Doctor Aphra #33 Review

Writer: Simon Spurrier

Artist: Wilton Santos, Caspar Wijngaard, Andrea Broccardo

Letterer: Joe Caramagna

Publisher: Marvel

In the second part of the Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon arc, Aphra has been taken in by Tolvan, now working for the rebels, and she learns all about the arc's titular superweapon.

It's a really solid issue as always. I did not expect to get to see General Cracken, whose only other Marvel appearance was a couple years ago in the Han Solo miniseries. It was great to see him get a bit of personality. The darker side of Rebel Intelligence is something that ties back into Rogue One. In that film, we saw Draven make some shadier calls in secret. Now we get to see what kind of shady calls the guy who trained Draven would make.

The actual superweapon is a really interesting concept as well. Spurrier had previously mentioned in an interview that the arc would include something he had always thought the rebels should have done immediately after A New Hope. Clearly, this is it. I had never considered the idea of the rebels using the Death Star plans for a reason other than destroying it but I really like the idea of Cracken using them to construct a superweapon without Mon's knowledge.

The character stuff between Aphra and Tolvan was also great. I can never get enough about Aphra and while I haven't always been the biggest fan of Tolvan, I think this is a really interesting direction for her character that I'm enjoying.

The art was pretty solid. I still miss Laiso's work but I enjoyed this and it wasn't distracting that there had been three different artists working on it.

This arc is proving to be even more interesting than I expected. The previous arc took place almost entirely on Milvayne with a focus on character development but this one seems to jumping around a lot with plenty of character development but also some bigger details about the war. Next issue also sees the return of Black Krrsantan, a character that was a staple of the series at first but we haven't seen in a long time. The issue after that looks like it involves a trip to Coruscant and Aphra infiltrating the Imperials. One of my biggest criticisms of the last arc was the issues were so tightly packed that they were less fun to read month-to-month than they were all together. This arc seems like it'll fix that problem for me, and I'm really excited to read more.