Aphra meets her match.
Creative Staff:
Story: Simon Spurrier
Art: Emilio Laiso
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
“WORST AMONG EQUALS” PART THREE! With a huge price on their heads, rogue archaeologist DOCTOR APHRA and her murder-droid companion TRIPLE-ZERO are hunted wherever they run. Of all their pursuers, you might think the deadliest danger comes from the EMPIRE-backed cops…or the deranged undead bounty hunter…or the relentless monster trappers — right? Nope. Because the entire population has tuned in to watch the chase through Triple-Zero’s eyes, and EVERYONE has a shot at that reward…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We hit the halfway mark of this storyline with this issue and, as usual, Aphra has found ways for things to go even worse for herself and those around her. Simon Spurrier has definitely leaned on that aspect of her personality well since taking over the series and there’s a lot of delight in it at times since as much as things go badly there are some really inspired ways out of it all as well. Emilion Laiso and Rachelle Rosenberg put together another great looking issue with lots of things going on and lots of little details, but also some fantastic color work as we get deeper into the city and all of its mysteries. That keeps it feeling stylish and bold in ways that a Star Wars book needs to and both of them deliver well on it.
The nature of events is a tricky one here as we get a lot going on as Evazan is working to really humiliate and torment Aphra and Triple-Zero. We see how he’s taking things up another notch here by basically live-streaming the hunt for the pair after a bit so as to draw in more people looking forward a reward that’s out there on both of them. But the real drama comes from within as we see how the “nice” bounty hunters of Nokk and Winloss are orchestrating things to take her down, which includes the junk-modifications of Beetee that have seriously upset Triple-Zero. But the book took things a bit further the last time around with Tam showing up thanks to that Force fungus that’s giving him life of sorts as a reanimated corpse. It’s a surreal number of things going on all while having Aphra and Triple-Zero on the same side because of the bombs inside of them.
That a creative escape and a bit of luck allows them to move on and hook up with Vulaada again hits is no surprise but it’s one that’s well-played. The visuals as they make a slow move through part of the area in an old Imperial device sets the mood well and allows for Vulaada and Aphra to talk a lot while Triple-Zero fumes, especially since he started showing some actual caring emotions in relation to Beetee. I like what we get out of Aphra here as she explains why she’s never shut Triple-Zero down when she had opportunities as well as simply explaining her way of life in general. It’s a mentoring kind of moment combined with a warning to not go down the same path, which of course means Vulaada is going to do that exact thing, which naturally puts everyone in even more danger. To be fair, Vulaada does the right thing in most ways here and it’s hard to really blame her for turning them in.
In Summary:
The halfway mark of most arcs are like this where everything has moved in one direction with a lot of information and setup hitting and then twisting the rug out from under us and putting a new dynamic into spin for the back half. The time between Aphra and Triple-Zero while on the run is great as we see a new aspect of our favorite murderdroid and how he deals with Aphra being aware of it but I also really enjoyed the quieter back half of the book before it goes bananas. I’m curious to see where the rest of this storyline goes and if we can get a “new normal” out of it so that things move forward again instead of just the constant back and forth that it feels like as it needs to be more than just that.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 30th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
