’t tell her that) and tries to look after more than just herself, an old (understandably bitter) flame reemerges, and a new, shifty (and PR minded) enemy appears. Full of the humor one expects from Doctor Aphra, a deep-dive into Aphra’s past and her latest scheme asks the all-important question: can and will Aphra ever change? Lucky for fans and new readers alike, the journey to the answer, and the answer itself, are all part of the next best arc for the series!
Last arc, “Worst Among Equals,” ended with a bigger surprise than Triple-Zero and BT-1’s departure: Doctor Aphra, champion of self-serving actions and interests, makes a selfless choice in saving her new friend, young Vulaada. Fans of Aphra and the Doctor Aphra series have experience many incidents that would seem to incite a selfless change in the character, but from the way Minister Voor, head of the Empire’s PR department, explained Aphra’s actions, as if she takes the blaster bolt for Vulaada on instinct, something felt different this time. Would “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” reveal Aphra finally begins to act a little less selfish, the change would finally stick? Fast forward six months to the start of this arc and Aphra is still looking after Vulaada, who she sees a bit of herself in, but she seems to be up to her old ways, putting potential credits and her own life ahead of her ward’s. As the arc goes on though, it’s obvious something has changed within Aphra, as her attempts to protect herself from the machinations of the Rebellion and the Empire, the latter hunting her since Milvayne for some surprising reasons, also are meant to protect her new ward (which, like I said before, don’t tell her that). From offering Vu’s pet qaberworm as a distraction from the menacing Black Krrsantan, who takes her side anyways in the hopes for more credits again, to taking an ancient weapon supposedly part of a hush-hush Rebellion superweapon program to the Empire so she may be deemed a hero and prevent them from hunting her and her known associates, aka Vulaada, anymore; these actions certainly save Aphra’s skin, and she likes to act as if that’s all she’s doing, but it’s all part of much larger game happening right beneath all of our noses.
The fun of Triple-Zero and BeeTee-One were their outright evil personalities and unpredictability, but after several arcs of back and forth with them and Aphra, a little change up was needed for primary antagonists, which is why Minister Pitina Voor was introduced in the previous arc. With the murderbots out of the picture for now, Voor and her PR department schemes stepped up to the plate, and admirably so, as her villainess came not from some overwhelming evil, but rather an overwhelming sense of self-righteousness that comes from a twisted sense of noble I can almost relate to. Voor views the Emperor’s methods, full of death and costing a lot of money (*side-eyes Death Star budget*), as a waste, because her PR department, creating monsters and enemies for the Empire to appear heroic against, take planets and systems with minimal bloodshed, implementing rules to keep the peace afterwards, much like we saw on Milvayne last arc; we’ve heard about Milvayne for a while in the Aphra series after Tam Posla was introduced, so it’s neat to know how far back all of this seemed to be planned! Voor’s plans are a somewhat noble pursuit, trying to avoid bloodshed, but in a way I find her plans far more horrific than the Emperor’s, as one could be under the yoke of the Empire and never know how horrible they are due to the PR firewall Voor carefully constructs, while at least the Emperor’s methods are hard to miss (which sounds like a bad thing to say, but my point stands) thus can help ferment rebellion better. As Aphra goes to the Empire for clemency by bringing the Farkiller and preventing the Rebellion’s “plans” for it, we learn Voor doesn’t just prefer her methods, she wants to overthrow the Emperor and rule with her PR department as her galaxy-wide whip against the Rebellion. It seems Aphra and the Rebellion both have played into her hands, as she manipulates events from a far in the hopes the delivery of the Farkiller weapon leads to the Emperor’s death, the Rebellion hopefully turning it into some type of weapon, and her hands are clean from the fallout as she swoops in. This is the larger game happening beneath all our noses I mentioned earlier…expect everyone underestimated one critical player, even myself a little, Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra.
Throughout the arc, the series flashbacks to Aphra’s past, to the time where Lona took Aphra away from everything, first described by Aphra herself back in 2015’s Darth Vader #10 (with a little flourish, of course), as an attempt to keep her daughter safe. It turns out Lona’s motives were a little selfish, as she was more worried about how she’d cope if Chelli was ever harmed rather than how Chelli would feel, but the many pearls of wisdom she passes down to her daughter have helped her survive as long as she has, alone in the galaxy, raiding for deadly artifacts and the next big score. While one pearl was at the center point of two previous arcs, a far more important pearl emerges and helps to set up and explain Aphra’s actions this arc and how she has changed to be less selfish: “Do right by the people you love.” Aphra’s certainly failed on that front, especially with Magna Tolvan even if the whole Bor-mind thing was to save the woman while saving herself, and that failure comes rearing back when Tolvan and Aphra collide in the first issue of the arc. Aphra manages to talk Tolvan down when she’s stealing the Farkiller, despite all the animosity, but Aphra reveals Tolvan letting her go clued her onto everyone’s scheming, as Tolvan never would’ve let her go unless instructed to nowadays, a heartbreaking reminder of what happened between them but also an admittance on Aphra’s part that what she did was a terrible thing. Since Aphra knew what schemes were coming from where, she hijacks one of Voor’s cameras and begins taping the woman’s Bond villain-like confession of her plans, which prevents the roundabout assassination attempt on the Emperor, brings Imperial justice Voor’s way, and totally continues to provide Aphra and Vulaada security, thus doing right by the person she “loves” in a sense in more ways than one: for starters, one of the helmets of the raiders who killed Lona Aphra resides in Voor’s illustrious PR halls, which means Lona’s death is on Voor’s hands as the “raiders” were part of one of her schemes; and this action helps protect Vulaada, a surrogate daughter of a sense of Aphra as she deals with her unresolved maternal problems.
