A mad dash of a plan goes all over the place.
Creative Staff:
Story: Simon Spurrier
Art: Emilio Lasio
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
WORST AMONG EQUALS: PART TWO! Rogue archaeologist DOCTOR APHRA has ten hours to cross a hostile megacity before the bomb implanted in her throat blows up. No big deal, right? And even if there ARE, say, insane cops and bounty hunters on her tail—she’s got a partner to help her! (Unfortunately that would be TRIPLE ZERO: the astonishingly unpleasant murder droid who yearns to see her dead)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I long ago gave up on Doctor Aphra being the book I hoped for and have largely enjoyed the ride since even if it’s somewhat uneven in what it’s presenting. Simon Spurrier took a bit to get his legs under him as the main writer with it but he’s captured the voices of the characters well and has thrown us to all sorts of fun places and introduced some amusing characters. That’s made Emilio Lasio’s job pretty fun since there’s a lot of variety and creativity to work with here that’s not constrained with a “look like this world, look like this character” thing too often as Aphra goes her own way. And I like exploring more of this galaxy than the constant familiar.
Aphra and Triple-Zero have managed well enough at this point to survive what Evazan has done to them and that’s unnerved Evazan just a little. Enough so that he’s worked an amusing attempt at getting others to go and eliminate the pair, or more primarily that of Triple-Zero. Bringing in Winloss and Nokk from the annual is definitely fun to see and making Evazan look like Leia is its own delight as she tries to set this in motion. It’s just a couple of pages of material but it shows the seat of the pants approach that Evazan takes at times and just how much Winloss and Nokk want to take down Aphra after all that’s happened. I do like that they’re trappers but not killers but are willing to make an exception in Aphra’s case (though they’re willing to deactivate Triple-Zero, at least).
The bulk of the book focuses on what Aphra and Triple-Zero are up to as she discovers that there’s someone that might help in the area named Prexo. The problem is that it’s pretty far even in-city and with them being fugitives and tied together because of the bomb it’s rather perilous. There’s a lot of comedy in all of this as they try to get closer to that while providing social commentary and experiencing some creative areas within the world. But it also just has a big dose of “that’s a lot of stuff” going on to it. It’s on the move constantly, which is understandable because of the time limit before they blow up, but there’s no real breathing room here and more and more things are introduced regarding this world and its setting that reinforces a really oppressive existence that just makes it even harder to read.
In Summary:
I continue to enjoy Doctor Aphra but I also continue to wish it had a little more meat to it. Spurrier keeps things moving here and it’s a lot of fun watching how Aphra and Triple-Zero handle the latest spin on the power dynamic of their relationship but it’s just something that moves things forward without anything truly concrete to it. Exploring more of the area is fun and seeing the personalities of the two clash works well, but it’s something of a more of the same overall. Lasio delivers another solid looking book with some fun design work coming into it and some great expressions as well as just one of the best looking Leia pages with how she’s presented at the start here.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: December 12th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
