DOCTOR APHRA Will See You Now

Spinning out of Darth Vader’s shadow, a new dark star rises in Marvel’s Star Wars comics line.

Doctor Aphra will see you now (or at least this new comic book Wednesday.)

Doctor Aphra courtesy Marvel and StarWars.com
Doctor Aphra courtesy Marvel and StarWars.com

After working with the Dark Lord of the Sith in the Darth Vader series supporting character blasts into her own book.

Writer Kieron Gillen explains why Aphra got her own book and what’s next:

“When I was sort of thinking about Aphra, the core of it was, Star Wars is about these archetypes. Archetypes, if you write them very badly, they become cliched. These very powerful, direct characters. You know, you’re not writing Proust. That’s not the point. The point is to be these big figures. A lot of my work was, “Okay, in terms of Star Wars, what sorts of characters fit well into that universe?” And it was, “Oh! The Indiana Jones archaeologist archetype. That’s fun, that makes perfect sense in Star Wars. Let’s do that.”

And of course, what makes it interesting in that is the ethical part of it. She has this very fun-loving attitude, she’s very fun to be around, but she’s really bad as a person. [Laughs] My description originally was, “Imagine Indiana Jones, how he goes about problems in that ramshackle kind of [way], but with his ethics inverted.” She became much more than that as she went through, and the push and pull between her and Vader, and she very much became an original person. But that was kind of the core of it, I think. And she’s kind of fun to be around.” Gillen told StarWars.com.

“The most interesting thing about what we’re doing with Aphra next is, she was designed to be Darth Vader’s foil. You know, she has to do a lot of the talking when Darth Vader doesn’t. Darth Vader will not make jokes. [Laughs] To be even a fun book to read, you need her to lighten it. But when you introduce her as a lead, that kind of changes the dynamic entirely. A) she becomes slightly more serious, and B) everyone else around her becomes a lot more deadly, as well.”

Wookie Black Krrsantan and droids Triple Zero and Beetee are part of the cast.

Here’s the StarWars.com link to Gillen’s entire interview.

Doctor Aphra arrives Wednesday.

By Editor