Welcome to Sunspot Prison, Dr. Aphra.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan
Colors: Sunny Gho
What They Say:
REBEL JAIL starts now! The Rebels travel to a prison base having taken an important captive in Vader Down. Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones with their eyes on the prisoners. The adventures of Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance continue!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a thoroughly enjoyable Kenobi Journals installment, Star Wars gets back on track with its main storyline following up from the events of Vader Down. While that event didn’t radically realign things in a lot of ways, particularly since we know so many of the main points ahead for our characters, it did shift things around a bit in some interesting ways. What I look for when it comes to these books is something that I did in the Clone Wars TV series as well, and that’s a proper expansion on the universe. With the expanded universe reset a couple of years ago we’re able to go into this fresh with new perspectives and new creative teams. And the Marvel side has excelled at that for the most part, which is pretty damn pleasing.
With this installment we have a small subplot that kicks off with Luke and Han off to purchase supplies for the Alliance only to have Han win a whole lot more at sabbac only to lose it all pretty quickly. Suffice to say, the two men are going to get into their fair share of trouble, but that’s just lead-off point here and there’s not much more to it. It’s fun, but it’s not meaty material. Far more interesting material involves what’s going on a few weeks after Dr. Aphra had been captured and questioned as Leia and Sana along with a small group of rebel soldiers are transporting her to the very secret Sunspot Prison. It’s essentially a small prison located extremely close to a remote star where nobody would ever look. The galaxy is damn big and there has to be a ton of creative places to store people and this makes a whole lot of sense.
Obviously not covered in the films, we get an idea of what the Rebellion does to those spies and others that they capture as they need to be kept out of the way. It’s not a unique prison in a sense but it works well in setting the tone. For Aphra, she’s just as cocky as always and breaks free from her bonds a few times on the journey alone, but she’s got a bit more work to do here. While there’s the obvious exposition about the prison, both from the warden and from Leia as she chides Sana for her more Imperial take on questioning prisoners, the neat part is the discovery that Sanna and Aphra know each other and apparently ran with each other in the past. That adds a new wrinkle to their interactions and it adds to the curious nature of Sana, who is now running with the Rebellion just to make some coin. You can see her following a similar path as Han to some degree, but not as deep and likely not for the same reasons. It’s an interesting shift for her after what we saw of her previously.
In Summary:
Kicking off a new arc here with Rebel Jail, things get underway solidly enough and it sets in motion a couple of different things. It’s something that’s certainly new and takes us away from the familiar areas while also putting Leia and Sana together to finally move past the whole Han scenario. I like what we get and am curious to see where it’ll go. Aaron seems to have gotten Aphra’s voice right and I’m digging Yu’s interpretation of her a great deal, which is saying a lot considering how much I love Larocca’s version over in Darth Vader. Yu’s artwork here is really well done as I love the way he captures the look of the actors but gives them their own personality and life here. It’s a solid issue with good layouts, some great two page spreads to dig into the material in a strong way, and a good sense of momentum getting ready to move into overdrive.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: All Ages
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 17th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