In several fear-inducing panels, which start with Voor’s decapitation, the whole security from persecution thing seems thrown out the window: Darth Vader has arrived to dole out the Emperor’s justice and murder Aphra for her several escapes. Or not???!? Vader asks not for Aphra’s head, but for her help, much like he did back in 2015’s Darth Vader #3, the issue which introduced her to the world. If you’ve been following along to the solicitations for the rest of the year and news the series is ending* (I’m not crying, you’re crying!), you might have an idea of what he wants, but for now the question looms large over the series final arc, “A Rogue’s End.”
Simon Spurrier has been delving into the mind and heart of Aphra in exhilarating, meaningful, and extremely funny ways ever since he took over and that continued in “Unspeakable,” while it’s pretty awesome to see so many threads, even from issues several years ago, picked up and explored. Special commendation on Voor, who was a great new adversary for Aphra, scheming with a hint of something relatable. Whereas the last few arcs had a steady art team, “Unspeakable” had quite the collaboration across the 5 issues: Wilton Santos (#32-33, 36), Caspar Wijngaard (#32-33), Andrea Broccardo (#33-35), Cris Bolson (#33, 36) on art/pencils; Marc Deering (#32-35), Don Ho (#32), Walden Wong (#33-34, 36), Scott Hanna (#35) as inkers; Chris O’Halloran (#32-36), Stéphane Paitreau (#33-34) for colors; and Joe Caramagna on lettering. Considering all the different hands at play, having at least the same colorist the whole time definitely helped, but all the main artists matched rather well, never quite making it feel readily apparent it wasn’t a new team nearly every issue. I really enjoyed Wijngaard’s flashback panels, it was smart to differentiate them stylistically, and I’m very excited he’ll be artist for the series’ final arc. Some of my favorite panels/pages include: how the opening issues’ flashback/present story matched the whole raiders coming/Rebels coming (issue #32); Tolvan and Aphra’s close-up just before the former shoots the latter in the face and the ridiculous look of the Rebels’ “superweapon” (issue #33); all the flashbacks with Aphra calling out her mom, Krrsantan floating in space while following Aphra’s path through the ship (issue #34); the new outfits for Aphra, Vulaada, and Krrsantan, the illustrious halls of the PR building, and Voor’s smiles switching to sneers (#issue 35); when Aphra nearly makes Voor spit-take, Aphra’s tears/anger when she reveals she now knows Voor got her mom killed, and those chilly panels leading to Vader’s reveal (issue #36).
Here are a few other things:
- As much as Aphra is likely right about Tolvan letting her go to easy due to everything that has happened between them, the final panel she appears in, where the Rebels are watching Aphra’s broadcast in the final issue, she actually looks…proud? Happy, even, maybe even a little hopeful for Aphra, so these two aren’t done just quite yet.
- *December is full of endings all over the saga, including Doctor Aphra?!?!? The upcoming Empire Ascendant one-shot will not only act as an epilogue for the Star Wars series after it closes with issue #75, it’s also marks the end of the first phase of Marvel’s comics, set to reveal Aphra’s fate! Thankfully it was announced the same day as the December solicitations, otherwise I wouldn’t had a heart attack over the solicit for issue #40, the series finale. But the solicit for Empire Ascendant actually has a glimmer of hope and some silver-lining for Aphra, so it might not be me crying endlessly after all.
- It’s never explicitly stated, but I do feel like Aphra purposefully got similar electro-tattoos on her left arm because it’s the same one Lona lost when the “raiders” attacked, as her mom had the tattoos first.
- There was some hubbub about Doctor Aphra exploring the grayer side of the Rebellion with General Cracken’s Superweapon idea, I got caught up in it too, but realizing their actual plans were only using Aphra to attempt an assassination, so it’s more of the gray area we saw in Rogue One.
Doctor Aphra‘s “Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon” was another excellent entry in a continuously great series, as it gave us our deepest look yet at Aphra’s past and showed how she can and has changed.
+ Lona and Aphra flashbacks
+ Aphra making a change stick for once
+ Voor’s machinations
+ Helluva a way to set up for the final arc!
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.
Doctor Aphra
Aphra (#1-6) | And the Enormous Profit (#9-13) | Remastered (#14-19) / Arc Review | The Catastrophe Con (#20-25) / Arc Review | Worst Among Equals (#26-31) / Arc Review | Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon: #32 | #33 | #34 | #35 | #36 | A Rogue’s End (#37-40) | Annual: #1 | #2