“Control Issues”
Creative Staff:
Story: Alyssa Wong
Art: Minkyu Jung
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
Doctor Chelli Aphra has struck a bargain for power! Will she be able to pay the terrible cost? Or does the crafty doctor have one last trick up her sleeve?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The storyline is continuing on with this arc as Alyssa Wong is playing in an interesting area with the Spark but at the same time, it feels so much less like Star Wars and far more like Marvel Comics, if you know what I mean. This issue keeps Minkyu Jung on board for the artwork once again, which is definitely a bit plus to it as it definitely has a bit more polish to it, even if she and the previous artist have a lot of similarities in capturing the Marvel Star Wars “house” brand design. She again captures the characters and works them really well in their design and movement. There’s some solid detail here and Rachelle Rosenberg’s color design helps to give it a bit more weight and continuity with the bulk of the rest of the Star Wars books.
With this unfolding at the same time as Hidden Empire, events are certainly picking up more. The initial piece focuses on the plan Aphra put into place in order to take over from the Spark by using the droids and her tattoos in order to draw her inside. It’s a bit of a narrative whirlwind but it puts her in a position of taking control of her own body again while the Spark watches her. Aphra’s amusing in trying to catch up to some of the events that have taken place in the time since and it definitely sets the right tone. The Spark Eternal has their own plan in motion that Aphra is now being thrust into, hoover, which is going Sith-hunting as a visual for Vader is pulled up. She’s had her path cross enough times with him to know this isn’t good and I believe the last time they were even near each other she was barely able to survive because of it.
The other side of this is split in a couple of ways. We get Lucky and his group rescuing Sana and hers from the explosion but it comes at a cost. He had to call in a huge favor from Ronen Tagge for them to survive with cutting edge medical help and that now means that they individually owe him millions in credits. It turns into an amusing subplot where Sanna basically works to turn Ronen against his aunt in order for them to survive because he’s backed by Crimson Dawn. She’s basically trying to carve out a place for her friends to survive in whatever way she can. We also get an extended piece with Kho as we see them working to deal with the Archivist and the cage that Qi’ra is using to deal with the Emperor and it serves as a kind of recap of the first part of Hidden Empire while setting the stage for what’s next.
In Summary:
There’s a lot going on in this issue and it’s… not bad? I’m still not enamored with the Hidden Empire storyline nor the Spark Eternal at this point either, but the narrative comes together well enough here to work and it’s structured in a way that’s pretty engaging because it feels like we’re hitting meaningful story points now. Aphra’s the least interesting part and I’m more amused by what Sanna is trying to pull off here, but also setting Aphra on the path to face/hunt Vader is going to make me laugh. It’s moving along and I’m hoping its closer to the end of this storyline so we move onto something more interesting.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 9+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: December 28th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
